"Aston Villa take the lead!" Gary Weaver shouted over the noise on the Sky Sports broadcast. "A brilliant assist from Theodore Bjorn, and a ruthless finish from Tammy Abraham!"
"Just ten minutes into this bitter derby, and Villa have already silenced the home crowd. With the form these two are in, tonight could get very ugly for Garry Monk's side."
Weaver sounded confident.
On paper, Birmingham's gritty squad was no match for this high-flying Villa team.
Birmingham was scraping by in 15th place, while Villa was charging hard in fifth.
An away win seemed almost inevitable.
But derbies rarely care about the league table.
After the restart, Birmingham looked like a wounded animal.
Garry Monk charged to the very edge of his technical area, waving his arms frantically and screaming at his players.
"Push up! Get forward! Press them!" Monk roared. "It's a bloody derby! If you lose this, you're the ones getting cursed out in the streets tomorrow! Get stuck in!"
Fueled by their manager's fury, the home side launched a relentless wave of attacks over the next five minutes.
The two wingers, Jacques Maghoma and Jota, were the main instigators.
They repeatedly used their raw pace to terrorize Villa's full-backs. They were dangerous, but their decision-making in the final third let them down.
After beating their men, they opted to shoot from tight angles instead of cutting the ball back, squandering decent chances.
By the 20th minute, Birmingham's high-pressing tactical strategy was starting to take a toll.
The Villa players were being suffocated, constantly forced to play out of tight corners.
Fueled by the deafening, hostile noise of the St. Andrew's crowd, the Birmingham players seemed to have an endless supply of adrenaline.
Villa, on the other hand, was struggling to weather the storm.
Constantly playing on the back foot was bound to force an error.
And then, it happened.
Glenn Whelan, who had just returned to the starting lineup after an injury layoff, made a fatal mistake.
Stuck under heavy pressure, the veteran midfielder tried to force a quick pass forward to Jack Grealish to relieve the tension.
But he badly misjudged the weight of the pass.
Instead of finding his captain, the ball was easily cut out by Birmingham's energetic midfielder, David Davis.
"Oh no!" Weaver gasped on the broadcast. "Glenn Whelan with a terrible pass! He's given it straight to David Davis in a very dangerous area! That is an inexplicable error from the veteran."
In the blink of an eye, Davis punished the mistake.
He drove forward and quickly slipped the ball to their pacey striker, Che Adams.
Adams was noticeably quicker than his strike partner, Jutkiewicz.
Receiving the ball on the edge of the penalty area, Adams took a heavy touch and surged into the box like a bullet.
Panic set in. The entire Aston Villa penalty area descended into chaos as defenders scrambled to recover.
"Che Adams!" Weaver called out. "He shapes to shoot... no, it's a dummy! A brilliant fake shot! He sits the defender down and pulls the trigger!"
BOOM!
"GOALLLL! The home side have equalized!"
1-1.
"St. Andrew's has absolutely erupted!" Don Goodman shouted, trying to make himself heard over the deafening roar of the home fans.
"The roof has come off this place! Che Adams is the hero! We have a real derby on our hands now!"
...
"That is what a derby is all about. Pure chaos."
"How on earth did we concede that?! Our defense just fell apart."
"Why did Smith start Whelan?! He's been out injured, and he just gave them a free goal."
"We should have started McGinn. Whelan is way too slow for a match like this."
After the equalizer, the momentum violently shifted.
The 30,000 Birmingham fans completely lost their minds.
The stadium shook as they belted out their anthem, followed quickly by a barrage of highly offensive chants aimed at the traveling Villa supporters.
When play restarted, Aston Villa naturally tried to push forward to retake the lead.
But for the next ten agonizing minutes, they couldn't string three passes together.
The Birmingham players were defending like a pack of rabid dogs.
They swarmed the midfield. Whenever a Villa player took a touch, two blue shirts were immediately snapping at his ankles.
Theodore Bjorn, in particular, was getting special treatment.
Monk had clearly abandoned his pre-match bluff.
He ordered his two strikers, Jutkiewicz and Adams, to drop deep and act as Theodore's shadows.
Wherever the teenager went, the two forwards followed, ready to hack him down or disrupt his rhythm the second he received the ball.
Monk had figured out the blueprint: cut off Theodore's supply line and you choke Villa's attack!
By the 35th minute, Villa was desperate to regain control.
Dean Smith stood on the touchline, yelling at his full-backs, Neil Taylor and Ahmed Elmohamady, to push higher up the pitch to provide width.
But despite Villa's efforts to throw bodies forward, they hit a blue brick wall.
Birmingham had dropped into a deep, aggressive defensive block.
They threw their bodies into sliding tackles and physical challenges, completely breaking Villa's rhythm.
This time, Conor Hourihane received the ball in the middle of the park.
Before he could even look up, Gary Gardner and Jota were already in his face, applying heavy physical pressure.
Hourihane panicked.
He wanted to feed the ball to Theodore to orchestrate an attack, but the teenager was currently being sandwiched by Adams and Jutkiewicz.
Forcing a pass there was suicide.
Rushed and out of options, Hourihane tried to lay it off to Glenn Whelan.
The moment the ball left his boot, he knew he'd messed up.
Whelan was also being tightly marked by David Davis. Davis had been Birmingham's best player on the pitch, an absolute engine in the midfield.
He anticipated the pass perfectly.
The second Hourihane played the ball, Davis lunged forward and intercepted it cleanly.
Without wasting a second, Davis launched a sweeping long ball over the top of the Villa defense. It was a golden counter-attacking opportunity.
Seeing the turnover, Adams and Jutkiewicz immediately abandoned their marking duties on Theodore and sprinted like madmen toward the Villa half.
Three seconds later, Davis's long pass dropped perfectly for Jutkiewicz. The big target man brought the ball down, instantly drawing panic.
Theodore, Anwar El Ghazi, and Tyrone Mings all converged on him, desperate to win the ball back.
But Jutkiewicz didn't try to be a hero.
He held the ball up brilliantly, shielding it from Mings, before laying it backward into the path of the advancing David Davis.
"Birmingham keeping the pressure on!" Weaver noted. "Davis has it back. The home side are showing some real composure here."
Just as Weaver said that, Davis whipped a dangerous cross into the box.
"He's looking for Che Adams!" Weaver shouted. "Adams stretches... but Kortney Hause gets there first to clear it! Corner kick to Birmingham!"
The St. Andrew's crowd roared in approval. It wasn't a goal, but they were keeping Villa pinned back.
On the touchline, Garry Monk waved his center-backs forward.
"Get up there! Attack the bloody ball!" he screamed. "If we can't break them down in open play, punish them on set pieces!"
Urged on by their manager, Michael Morrison and Harlee Dean jogged into the crowded Villa penalty area.
Davis walked over to the corner flag.
He raised his right hand—a pre-planned tactical signal—and whipped a wicked, in-swinging cross toward the near post.
Michael Morrison was waiting exactly where he needed to be. Standing at 190cm, the Birmingham captain was a massive unit.
The man tasked with marking him was Neil Taylor. At barely over 180cm, the Villa full-back was completely mismatched.
Morrison didn't even have to jump that high.
He simply overpowered Taylor, using his superior strength to hang in the air and direct a violent, downward header toward the goal.
The header was as powerful as a striker's volley.
Thump.
The ball rocketed like a cannonball, slipping right through the desperate fingertips of Jed Steer and crashing into the net!
2-1.
Birmingham City had miraculously taken the lead.
St. Andrew's descended into absolute madness!
"Michael Morrison! The captain delivers in the derby!" Weaver roared.
"What a header that is!" Goodman added. "He just bullied Neil Taylor out of the way. Birmingham have completely turned this game on its head!"
The home fans were losing their minds, leaning over the barriers to taunt the stunned Villa supporters.
"Morrison! You absolute legend!"
"We are going to crush them today! The city is ours!"
"Hey Villa! Where's your wonderkid now?!"
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