​Birmingham City player ratings gallery: Four score 4/10 in 0-0 draw vs Millwall as three get 7/10

Birmingham City maintained their run of picking up points but managed just one in a rather dull 0-0 home draw against Millwall on Wednesday evening. Blues didn’t even have a shot on target and looked far from the side which dominated QPR five days ago.

It was an incredibly slow start to the clash with neither side managing to challenge either goalkeeper in the opening half an hour. City had plenty of the ball but were unable to create many goalscoring opportunities, whereas Millwall floated a few crosses into the area but to no avail.

Blues didn’t put much of a foot wrong defensively but one opportunity did come in that period - not that it was of much note - as Zian Flemming tried an audacious chip, landing on top of the Blues net. Ruddy gave his teammates a bit of a telling-off as Flemming was given far too much space.

There was a small confrontation down near the technical area toward the end of the first third - as seems to be the nature of clashes against Millwall. Mason Bennett squared up to Scott Hogan after Krystian Bielik went down with a problem, raising the temperature at St Andrew’s somewhat.

Blues enjoyed a slightly better spell right at the end of the first half as they picked up the pace a little, but there wasn’t a great deal to report even then. Eustace seemingly asked his players to take a few more risks, but midfield duo Tahith Chong and Hannibal Mejbri were often caught out.

Almost immediately after the break, Birmingham displayed more energy and there was a clear improvement in an attacking sense. Chong in particular showed more desire, driving forward and taking the brunt of a Murray Wallace body check and winning his side a dangerous free-kick. Hannibal then fired over and Chong was soon replaced by Juninho Bacuna.

The first bit of true invention of the entire night came in the 62nd minute, as Blues so nearly opened the scoring on the counter. Hogan, who made a good run into the six-yard box, was ever so close to converting a low cross from Maxime Colin but couldn’t quite stretch far enough.

Millwall had their first big opportunity of the night in the 74th minute as Dion Sanderson misjudged a challenge and allowed Tyler Burey to run through one-on-one. Ruddy was there, though, using his experience to smother the midfielder’s effort.

The tension picked up somewhat in the dying embers, with both sides threatening from corners. But neither team could find a breakthrough nor cause much trouble for either goalkeeper. The draw sees Blues drop down one position, to 13th. Here’s how we think each player performed, with ratings out of 10.