Let’s have a little recap, shall we? Our new Senegalese right-back picks the ball up just inside of enemy territory with time rapidly running out, given no options for a pass from his team-mates he decides to go for broke and attack Kapo down their left-flank. It all seems hopeless for a moment before he cleverly wins us a corner and then heads into Birmingham’s box, pumping up the Gallowgate crowd as goes. Emre, who it was great to see on the pitch, comes across and places the ball… this is bound to hit the first man… a short observation of the scene from the little Turk follows before he curls a ball in towards the near post…

…Beye, the replays showed, then executed a lovely little sidestep to avert his marker as he judged the trajectory of the ball perfectly-ish, meeting it low with his forehead and sending it bouncing into the roof of the goal. Magic. Another defender scores! Only Rozehnal and Enrique to go now, by my calculations, which don’t include Babayaro, Carr and Ramage for various reasons! If Beye had not decided to go on a one-man mission for three points it remains to be seen what the reaction to a 1-1 result would have been, especially considering the laboured nature of our second half performance. Thank God he pulled that one out of the bag!

In truth, half-time should have seen us going into the changing rooms at least a goal to the good as we peppered Maik Taylor from all angles – with Milner looking our most likely candidate to bang one in. As it was, the only way we could find the net was because of a very dubious penalty given against Matt Saddler on Obafemi Martins. The little Nigerian JUST squeezing it in at Taylor’s left-hand post… Am I the only one who doesn’t feel at all confident when Oba steps up to the spot?

In the end a very satisfying result against a very resolute Birmingham side, who look like they’ll have enough about them to stay up now that the cretinous Steve Bruce has gone to relegate Wigan. Fair play to them for another highly impressive away performance, which completely lacked the luck they had at White Heart Lane last weekend. Not to speak for supporters of other teams, but if you had offered them 3 points from their last two games I’m sure most would have taken them. I’m sure a Brummie will correct me if I’m wrong.

However, I came away from the game unconvinced of the performance I’d just seen. It wasn’t a dreadful performance by any means, just an ‘OK’ one, and I’m not sure how far forward we’re going to be able to go on ‘OK’ performances.

There were many bad things during the 1980s. Thatcherism, Unemployment, New Romantics and Canned Milk rank amongst that decade’s most heinous of crimes. But up there with them was the long ball game. A style of football stripped of all skill and grace and beauty. Sadly, we have a manager who seems to have a penchant for this kind of anti-Football, which goes completely against the ethos of this club.

I want to see the ball played on the floor, played into the forwards by wide men bursting down the wings. I don’t want to see a bunch of cloggers lumping the ball around, which appears to be what Allardyce wants to bring in. He did it at Bolton and he’s doing it here as well. For one thing, we don’t have the players to do that right now, and more importantly, I don’t want the players to do that.

Once again we had to put up with that midfield folly - Geremi, producing little of worth yet again, and it’s really starting to annoy me - christ knows why he was made captain.

OK, OK, I’m getting a little bit harsh and a bit grumpy. The performance wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. I was dubious about the penalty at the time, and watching several times on TV has done nothing to quash this. However, we were pressing for the goal at the time, so you could make the point that after a pretty sluggish start, we deserved our 1-1 scoreline at half time. Did we deserve the win? I’m not at all sure about that.

Finally a victory that we can celebrate. It’s been a long time coming too! But sadly it means nothing unless we can back it up with another 3 points at Craven Cottage on Saturday night. Watch this space!

Back to the Brum game, and although based on our second half performance we probably didn’t deserve it, you can’t fault the lads for their efforts in the first half. It was almost like nothing was going to hit the back of the net (the Martin’s penalty nearly didn’t!).

But sometimes you have to just keep knocking and knocking on the door, and eventually it will break down, even if it is as late as the 91st minute! That’s the magic of football and they don’t get much more magic right now than Habib Beye; our best defender in the past few games. He finally has a goal to his name as well, that must have felt great for him.

The crowd were still a bit mumurring compared to Wednesday night but they were still on top form as per usual. Oba Martins probably should have done better but you can’t fault Big Sam’s tactics. And hats off for the Butt - Viduka substitution; that’s a risk we ought to take more often.