Often Partisan

The Loss of Marlon King

One of the things to come out of the draw with Blackpool was the lack of clinical finishing from Birmingham City to kill the game off when leading 1-0. With leading scorer Marlon King now out for the remainder of the season are Blues going to suffer badly due to the loss of their Jamaican striker?

Marlon King has been a steady goalscorer for Blues in the one and three-quarter seasons since he signed from Coventry. In eighty appearances in a Blues shirt he’s scored 32 times (29 in the league) and with 14 this season in 30 appearances (13 in 26 league appearances) he is comfortably top scorer, eight goals ahead of Chris Burke, Curtis Davies, Wade Elliott and Nikola Zigic who shared second place with six apiece. With a 1 in 2 record in the league for Blues this season it’s easy to see that Marlon King is a big loss.

However, since December Marlon has been through a bit of a lean patch, scoring just one goal in nine appearances. Those nine appearances comprise seven starts – of which he was only subbed off once (Sheffield Wednesday, 83 minutes) and two sub appearances where he came on for the last ten or twenty minutes. In the nineteen games that Blues have played since December 1 Blues have scored twenty-four times – and King only has one of them.

What is interesting is of the remaining 23 goals, only six have come from recognised strikers (Zigic 5, Lovenkrands 1). Curtis Davies has really weighed in of late with five of them, Burke has four and Elliott 3. In honesty, this doesn’t surprise me either; over the New Year period Blues were struggling for strikers having to play Redmond and Morrison up front and even going as far as to give Reece Hales a debut. However, it does show that Blues are reliant on other players in the team chipping in with goals because the front-men aren’t banging them in on a consistent basis.

Thus the crux of the problem on Tuesday night is shown; whilst Blues can and do score goals without Marlon King in the team and firing on all cylinders there is a real struggle for the front line to provide the goals to win games. The number of Curtis Davies goals in the last couple of months makes me wonder if we’re overly-reliant on set pieces to score; I will admit to feeling at times during games that I can’t see Blues scoring because of the lack of faith that I have in the front men.

Derby County come to St Andrews at the weekend with a squad that has been fairly decimated with injury and that has had to blood various youngsters (in the same way Blues have) to ensure a team can be put out. If Blues are to pull themselves out of the mire they need to start putting away chances on a more frequent basis – and more importantly, have more confidence in themselves to do so. For example, as bad as the Wade Elliott miss was on Tuesday (bobble or no bobble), he’s got to be able to pick himself up and back himself to put the next one away – if he lets it eat away at him, he’s only going to lose confidence and it will affect his game more. Blues are starting to get into the position where only wins will do – and you can only win games by scoring goals.

Talking Points sponsored by John Hicken Industrial roofing and cladding materials

Tags: , , , , , ,

51 Responses to “The Loss of Marlon King”

  • DoctorD says:

    “Wade Elliott miss was on Tuesday (bobble or no bobble), he’s got to be able to pick himself up and back himself to put the next one away – if he lets it eat away at him, he’s only going to lose confidence and it will affect his game more.”

    Al, you sound like Lee Clark.

    But seriously, this is the kind of situation where a manager earns his salt.

  • Dino Tiltoni says:

    When Thomas came on to partner Zigic up front on Tuesday the phrase ‘give enough monkeys enough typewriters….’ immediately sprang to mind. Marlon will be sorely missed.

  • chris says:

    Time for another loan IF we have the money to do so, though probably not from a lower division.
    Even if the club can only afford someone for just one month, it could be long enough to get those points we need to stay up.
    The loan window shuts on the 22nd i believe, come on Pannu give us a fighting chance.

  • dave mann says:

    with marlon out for the season we will struggle to score goals deffanetley,
    but zigic will get a run now ( if he trains properly?) and hopefully he just
    might get one or two important goals like hes done in the past and pull os
    out of trouble. as for elliott he only scores when not expected so not to
    shocked about his miss against blackpool!
    ps. bring back kp.kro.

  • AR says:

    Dare I mention Nile Ranger as a loan?

  • carlos says:

    Never been a big fan of King, I think his all round game is very limited, BUT stick the ball in the right areas for him and he very rarely misses the target. Best finisher we’ve had since Forssell and he will be missed.

  • mark says:

    Dan you are right about Marlon he will be sorely missed, sometimes it not about just one player either. It about the team sorting itself out making the right decisions at the right times. The manager can only do so much once they are on the pitch they should be man enough and professional enough to shut out games that are there to win. Games are only won if put the ball in the net. Interesting people pick on individuals please note Zigic could have done a lot better with his chances in games since his return. He had better chances than Thomas and still missed. and he cost the club millions.If I paid that much for a player who did well premiership, and only scored 6 goals in this league I want some kind of return would.. you…at least 20-25 goals. Its the players who should take responsibility when they on the pitch to do the business, play as team win as team. It about taking the knocks, get back up, roll your sleeves up, get that hunger and fire back in your bellies, and have damn right go at the next team.

    • blaneh says:

      I agree Mark, Zigic should have done better with some of the chances he has had over the last few games. However, he was never going to be a goal machine for us, at no point in his career has he scored 20+ league goals in a season (he came close once bagging 19 in the Serbian top flight for one of Serbias top clubs).

      Thomas may have done better with the chances, but would he have been in a position to take those chances? I’ll be honest, what I’ve seen from Thomas so far is that he is a poor mans Clinton Morrison, and is out of his depth.

      I believe for the rest of the season, when the Likes of Zigic, Thomas and Lovenkrands do get sniffs at goal, we need to prey to the footballing gods that they can find the back of the bloomin net.

      Fancy us 2-1 on Saturday, big Zig with a double ;)

  • dave mann says:

    if you think of some of the stikers weve had over the last 10 years.
    ( forssell, dugarry,pandiani, zarate,cole,sutton,morrisson,yorke,horsefield etc.)
    we are now realising how good we had it under gold and sullivan.
    king would not have got a sniff with any of them around and now
    weve got no one of his goal potency to fill is boots. SO SO SAD! KRO.

    • Euston 9.18 says:

      You missed out KEVIN PHILLPS who scored a hat trick the other night !!

    • nicky wicky says:

      another fool sucked into the debate about sullivan and gold forgatten how they used the fans ,and fed us all the bull for years just to keep the club in profit. The Blues were never going anywhere under them we would never have won at wembley and played in the europa league because they were happy to finish 17th every year. they bought average premiership players,but told us every year they were going to sign stars until we’d paid for our season tickets. they were’nt interested in the cups except the ones they’d bought!

      • Dino Tiltoni says:

        Whatever is said about our former owners Mr Nicky Wicky it should be remembered they did a great job just getting us into the Premiership after taking the club over when it had a negative value. Maybe you are too young to remember those dark days. If we are hold Sullivan and Co responsible for anything its selling the club to the current owners who have little of their business acumen.

      • Marky mark says:

        Yeah shocking times under Gold & Sullivan

        New stadium
        Prem league football
        Some great players
        Financial security

        Everything was ok until we hounded them out, all because we were not satisfied.

        And look at us now !

        • Art Watson says:

          Spot on.

          Sums it up nicely.

        • chris says:

          new stadium was paid for by football trust money and fans with two share issues, they just supplied the cash flow, which i don’t underestimate, but it was all about business and never about love like they have at WHU.
          They never pushed the boat out for Blues like they have for West Ham.
          They started the rot when they failed to buy decent players in Jan 2006? when sutton and campbell were signed and cost us relegation.
          Then they put the knife in by taking around £500k in wages between them so signalling it was just a cash cow, just like the present lot with Pannu’s greedy wages.

    • Dino Tiltoni says:

      Sorry but I don’t consider Sutton, Yorke and Pandiani were ‘hits’.

      • Ali Duncan says:

        Have to agree. Sutton was awful and his link up play with Heskey nonexistent. Although perhaps he was just pointing to the calibre of the player as opposed to their actual impact.

    • prewarblue says:

      I am so glad you didnt include the “Misshigher,,,,,,StJerome” in your list as a “”Striker””,,,,,,he gave lessons to all about missing open goals,,,,,,,,anywhere except the back of the net

  • Tony says:

    At times like this we need a Hero and Im available, just put a spot of dubbin on me boots and try to avoid them laces on the ball when I head it home.
    Fear not boys all is not lost If i can just find my Bus Pass.

  • KeeprightCroydON says:

    This is an interesting comment that I’ve extracted from your report.

    “The number of Curtis Davies goals in the last couple of months makes me wonder if we’re overly-reliant on set pieces to score; I will admit to feeling at times during games that I can’t see Blues scoring because of the lack of faith that I have in the front men.”

    There’s another way of looking at this. With Davies’s potency at set pieces, we could do with winning more corners and free kicks in the final third. I notice from stats at most of our games (Tuesday being an exception), we hardly win any corners, usually conceding more than we gain. I wonder if we need to harry their defenders more in the final third will get us more corners.Is it coincidence that the combination of Ferguson and Hiscox resulted in us getting more corners on Tuesday?

    And as for free kicks in this area, I actually think we’ll get a lot more with Redmond in the side. I really hope LC starts him more often; it’s about time he was given the opportunity to show what he’s really capable of with a regular starting berth. I accept that with Ferguson on board, it limits Redmond’s chances, but it would be great if LC can find a way of making more of his abilities.

  • dave mann says:

    euston if you read my earlier message you will see i did mention kevin phillips.
    ps bring back kp kro. remember?

  • Cleggy says:

    King is a huge loss. I think he would have scored 20 or more this season and who’s the last player to do that for us? Claridge?

  • dave mann says:

    we need someone in on loan because we will struggle with what weve got.
    any ideas?

  • Northern Exile says:

    The trouble with loans is that we’re restricted to what’s available. Nobody wants to give away a quality striker unless there’s something not quite right about them – attitude/motivation/fitness etc. – so we’re stuck. Maybe we just have to bite the bullet and accept that Thomas is the best we can get on the loan market at the moment.

    Unless we have someone at the club who knows the top European leagues well enough to cherry pick a decent but unsettled reserve player from there for the remainder of the season, I think we just need to keep behind Zigic, Løvenkrands and Thomas (I couldn’t fault his battling that won the ball for our 2nd against Peterborough, so he’s obviously not useless) and hope they do the business.

  • andy says:

    Nile Ranger has had his contract terminated at Newcastle and is now a free agent. I know there is a one out one in policy but Ranger, despite his off field antics, is a talent and Birmingham would do well to sign him.

  • Paulo says:

    Marlon will be missed. It doesn’t matter which way we look at it, but now only having Zigic and Lovenkrands as the main two, then if injury hits them ..we will be in the proverbial. Finishing has always been a problem for us anyway, and it no doubt will continue to be, but if each player works as a team, the team will work for the players. We will find goalscorers and the team has to go on and stop being so inconsistent. One of our concerns now is ..who is the main man for penalties, as Marlon was that confident spot kick taker.
    Anyway, it’s a bad injury that he has, so I only hope he recovers in good time and in good spirits, and returns to us next season, ready to get stuck in.

  • Dino Tiltoni says:

    Ranger would be the ideal replacement for King so long as ‘He scores goals’ !

  • dave mann says:

    didnt houghton try to get ranger last seaeon and nothing happened.
    we normally do well with players with a past dont we!

    • clubclassblue says:

      I think youre right, perhaps just before he hit the headlines again.
      It would be a big risk. Biggest problem would be his match fitness, he cant have had much time on the pitch recently. The last thing we need is another bench warmer.

  • Evesham blue says:

    A point a game will be enough. I subscribe to the 3 points would have been nice vs Blackpool but we got another point on the board anyhow. Lets not get hung up about it

  • ed77 says:

    we need to start winning home games for sure,does any1 think with us playing at palace on the friday night giving us an extra day off than wolves who we play the easter monday gives us the edge in that game,cuz i do,and with my wife being a wolves fan we need 2 win else im not going home haha

  • ed77 says:

    I believe we will miss king his blues record speaks for itself i always think hes got a goal in him even when we not playing well he can score out of nothing,that strike at burnley winner against middlesboro to mention just 2.also he takes a good penalty

  • Roy Smith says:

    If Gold And Sullivan had stayed they would have worked their butts off to get the council to build a new stadium, sold off St Andrews taken the cash and left us in the mess Coventry are in, no assets and a high rent to pay every week. It’s exactly the same policy as at West Ham. Do you think the club will be better off moving to the Olympic Stadium? G&S will have a healthier bank account but the club will be far worse off. Their only interest at Blues was in taking money out of the club, why be surprised they were businessmen after all, but as long term security for our club no thanks.
    Yeung may be a disaster but it was not a policy decision for his business empire to go belly up.
    All we can hope for is new owners with more business acumen than Yeung and more love of the club than G&S.

  • bluenoserob says:

    if it was possible for sullivan and gold to buy back birmingham today how many of us would say no ……maybe only Nicky.

    • james says:

      All day long. Stability, investment, no fire sales, huge signings.

      Queue 100’s of knuckle draggers invading the pitch. Well done lads!

      KRO

  • bluenoserob says:

    what empire did CY ever have , did he have a half share in a wine bar called “the empire”?

  • bluenoserob says:

    as for sully and gold taking money out of BCFC , they both grew their wealth out side of the club during their ownership , i would i think that owning us and the distractions that brought cost them both millions.


Leave a Reply

Personalised Gifts for a Bluenose
Haircuts and League Cups
Open Tax Services
Corporate Solutions UK
PJ Planning
Rodal Heating

Archives