Birmingham City 2-0 Rotherham United: Blues end five-game winless run
- Published
Kevin Long's goal was his second for Birmingham City since joining the club in January from Burnley
Birmingham City moved 10 points above the Championship relegation zone after beating fellow strugglers Rotherham United for their first win six games.
Blues made a superb start as Reda Khadra blasted them into a fifth-minute lead.
Kevin Long scored a close-range second from a corner in controversial circumstances as replays seemed to show the ball had not hit a Rotherham player on the way out.
The Millers upped their game after the break and created a number of chances, while Birmingham's Lukas Jutkiewicz had a late header well saved.
The win - a first for John Eustace's side since the 2-0 victory over neighbours West Brom on 10 February - moves Birmingham up to 18th place.
They leapfrog Rotherham who replace Blues in 20th place with Matt Taylor's side eight points above the drop zone.
Blues got off to a wonderful start as Khadra took on Jutkiewicz's pass, cut inside and unleashed a thunderous right-footed effort into the bottom corner before Tahith Chong blazed an effort over soon after.
Birmingham had defender Krystian Bielik forced off with what looked like a concussion having been caught by Hakeem Odoffin's high boot, but it it did not put them off their stride.
Long powered in the second from close range as Rotherham failed to deal with a corner - but it was a corner that should not have been after replays showed the ball did not touch Chiedozie Ogbene on the way off the field as referee Geoff Eltringham had thought.
Jutkiewicz had two chances before half-time to put Birmingham further ahead, but Millers boss Matt Taylor made a double change at the break, bringing on Conor Washington and Jamie Lindsay.
The changes had the desired effect as Rotherham created a host of chances - Tariqe Fosu and Washington had good efforts blocked while Jordan Hugill appeared to have his shirt pulled in the Birmingham area, but no penalty was awarded.
In the final 10 minutes Birmingham had chances to equal their biggest win of the season - first Viktor Johansson had to be quick off his line to cut out a Scott Hogan chance before Rotherham's Swedish keeper superbly tipped a looping goal-bound Jutkiewicz header onto the bar.
Birmingham City head coach John Eustace told BBC WM:
"I was really proud of the efforts today, I thought the group were outstanding.
"First half we played some fantastic football, we looked a real threat going forward, and second half we knew they were going to throw a lot of big boys at us, which they did, and I thought the way the team stood up to that was outstanding.
"There was a lot of pressure at times, but sometimes you've just got to put your bodies on the line and defend for your lives and the group did that."
Rotherham United manager Matt Taylor told BBC Radio Sheffield:
"We've been punished for a poor start to the game, probably a poor first-half performance - you have to give the opposition credit at times - they outmuscled us, got there first and came out on top of most of the duels in the first half.
"Second half we were much-improved, I could have made more than two changes at half-time - and we were a lot more aggressive with our intent and the way we went about our business.
"We've learnt a lot from that first-half performance, some of the individual performances within it weren't quite there."