Blues 4 Wrexham 1 (A.E.T) .. Report

The Welsh visitors forced the game into extra time after earning a 1-1 draw in normal time, with Blues having to come from behind through Cameron Jerome who equalised Chris Llewellyn's earlier strike.

Steve Bruce made many changes to the Blues side – as you'd expect – with Colin Doyle coming in for Maik Taylor in goal. There was a totally new back four to start the game, with Stephen Kelly, Martin Taylor, Olivier Tebily and Marcos Painter coming in to play across the defence from right to left respectively. Sebastian Larsson moved across the pitch and further upfield to play wide right, whilst Fabrice Muamba and Neil Kilkenny provided a youthful central midfield. Gary McSheffrey did keep his place wide left (his natural back-up Julian Gray is apparently still ill), with Cameron Jerome being given another start up front alongside Mikael Forssell.

Early on the game was pretty much as you'd expect from such a Cup tie – Blues had plenty of possession through Kilkenny and Muamba in the midfield, but they struggled to break a well-organised Wrexham side down. Whilst Wrexham had conceded 10 goals in their last 2 games, prior to that they'd actually had a pretty impressive start to the season, and they looked a decent enough side. Blues were restricted to a couple of long range Painter efforts which did little to trouble Michael Ingham in the visitors' goal.

Wrexham took the lead somewhat against the run of play after half an hour through Llewellyn's strike. The visitors earned themselves a corner after John McAliskey – who had only signed on loan from Huddersfield on the day, and was fairly impressive in a Peter Crouch appearance and performance stylee throughout the evening – forced Doyle into an impressive save following a smart bit of control and a fierce volley. From the corner, Blues failed to clear their lines and Llewellyn, who came through the Norwich ranks at a similar time to Craig Bellamy, smashed the ball into the back of the net from close range.

This seemed to shock Blues and raise Wrexham whose band of travelling fans continually diminished in numbers through them getting arrested – surprise surprise. Darren Ferguson (son of Alex) should have made it 2-0 shortly afterwards as Wrexham put Blues under increased pressure.

Shortly before half-time, however, Blues were level through Jerome's second goal for the club. McSheffrey continued his fine 100% record of setting up every single Blues goal since his arrival at the club (statistic slightly exaggerated) with a deep cross which Jerome was going to head into the back of the net, but decided in the end to just chest it in (or that's how it looked) to level things up at half-time – although Forssell missed a great chance seconds before the interval.

Wrexham started the second half impressively too, and tricky winger Josh Johnson really should have done better when presented with a fine opportunity whilst unmarked at the far post. For Blues, Jerome and Forssell were one again illustrating why they're 3^rd and 4^th choice strikers this season with poor displays. Nicklas Bendtner and DJ Campbell were sat on the bench improving their first team prospects without doing anything, such were the ineffective displays of Jerome and Forssell. Granted, Jerome scored a goal, but otherwise he was pretty poor, and about two decent touches aside, Forssell continued to look a shadow of his former self.

So, midway through the second half – as against Shrewsbury in the last round – Jerome and Forssell were hauled off with Bendtner and Campbell replacing them. The difference in the movement up front was noticeable immediately, and within minutes the two had combined to allow Campbell to knock the ball past Ingham only to be dragged down in the penalty area. The penalty was duly awarded, and Campbell insisted on taking it despite McSheffrey's pleas – the ex Coventry man clearly desperate to get his first goal for the club. As I said about two reports ago, Campbell's finishing is dreadful when he has time to think about it, and with a penalty, there's not much more time you can have to think about it. In fairness he did send Ingham the wrong way, but he also sent the ball the wrong way, and well wide.

The penalty incident clearly got to McSheffrey and Campbell in different ways – but with similar results. McSheffrey obviously decided he was going to score no matter what, and Campbell obviously decided he needed to make up for his miss, and so both took it upon themselves to shoot every time they got within 80 yards of the Wrexham goal. Neither of them scored, full-time came, and with the teams level, both sides prepared for extra time.

David Dunn came on for Muamba for the extended period. Muamba had given an impressive display in midfield alongside Kilkenny who also gave an excellent account of himself. On the other side of the coin, both Kelly and Painter will have been disappointed with the contributions that they made.

Whether it was down to Wrexham's tiredness or not, I don't know, but Blues showed their class in extra time to ease past the visitors in the end. This was mainly down to Kilkenny, Bendtner, McSheffrey, Campbell and Dunn playing against a Wrexham team who appeared to suddenly lose all their earlier organisation, and the class of those five made them pay.

McSheffrey hit the bar with a free-kick before he did get his first goal for Blues with a stunning half-volley which he took first-time after a corner was cleared to him some 25 yards from goal to make it 2-1 after 105 minutes.

During the second half of extra time, Blues added two more, thanks to some sublime through balls by Kilkenny. Firstly he managed to pick out Bendtner who broke Wrexham's offside trap along with McSheffrey and Campbell, leaving poor Michael Ingham facing all three of them. Bendtner drew the ‘keeper, before slipping the ball across to McSheffrey who netted his second.

Not long later Kilkenny found Bendtner again with another superb through ball, and this time the Dane drew Ingham out again before rounding him himself and slotting the ball into the empty net. Kilkenny even picked out a couple more of these through balls to find Bendtner (again) and Campbell late on, but Blues settled for 4-1. Kilkenny's through balls showed some of his ability, but also highlighted to easy you can make it look if you have forwards making the right runs. Jerome and Campbell had wandered off to the dressing room before the second half of extra time when Blues ran Wrexham ragged with forward movement – perhaps they should have stayed and watched and learnt something.

And that was that – credit to Wrexham for their 90 minute performance, which was decent enough. They were torn apart after that though, when Blues introduced their more in-form players, and Blues will have been pleased just to progress after being given something of a scare. A useful run out for the likes of Kilkenny and Muamba, and it won't have done McSheffrey and the frighteningly good Bendtner any harm either, so all in all, can't complain too much.