Southampton rescued a point at St Andrew's last night, although for 60 minutes it looked like they would come away from the midlands empty handed.
For an hour at St Andrew's last night, it looked like Southampton were drifting towards a fourth defeat in a row away from home. All the usual signs were there.
The front three had failed to take their chances and the wide midfielders were dropping ever deeper. Passes were going astray and Saints were finding it increasingly difficult to get out of their own half.
Then Tonda Eckert made some key substitutions that ultimately changed the outcome of the match. But it was the performance of one player in particular that really caught the eye.
The sloppy moment that looked oddly familiar
The Birmingham goal when it came was a sloppy one, almost inevitable as the Saints defenders struggled to get the ball away from their six yard box in a game of head tennis.
When they went behind they continued to suffer under a barrage of Birmingham City attacks and the home side almost went further ahead when Jay Stansfield's shot from the edge of the box was superbly tipped on to the post by Gavin Bazunu.
That save kept the Saints in the match. Tonda Eckert's substitutions tipped it in the away side's favour.
First Léo Scienza, inexplicably left out of the starting eleven on the grounds that he must be wrapped in cotton wool, came off the bench to replace Jay Robinson.
At the same time, Tom Fellows was withdrawn and replaced by Elias Jelert who has been injured since October. Jelert's last game was the 70 minutes that he played against Swansea at St Mary's, a game that the Saints should have won comfortably but didn't.
When Jelert limped off with a hamstring injury on the 18th October, few would have predicted that he would be out for 15 matches and that his next game for the club would be under a completely different manager.
The stark difference that changed the game
But, Jelert's impact at St Andrew's last night was instant. In contrast to Tom Fellows, who prefers to run the ball out of deep areas, Jelert passed and moved. He found space down the right flank and looked to get in behind the left full-back.
The introduction of Southampton's breakout midfielder, Cameron Bragg and a change of personnel up front, was enough to shift the momentum in the away side's favour for the final 20 minutes of the match.
Bragg found the willing run of Jelert with a perfectly weighted pass inside the full-back, after the referee had seemingly impinged Tomoki Iwata in the build up. Jelert whipped in an early cross and Cameron Archer gambled, getting ahead of his marker to guide the ball inside the far post.
Not content with the point, Eckert threw on Kuryu Matsuki for a long awaited cameo in the final few minutes of the game. Matsuki added energy and enthusiasm; Saints fans should expect to see more of him in the coming weeks.
In Elias Jelert, Southampton have found exactly the player that they needed at exactly the right time. Tom Fellows is not a right wing-back; he's not a hybrid midfielder; he's not a full-back. Elias Jelert is all of those things and he more than proved that last night. Finally Eckert has found the round peg to fit the round hole in his 3-4-3 system.