Blues keep Wolves at bay

Craig Gardner
12 April 2012

Wolves failed to capitalise on the sending-off of Birmingham midfielder Craig Gardner and remained in the Barclays Premier League bottom three after sharing the spoils in a 1-1 draw at St Andrew's.

Gardner was sent off after only 29 minutes for two bookable offences and faces a two-game ban as it was his second dismissal of the campaign.

But Blues held on for a point in their own battle for survival, with Sebastian Larsson cancelling out Steven Fletcher's early penalty.

Alex McLeish's side are now four points clear of the relegation zone with three matches to play.

But Wolves will view this as a golden opportunity wasted to climb out of the bottom three, having had the numerical advantage for such a lengthy period.

After six minutes Wolves went ahead through Fletcher's penalty. Ben Foster's poor clearance fell straight to Matt Jarvis, who played in Stephen Ward.

Foster came off his line but only succeeded in bringing down the Wolves player and referee Kevin Friend pointed to the spot.

Foster was booked before being sent the wrong way by Fletcher for his ninth goal of the season. Gardner was then brought down by Jamie O'Hara and the two were cautioned after squaring up to each other.

A mistake by Michael Mancienne gifted Birmingham their equaliser after 27 minutes. The on-loan Chelsea player failed to make a clean header when trying to deal with a long Foster clearance.

The ball dropped into the path of Larsson, who drilled his low shot past Wayne Hennessey. But two minutes later Birmingham were reduced to 10 men. Friend adjudged that Gardner had dived when challenged by Jody Craddock and he was sent off.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in