Post Augsburg

The turn out of Blues fans in Westendorf for the FC Augsburg friendly was highly impressive.

There's many more here than last year and about 250 made up a crowd of more than 400 at the Waldstadion.

Shame that there was no cheer apart from the beer, that went down well - too well in some cases - as temperatures reached 30 degress Celsius.

Blues were again beaten 2-0 and were sluggish, the passing was skewiff and the 4-3-3
malfunctioned.

Augsburg are nearing the end of their pre-season preparations - this was their fifth friendly - and had more spark, more sharpness.

There is no question that Blues have been putting the hard yards in during training, in sweltering conditions.

Yet the wisdom of having two matches in three days, against good opposition who are more advanced fitness-wise and settled on the pitch, has to be questioned.

Afterwards Alex McLeish made a point of thanking the support the team has received and said he was sorry Blues had been unable to give the fans a victory so far.

Such tours were essentially about getting the mileage in the legs, he added, and not about the results.

Formation-wise, the tinkering will stop the deeper Blues go into pre-season and McLeish, I gather, knows in his own mind what does and doesn't work with the certain players in certain positions.

Our photographer Tim Easthope patiently waited at the Augsburg end to get decent action, and it's fair to say most of the time he was looking down the pitch to the other goal.

During the first-half Blues substitutes were warming up near him and all of a sudden Cameron Jerome decided to whip his £7,000 Nikon out of his hands with the words 'let's have a go then'.

Jerome's picture of Marcus Bent can be seen here.

Of course, it would be an easy gag to crack about Jerome not being able to shoot straight, so I won't.