A friend of mine recorded the game for me but when it got to the penalties she told me she hadn’t bothered recording them as she didn’t think they were important! 🙈
Man what a night that was. When Shabba scored that goal, I just raised my arms in the air as the Kop erupted around me. You could feel the stand actually swaying.
Trevor Francis's frustration comes from the fact that in the league cup final against Liverpool 3 months earlier no coin toss was made because the officials decided holding the pens at the Liverpool, citing safety reasons saying only there was more of a risk of crowd invasion at the Birmingham City end than the Liverpool and so passing the advantage to Liverpool. Fast forward to this game and the officials again held no coin toss because one end of the ground was empty (no risk of invasion then?) and held it in front of the PNE fans. I don't think I've ever seen another game live or on TV when tossing the coin to decide which end to take the pens didn't happen and we had 2 in one season.
All Blues fans know this and I mean no disrespect to Preston but Birmingham were so cursed in the playoffs and on penalties around that time so it really didn't matter who the hell we were playing, we were fucked. You could have put us against a team of crippled old ladies that night and we still would have somehow messed it up. Still i guess it was shit like this that made our eventual promotion and the wins over villa and then I suppose years later beating Arsenal at Wembley all that much more worth it
