Birmingham City ‘are carrying a few too many’ according to John Ruddy who wants to scrap ideas and styles in pursuit of points to avoid relegation.
Riley McGree’s thunderbolt handed Middlesbrough all three points at St Andrew’s on Tuesday night and pushed Blues deeper into the relegation battle at the bottom of the Championship. Blues are 21st in the table after four defeats from their last five games.
“It’s a shame because we have got quality, and we have got fight and endeavour in the squad,” said Ruddy. “But when things are tough, you need everybody to stand up and be counted and I think we’re probably at the point, at this moment in time, where we’re carrying a few too many during the games.
“The quality isn’t quite there but we still need to stay together and keep fighting together because it’s going to take every single player that’s available, alongside the management team, to get us out of this.
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“We need to remain together and try and stay as positive as we can. No excuses moving forward, we need to make sure we’re ironing out mistakes.”
Ruddy dubbed Saturday’s meeting with Watford a ‘must win’ match. The Hornets sacked Valerien Ismael at the weekend after a run of one victory in 12 matches and have named Tom Cleverley their interim head coach. Cleverley was at St Andrew’s on Tuesday to cast his eye over Blues.
Part of Blues’ problem this season has been their inability to keep clean sheets. Ruddy has only kept seven shut-outs in comparison to 14 in the Championship last season. Instability on the touchline and in defence are undoubtedly contributing factors to Blues’ regression on that front.
Ruddy commented: “Different managers have different styles. John (Eustace) was labelled a transitional manager, rather pragmatic, but found a way to get a very good balance between us.
“We obviously then switched to a more possession-based style, which I don’t think suited us very well, and now we’re trying to find a middle ground where we can get back to being defensively solid but also still threaten going forward.
“The last two games, tonight and Millwall on Saturday, we didn’t work their keeper anywhere near enough. That is an issue as well as keeping efforts and goals out at the other end.”
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