Both these teams will hope to be in contention for at least a play-off place this season, with Birmingham’s ambitious owners bankrolling significant squad improvements following their promotion from League One, and Swansea spending more this summer than in any other transfer window since their relegation from the Premier League in 2018.<\/p>\n
Having won two and drawn two of their first four matches back in the second tier, Blues had suffered successive defeats in their two previous outings, but returned to their St Andrew’s home where they had not been beaten in the league since April 2024.<\/p>\n
Swansea had a burgeoning record of their own to sustain, unbeaten in seven games in all competitions and buoyed by a dramatic 3-2 midweek EFL Cup win over Premier League Nottingham Forest.<\/p>\n
This was for large parts a compelling match-up between two sides who looked to attack at every opportunity, both at their most threatening on the break.<\/p>\n
The frenetic pace played to the strengths of Swansea wingers Ronald and Zeidane Inoussa, with the former delivering a superb low cross for Vipotnik to fire over from close range before Inoussa turned smartly and had a shot well smothered by Blues goalkeeper Ryan Allsop.<\/p>\n
That passage of play led to Vipotnik’s disallowed goal, the Slovenian striker’s volley from Josh Tymon’s excellent whipped cross ruled out for offside even though replays suggested he was onside.<\/p>\n
Inoussa tormented Birmingham’s defenders, two of whom were booked for fouls on the Swede, and the home side’s wide players were similarly effective.<\/p>\n
Gray was their chief creator, while striker Marvin Duksch should have capped his first Blues start with a goal, but was thwarted by Vigouroux.<\/p>\n
The Swans keeper was busy in the second half, as Birmingham gradually took control of the match.<\/p>\n
Furuhashi and Gray should both have done better with their efforts, while Lewis Koumas headed wide and Tommy Doyle went close with a curling 25-yard shot.<\/p>\n
The home side eventually made the breakthrough deep into injury time, as Roberts swung in a left-footed cross from the right and Dykes glanced a fine header into the far corner to prompt jubilant celebrations among the home fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both these teams will hope to be in contention for at least a play-off place this season, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-170170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}