‘Everyone is hurting’: Jordan Graham reflects on Birmingham’s loss to Middlesbrough and upcoming fixtures

Jordan Graham has revealed he and his Birmingham City teammates feel ‘hurt’ after their 1-0 loss to Middlesbrough on Wednesday evening.

The defeat ended Blues’ four-game unbeaten run and is their fifth in the Championship this season.

Birmingham sit 19th in the table after their opening 12 league fixtures, winning three games so far.

Graham, who has registered one assist in nine appearances for Blues this campaign, believes there are positives to take from Wednesday’s loss.

“It’s a long season,” he told BluesTV after the game. “It’s 46 games in this division so it’s a long journey and you’re going to have games where you lose - you’re not going to go 46 games unbeaten.

“We have to try and take the positives out of the defeat, which are the fact that we dominated pretty much all of the game.

“We felt as a team that we did [dominate] and it is what it is.”

However, the winger admitted the defeat was a tough one to take and felt his team deserved more from the game.

“It hurts us as a group, as staff, as players, as fans,” he said, “I’m sure everyone is hurting tonight and so it should, because we felt we deserved more from the game.

“But at the end of the day, we didn’t get anything from it, and we have to now dissect it over the next couple of days, see what we didn’t do right on the ball, see what we didn’t do right off the ball and try and put it right on Saturday, because we all believe we can go and win the next few games in a row.”

Birmingham welcome Bristol City to St Andrew’s on Saturday, the first of five matches remaining this month.

Focus will be on Blues’ attacking players during their upcoming fixtures. John Eustace’s side have scored the joint-third lowest number of goals (9) in the second tier and will need to add to their tally if they want to climb the table.