"Felt fear" - Birmingham City's Koji Miyoshi makes claim about Sunderland players | OneFootball

Highlights

Birmingham City's 2-1 win over Sunderland, on Saturday, was the first time that the Blues have won back-to-back league games since the start of October 2023.

The game didn't start on the right foot for Tony Mowbray's side, who gave the ball away cheaply to the opposition's talisman, Jack Clarke, who opened the scoring after 22 minutes. That was his 15th goal of the season.

It took a while for Birmingham to respond, but the second half was dominated by them. They grabbed an equaliser in the 60th minute, thanks to Jordan James, and they took the lead in the match 20 minutes later. Koji Miyoshi managed to nip between Leo Hjelde and Anthony Patterson to get on the end of a deflected Jay Stansfield shot to poke the ball into the back of the net.

St Andrew's erupted with joy, and the man who scored the winning goal said that Saturday's opposition were feeling the pressure of the home support all afternoon.

Koji Miyoshi says the Sunderland players were scared at St Andrew's

The Japanese winger said, after Saturday's game against the Black Cats, that he felt that the opposition players were a bit overwhelmed by the atmosphere created by the Birmingham fans.

"These fans improved our confidence," said the Japanese winger to the club's website, via the Sunderland Echo. "That was amazing for us. When we played the game, we felt like the fans were really behind us. When they shouted at the opponents, I think they felt some fear from the fans."

On the game itself, he praised his team for showing fight and resilience in the face of some adversity in the first half. He said: "We showed our character and we showed our confidence. Especially after we conceded the goal we bounced back from that and won the game, which is great for us.

"It was tough. We conceded the goal and gave them an easy goal, actually, but we bounced back from there and feel like we dominated the game and controlled the game. We did enough to win, I think."

Koji Miyoshi statement shouldn't surprise Sunderland fans

The Black Cats are hoping to be back in the play-offs once all 46 games of the Championship season have been played, as they were last season. They're still very much in the mix, but that gap can't afford to get too much bigger, otherwise they will really be behind the ball.

It's been shown many times in all professional sports, not just football, that when a team is in a scenario like the one Sunderland find themselves in, where they are in a tight battle to try and achieve the same thing as six or seven other teams are trying to do, you need experience. Players who have done it before, and succeeded, are some of the most invaluable players to have in a play-off race.

The Sunderland squad is full of players who have some play-off experience; most of the current squad was at least part of the team that reached the play-off semi-finals last season. But they are very limited when it comes to players who have that experience of getting up from the Championship to the Premier League; that's just a by-product of their recruitment model.

Solely focusing on signing younger players does mean that they can find diamonds in the rough, who perform well and then go on to make the club a lot of money, but they rarely come with the intangibles of an experienced operator at this level.

This area where they are lacking can lead to them not being able to pull through tough games, like the ones against Birmingham, and being overwhelmed by their surroundings.