Birmingham City fell to a third consecutive defeat in the Championship last night with an Anthony Pilkington goal enough to give Wigan all three points against Pep Clotet's side.

In truth it was a pretty low-quality encounter between the teams with chances hard to come by, but a glaring error from Blues keeper Lee Camp allowed Pilkington's effort to squirm in, condemning the west Midlands outfit to another loss.

Even though Blues are still comfortably above the relegation zone, fans may worry about what this season will bring as last night was the latest unconvincing display from the team in this campaign.

There are several clear problems that the side has and here we look at THREE things we learnt from the setback against the Latics...

Scoring goals is becoming a big problem

Nine goals from ten games is a pretty alarming stat for Clotet, with his men failing to score for the fourth time this season in the defeat at Wigan.

Only three sides have netted fewer in the league - and they all have a game in hand on Blues this evening.

There is a massive reliance on three-goal top scorer Lukas Jutkiewicz and the pretty drab football means that creating chances is extremely tough right now. Again, that was evident against Paul Cook's men when they had no shots on target - this lack of quality in the final third is a massive problem.

They aren't starting games quick enough

Remarkably, Blues have only scored one goal in the first half of a Championship game this season and it came on the opening day.

Clearly, that's too long for it to be bad luck or a coincidence, they simply aren't starting games quickly enough.

The team seem to be playing with too much caution from the off and they don't have the required intensity to take the game to the opposition and they are paying for that.

Clotet still doesn't know his best team or formation

Following on from that, the Spaniard also doesn't seem to know his best side.

He has switched things up quite a lot this season in terms of personnel and formations but nothing seems to have worked and there is no clear style of play that many fans expected.

Of course, it should be stressed that Clotet is ten games into his reign at St. Andrew's and will need time but there aren't really many signs that things are going to get better.

 

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