Lee Bowyer endures ‘worst day in football’ as Blackpool hit Birmingham for six

Under-fire Lee Bowyer branded Birmingham’s dismal 6-1 defeat at Blackpool his “worst  day in football” but insisted he would not stand down unless pushed by the club’s hierarchy.

Blues suffered an Easter Monday mauling at Bloomfield Road as Jake Beesley’s double helped fire the Tangerines to their first win in six Sky Bet Championship matches.

A furious stand of 3,500 travelling fans let rip at their players throughout the one-sided contest as mathematically-safe Birmingham slumped to their third defeat on the spin, including 10 goals conceded in the last two matches alone.

Former Blues midfielder Bowyer admits he’s feeling the pressure in the St Andrew’s hot seat and believes a complete club overhaul is required to get his stuttering side back on track.

“This is my lowest day in football,” he admitted.

“I’ve been in football for 20-odd years as a player and a manager. As a player, every time I walked off the pitch I’ve had my head held high and could look my manager in the eye and say I gave 100 per cent.

“But that didn’t happen today. To lose in the manner we did, to have your own fans singing the songs that they sung, which they had every right to, that’s horrendous.

“It wasn’t acceptable – that’s the worst day I’ve ever had in football.

“There are so many things that are wrong, but there’s no excuse for coming second best all over the pitch and not fighting for this football club.

“I apologise to those fans who spent their hard-earned money to come here and support the players.

“It isn’t acceptable what they’ve just paid to see.

“We need a clear-out. It’s plain and simple. This has been going on for years now – we’ve been scraping over the line and there is no excuse.

“Is it going to be fixed quickly? No, I don’t think so. Nothing’s going to change. I just wish I knew about this situation before I came here.

“I’ll be here for as long as I’m wanted – I never associate myself as a quitter and I’ll keep fighting.

“I’d be stupid to think that my job is as safe as I think it should be, but this is the hand I’m dealt.

“Obviously people aren’t going to be happy upstairs, and they have every right to be.

“If the owners want to have a conversation with me and tell me to move on, then I’ll move on.”

Beesley took just three minutes to open the scoring before CJ Hamilton and Kenny Dougall fired Blackpool into a 3-0 lead at half-time.

Former Rochdale forward Beesley grabbed his second after the break and, despite Ivan Sunjic pulling one back for Birmingham, Jerry Yates’ penalty and a late long-range Callum Connolly free-kick capped a dominant Tangerines display in the seaside sun.

Blackpool sit 16th in the Championship table and boss Neil Critchley said: “It’s a great day.

“What we’ve done today is be clinical and take our chances, which we’ve not done in previous games.

“Our general play was better in some of the other games we’ve played recently, but we lost.

“The counter-attack goals we scored, the first two goals, were real quality goals.

“When you score and you take those opportunities, it gives everyone a lift, you’re full of confidence and the game is different.

“For 20 minutes, I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t think we were very good – we turned the ball over a lot, they got a lot of corners and some chances on the counter-attack.

“But then we scored from a really good well-worked corner – we took our chances today and that’s what made the difference.”