Sloppy whites let it slip

Furious with his sloppy defenders and raging at the injustice of another costly mistake by match officials, he at least had the consolation of not having to pick up the tab when he went out for his customary post-match dinner with Blues boss Steve Bruce, the friendliest of his Premiership rivals.

Since the winning manager usually pays on such occasions, the original plan was to split the bill, but they decided to toss for it and, for the second time in little more than an hour, Big Sam got lucky.

Minutes earlier Emile Heskey's header had drifted just off target to save Wanderers from the ultimate insult of losing a match they should have had sewn up by half time.

"I suppose I've got to be thankful for small mercies," Allardyce said, reflecting on Heskey's near miss in the dying seconds.

"That would have been something we didn't deserve but we know what the Premiership's like. It will hurt you if we don't take full advantage of your opportunities when you get them."

What an opportunity too. Birmingham, without an away win for nine months and suffering an early-season crisis of confidence, were there for the taking and Wanderers had everything going for them from the moment Radhi Jaidi produced a stunning finish to put them in front after just 16 minutes.

Few Premiership games are ever quite as one-sided as this but - and this is rare when Steve Bruce's Blues are involved - it was no contest. Not until Wanderers conspired to surrender control in three minutes of sloppy, hesitant defending at the start of the second half.

Muzzy Izzet cashed in, Birmingham were level and suddenly all the good work - not only of the first half but of the previous four games - counted for nothing.

Wanderers were justified in arguing that top scorer Henrik Pedersen had a perfectly good goal disallowed for offside but, in all honesty, they only had themselves to blame.

"I would still have been very, very disappointed had we won the game because of what we did in the second half and how we conceded that goal," Allardyce said. "But that was a really bad decision by the assistant referee - nobody in the world will ever convince me otherwise.

"I didn't need the video replay, I could see he was onside from where I was sitting.

"Schoolboy, comic errors by our back four and another diabolical decision ... it really is disappointing that we've dropped two points. Henrik would have been up there in the top three or four in the goalscoring charts and we could have gone third in the table with 14 points and made a statement to the Premiership."

Wanderers have still exceeded expectations by taking 12 points from their first seven games and the fact that they are far from satisfied after a five-match unbeaten run, including games against Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal, is a sign of how far they have progressed as a Premiership force.

But they have raised expectations to new heights and it is no longer enough to be drawing games at the Reebok, especially when the opposition is as impotent as Birmingham were in the first period.

They failed to get a single shot on goal while Wanderers made light of Jay-Jay Okocha's absence to win the midfield battle - battle being the operative word when Robbie Savage is around - and launch repeated raids into the final third.

But, apart from Jaidi's smart finish for his second goal in successive games, they rarely troubled Maik Taylor. The Birmingham keeper did well to smother a free kick from Ivan Campo and was relieved to see a couple of shots flash wide, but the single goal was all Wanderers had to show for their overwhelming dominance of the first 45.

That might have been enough had they not been so careless and given Birmingham all the encouragement they needed to post an early reply.

Without a single shot to save in the first half, Jussi Jaaskelainen had to be on his toes to tip one over from Izzet after Ricardo Gardner's miscued clearance ballooned back into the box and Heskey, anonymous up to that point, was dangerously close to scoring from the resulting corner.

Birmingham knew they'd been let off the hook in the first half but they could not have expected Wanderers to have shown such reckless disregard for their lead as they did when Taylor launched a clearance into the box. It was routine stuff but no one in a white shirt took the initiative and Jesper Gronkjaer cashed in on Gardner's hesitancy to hook the ball in for Izzet to claim his first goal since his summer move from Leicester.

From that point on, Wanderers were chasing a game they should have been controlling and Birmingham were giving as good as they got, helped in no small way by some alarmingly poor distribution from players who repeatedly wasted valuable possession.

Kevin Davies, who hardly flinched in the phsyical contest against Kenny Cunningham and Matthew Upson, had Reebok fans on their feet when he raced away from Savage and delivered a slide rule pass to tee up Pedersen for a shot that flashed past Taylor. But the flag was up and Wanderers' chance of recording their fourth win of the season evaporated.

There were half-chances after the introduction of Stelios and Gary Speed, making light of his 35 years in the 500th appearance of his career, was close with a long-range effort. But the second half honours went to Birmingham - and so would all three points if Heskey's last gasp header had been fractionally more accurate after Gardner had carelessly headed Mario Melchiot's long throw into the danger area.

"I don't know what was wrong with him," Allardyce said, puzzled by the full-back's calamitous second half performance.

"When Melchiot takes one throw and it goes 40 yards, you know when he takes the next, it's going to go 40 yards again. But it appeared that none of our defenders, as well as Ricardo, seemed to think there was a problem."

Bruce, his face scratched and grazed from an early-morning encounter with two car thieves at his home, admitted: "I'd have taken a draw before the game, so I'm delighted.

"I suppose it was a fair result but that last header sums us up away from home ... when things are going for you, they nestle in the bottom corner and you nick it in the last 10 seconds."

Wanderers did not deserve that but they know how desperately close they came to handing Birmingham - and that man Savage - all three points.

Love him or loathe him, Savage can be an inspiration as well as a liability. Baited by the Bolton fans from the minute he set foot on the field and booked for his third rash tackle on Speed, he was a red card just waiting to happen. But, as he often does, he settled down and came into his own in the second half.

"That's Robbie," Speed said of his sidekick in the Wales team. "He does that a lot. To be fair to him he does try to get them going and he did that first half and there were a few tackles flying in.

"He tries to get the tempo up for them but as soon as he gets his yellow card, he understands that he has to calm down a bit and he did that.

"He's only had one (red card) in his career and that shows why."

Kick by kick

9 mins: Gronkjaer skips past Campo and whips in a dangerous cross that is just too strong for Heskey.

13 mins: Campo makes his presence felt at the other end, firing in a 25-yard free kick that Taylor does well to save, going low to his left.

GOAL!

16 mins: Jaidi gets his second in successive games, finishing like a striker after N'Gotty's free kick arrives at the back of the box via the heads of Davies and Upson.

37 mins: Referee Styles waves away penalty appeals as Campo goes down under Gronkjaer's challenge.

42 mins: Gardner's 25-yarder flashes past the angle after a well-worked Campo free-kick.

Half-time: Wanderers 1 Birmingham 0

47 mins: Jaaskelainen is forced to make his first save of the game from Izzet after Gardner's attempted clearance; Heskey gets a chance from the resulting corner but shoots off target from close in.

GOAL!

48 mins: Jaaskelainen is let down by sloppy, hesitant defending as Gronkjaer gets wrong side of Gardner to hook Taylor's long clearance inside for Izzet to lash the ball in off the underside of the bar.

55 mins: Pedersen has the ball in the net after terrific work by Davies but the flag is already up for a contentious offside decision.

65 mins: Jaidi comes to the rescue as Heskey threatens to cash in on Jaaskelainen's hesitancy.

71 mins: Stelios is blocked off by Melchiot in a challenge for Pedersen's cross but again Mr Styles says "no penalty".

84 mins: Stelios picks himself up off the ground in an offside position to react first to Ferdinand's flick on and poke a shot narrowly wide.

92 mins: Wanderers survive a late, late scare as Gardner makes a hash of a header from Melchiot's long throw and tees up Heskey for a header that drifts a fraction wide of the far post.

Full-time: Wanderers 1 Birmingham 1