Blues made two changes to the side that started against Arsenal in a low-key game last week. The injured Olivier Kapo was replaced by Gary McSheffrey, whilst child molester and serial rapist Martin Taylor was killing immigrants or committing arson or suspended or something*. Radhi Jaidi replaced him.
Some games can take a while to settle into any sort of pattern, but this one didn't. Very, very quickly you could sense that Blues were up for it and that Spurs weren't. The fact that it only took Blues seven minutes to take the lead through Mikael Forssell highlighted this.
Blues kept up the good work for another 20 minutes or so, before suddenly getting incredibly nervous and nearly letting the pretty hopeless Spurs side back into the game. By the time half-time came, Blues needed it. Spurs had still been pretty poor though, with Dimitar Berbatov doing his best William Gallas/toys/pram impression either side of hitting the post.
Thankfully, Blues did regroup at the interval and within 15 minutes they were 3-0 up. Seb Larsson's free-kick didn't look like it was particularly in one of the corners or anything, but if you hit the target with Paul Robinson in goal, you've got a chance. Then some comical Spurs defending saw Forssell and the magnificent James McFadden nearly run into each other before Forssell finished from a tight angle.
Blues were cruising now and Spurs looked like they wanted to get back to the Basildon nightclubs with their Wembley medals around their necks. Forssell got his hat-trick to make it 4-0 late on after being set-up by McFadden before both were subsituted to standing ovations. Forssell will rightly get the plaudits for his hat-trick (a perfect one, at that) but McFadden was the best player on the pitch by a country mile, and that's quite something to say given that he shared the pitch with Berbatov, Robbie Keane and Stuart Parnaby.
McFadden and Forssell showed signs of forging a decent strike partnership at West Ham, and then consequences conspired to halt that against Arsenal. However, back together today they linked up superbly. Forssell's finishing and hold-up play allayed with McFadden's incisiveness and cunning was pretty breathtaking at times - even if they were up against Spurs' 87th choice backline. Seb Larsson also played well given the licence to go forward by Spurs being pretty weak.
Further back, Damien Johnson deserves special praise for another fine display - more so given that Fabrice Muamba alongside had his poorest game of the season. Whether Steve Bruce's departure has just released Johnson a little, I don't know, but he looks like a new player. Perhaps he even questioned himself because of the whole Bruce thing and the stupid "lovechild" tag, and maybe McLeish coming in and backing him and showing faith in him has rejuvenated him. He's no Kaka yet, don't get me wrong, but he's been superb lately.
The full-backs in Stephen Kelly and David Murphy both continued their good, solid, reliable recent form, whilst Jaidi was as solid as you expect when long balls are played at him. Why Spurs didn't look to get the likes of Darren Bent, Berbatov, Keane, etc (or even Aaron Lennon off the bench) running at him, I don't know, but more fool them. Gary McSheffrey, as much as I like to deride him, was "ok", but no better than that, and looks like a player with no confidence whatsoever.
Just look at how positive that above has been! Imagine that - a fine team performance with Blues beating Spurs 4-0. But oh no… final word to Liam Ridgewell, who again displayed his Pursesque ability to undo 89 minutes and 57 seconds of a decent performance with a ridiculous mistake to cost the team a goal. In the week Ridgewell had put his hands up and taken the blame for Theo Walcott's second goal last week. Ridgewell himself spoke of the need to "stop playing football sometimes and put the ball out". He obviously pays as little attention to himself as his team-mates do when he's doing windmill arms, and he did it again to allow Jenas to make it 4-1 in the last minute. Thankfully it wasn't costly, but it could have been, and even as you left the ground, although Blues had beaten a very good team 4-1, it did take the gloss off the whole day a little, which was a shame. Someone needs to bang Ridgewell's head off a brick wall this week.
Still, on little moan doesn't overshadow all the positives. There's been some encouraging signs from Blues of late, but they hadn't put it all together in one game. They did here, and hopefully they can push on to safety now. McLeish has found wins hard to come by (except against Tottenham) and hopefully this one, and the manner of it, will just relax everyone a little and get the monkey off their backs.
(* Martin Taylor is not a child molester or a serial rapist and I'm sure he's never committed arson. Oh, he's not an immigrant killer either - he just breaks their bones.)