Eddie Howe admits Birmingham City 'confirmation' and comments on St Andrew's atmosphere

Newcastle were the team to progress to the FA Cup fifth round on Saturday evening but Birmingham will rightfully steal plenty of the national headlines for their spirited performance.

Magpies boss Howe was sure to heap praise on Blues, impressed by their resilience in what he predicted would be a difficult test despite the gulf in quality between the two squads. Newcastle are Premier League top-four challengers while Birmingham are League One leaders - separated by 40 places in the pyramid - but there was hardly anything to divide the two teams under the lights.

“A really tricky game,” Howe admitted in the post-match press conference. “I think before the game, we knew it was going to be a very tough match, and then we concede after a minute and sort of all your thoughts are confirmed, really. The atmosphere then is electric in the stadium, and I thought we did well to navigate the early part of the game, because that was a difficult first half for us.”

Howe mentioned ahead of the match how much he respects Blues manager Chris Davies for the work he’s carried at so far at St Andrew’s, while also anticipating the noise the stadium would be able to produce. Howe described Birmingham as a “huge football club with a brilliant supporter base” and those feelings were certainly verified during his latest experience facing up against them.

“I've watched a lot of them in the build-up to the game, that's why I knew today was going to be very difficult,” Howe added. “I like their style, I like the system that they play, they've got some physical players as well, which you need in the league that they're in, I think Chris is doing a great job.

“I also have to pay tribute to the strike for the second goal (from Tomoki Iwata). From their perspective, it was an unbelievable hit, I was right behind it.”

Chris Davies delighted with Birmingham performance

Blues’ head coach echoed Howe’s praise as he expressed his pride in his players’ efforts despite defeat. It was always going to be incredibly tough to see off a team fighting for a Champions League spot two divisions above but Birmingham went toe-to-toe with their opponents for much of the game.

Many teams in such an underdog position would sit deep to form a low block and hope for luck on the counter-attack, but Birmingham stuck with their usual high-tempo identity. Birmingham World asked Davies if sticking with his usual tactics against top-tier opposition was a statement of intent.

“Yeah possibly,” Davies replied. “The fine balance we were trying to strike tonight was being ourselves but not going gung-ho, respecting the opposition and tweaking things. We did do that, there were subtleties amongst how we set up that was with respect to the opposition.

“From our point of view, we looked like ourselves and the performance level was high. The boys had the appetite, the hunger and energy were there. It was very good, I was really impressed physically with how they coped with it. Obviously, at the end they were jaded but some of the Newcastle players were too.”