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Chris' decision leaves Klarer in danger zone
Birmingham Mail
|September 27, 2025
NO-ONE can say the balance of Blues' defence didn’t look better against Swansea.
Jack Robinson replaced Phil Neumann to allow Christoph Klarer to move back to his natural right side and there were no issues playing out from defence.
The benefit of playing with a left-footed centre-back is the passing angles and lanes it creates. During his brief spell on the other side Klarer, as a right-footed player, couldn’t open up and play forward and quite often his only pass was a short one to Alex Cochrane.
That in turn put pressure on Cochrane to always be available and find the forward pass Klarer couldn't. We saw a huge improvement from the two players in question with Robinson between them last weekend.
Neumann was the unfortunate casualty, despite doing very little wrong in Blues’ opening five Championship games. “It was always going to be a tricky call but I was keen to give Jack a go,” admitted manager Chris Davies.
“Phil has done nothing wrong, as I said to him. Defensively, we have been pretty strong generally but it was more to do with the balance and we had that.”
This story is from the September 27, 2025 edition of Birmingham Mail.
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