Birmingham boss Chris Davies felt his side turned in their best performance of the season as they showed no mercy on Exeter with a dominant 2-0 win at St James Park.
Tomoki Iwata opened the scoring with a sweet 20-yard strike – his sixth goal of the season – before Jay Stansfield marked his return to his boyhood club with a second-half penalty seven minutes from time to seal a one-sided League One contest.
“I am really, really happy with the performance, I thought it was one of our best performances of the season,” said Davies, whose side lost at Shrewsbury on Saturday.
“Obviously we knew we had to react and we challenged the players to make sure there was a reaction to a really disappointing result at the weekend and, to a man, every single one of them reacted.
“I thought we looked a real proper team out there and gave very little away, they only had two touches inside our box the entire game, we created numerous chances with the possession we did have and we scored two good goals, so I am really pleased.
“I didn’t know we were signing a goalscoring midfielder when we signed Tom, but he has scored plenty of goals and he is lethal from that range.
“The main thing from our point of view was the pressure we created and the positions we got into, we looked really dangerous with that possession and had crosses into the box and eventually it dropped and we got the reward.
“There were multiple times in the first half where they were pinned back, the ball was bouncing around and we could have had two or three goals. We could have been two or three up at half-time, but I was pleased to get that penalty goal.”
Exeter boss Gary Caldwell, who was without several important players for the match through injury, felt his side had just played the League One champions to be.
He said: “I said it before the game and I am even more convinced now that Birmingham will win the league.
“They have so much quality, strength, speed, power and not just on the park, but on the bench and probably left back in Birmingham as well!
“It was always going to be a difficult night, but I thought the players gave everything. We were in the game for a long period, but I would like us to be better in certain moments and that for me is what we have to focus on – the performance level and what we have to do to be a better team.
“We won’t play teams like Birmingham every week, but that is the benchmark for this level now and we have to keep working hard to improve and try and close that gap.”
