Stoke City 1-2 Birmingham City: Scott Hogan & Harlee Dean score for Blues

Stoke 1 2 BirminghamImage source, Rex Features
Image caption,

Scott Hogan played 15 times for Stoke during a loan spell in the 2019-20 season

Goals from Scott Hogan and Harlee Dean were enough to see Birmingham City pick up all three points from their visit to Stoke City.

The Blues took the lead in the 13th minute when Hogan pounced on a mistake by Phil Jagielka before rolling the ball past Josef Bursik in the Stoke goal.

The lead was doubled against the run of play in the 67th minute when Dean headed in at the back post from Hannibal Mejbri's corner.

Lewis Baker pulled a goal back from the penalty spot for the Potters after Liam Delap was brought down by Auston Trusty, but Stoke were unable to find an equaliser.

Birmingham profited from a horrible moment from former England centre-back Jagielka with the ball rolling into the path of Hogan, who calmly slotted past Bursik.

The home side pushed for an equaliser and Josh Tymon's well-hit volley from the edge of the area was gathered by John Ruddy at the second attempt.

The Blues doubled their advantage in the second-half as poor marking allowed Dean to head home from Mejbri's floated right-wing corner.

Alex Neil's Stoke found a way back into the game as Delap was brought down in the area and the resulting spot-kick was powered into the bottom left-corner of the net by Baker.

Stoke drop to 19th and are now just two points above the drop zone, while Birmingham move up two places to 11th.

Stoke manager Alex Neil told BBC Radio Stoke:

"The analysis was that we're giving cheap and really silly goals away and if you're going to do that you're going to find it really hard to pick up points in this division.

"I think with Jags [Phil Jagielka] he's been that good for us but we've asked a lot of him, three games in a week, and maybe today was just a game too much.

"The way we want to try and play is to get the ball down and move it but at the moment that's to our detriment more than anything else.

"The problem we've got is when we've asked the lads to open the pitch up and use the ball, you will naturally make mistakes, but really we made fundamental errors."

Birmingham manager John Eustace told BBC Radio WM:

"It was a magnificent performance from the lads without the ball and I'm really pleased with the performance.

"The spirit in the camp is fantastic and the way they got through that 95 minutes together was fantastic, I'm really proud of them.

"This is such a tough place to come and play any football, the wind and rain, the fans are right on top of you and the atmosphere is very hostile.

"The most important thing was that we came here, we were competitive and we looked after each other. It's a fantastic win."

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