Birmingham defender has praise for Charlton Athletic’s pressure tactics at The Valley

Birmingham City defender Alex Cochrane has praised Charlton Athletic’s pressing game after they ended the League One leader’s seven-game winning streak.

Matty Godden’s second-half finish inflicted a first loss of the campaign on the lavish-spending Blues, whose expensively-assembled strikeforce – especially in the case of former Fulham attacker Jay Stansfield – were not even given a sniff of goal.

Birmingham looked very uncomfortable with the pressure applied by the fired-up hosts, who had been a three-match losing run.

Cochrane told the Blues’ in-house media channel: “It is disappointing, you never want to lose a game of football.

“Charlton made it hard for us from the first whistle. It was one of those days in the office. As a team we know we could do a lot better. There were a few sloppy bits from everyone.

“It was a tough game. It’s not easy coming here – Charlton made it hard for us. It hurts but we have to pick ourselves up and move on.

“They pressed well throughout the game, you saw that from the first minute. It is maybe just down to us as players to try and get around that – but it wasn’t easy.

“We’ll review what went wrong and move on to Tuesday.”

PICTURE: KYLE ANDREWS