Birmingham City’s key threat pinpointed as Bristol City captain calls on Robins to be more aggressive

Bristol City captain Daniel Bentley is predicting a physical match when Birmingham City come to Ashton Gate in the EFL Championship on Saturday.

The Robins, are currently 17th in the table and welcome 20th-placed Blues to B36 on Saturday with just three points separating the two sides.

City will be looking for revenge on Birmingham as last time they two teams played one another, it resulted in a 3-0 for the Midlands side in early November.

Experienced front-man, Lukas Jutkiewicz, who stands at just over six foot, has been pinpointed as the player who could be the difference maker for the Blues.

His goal scoring record scoring is 90 goals in almost 400 Championship games. so he possesses a vast amount of experience at this level.

City need to be ready for his presence as although he has only scored two goals in the Championship this season, he has other strengths to his game, his physicality, as well as bringing the best out of others.

“This isn’t my first rodeo against Birmingham, I’ve played a fair few games against them so I know what to expect,” he said.

“I’ve played against him countless times and know what he’s all about and what his strengths are.

“We are all very aware of what his strengths are and what Birmingham will bring. It’s been well documented they’ve had a crisis issue with injuries.

“We are still fully respectful of the quality that they have in their squad regardless whether they have some of the senior boys out or not.

“We’ll be expecting a physical game for sure with the likes of Jutkiewicz, that is something he is very good at. They can play as well when they need to, they keep a high line and they’re aggressive with their press.”

Jutkiewicz also has a habit of finding the back of the net against City, having scored four times in the 17 games, he’s come up against them.

Focusing on their own game, the shot-stopper believes that there needs to be more aggression from his side if they are to keep more clean sheets this season.

It has been 14 games without a clean sheet and that has ultimately led to either points being dropped from wins to draws or in other cases, draws in to defeats

“We’ve got some nice lads in the dressing room, who you wouldn’t expect and have a fight if you like in a hypothetical sense.

“In terms of how we stand out it could be if we win a header, go and punch it fifty yards down to the opposition throat and get us up. The way we can talk to each other we can be aggressive in tackles in controlled aggression.

“All those little things in the terms of the mentality that you can change the way a game is going with how aggressive you can be defensively.”

An example of where a player has used their physical strength to their example was how Antoine Semenyo has fared in games where he’s caused a tough time for a defender.

In the Severnside Derby win over Cardiff City, Semenyo was a nuisance for former Robins defender Aden Flint, causing him a number of problems, which earned the 22-year-old a few assists.

“If you look at Antoine, if you let him bully you, he will bully you all day long,” said Bentley. “If you get up against Antoine and you go in to the back of him with headers and things like that.

“I’m sure he’s not going to be quite as effective as if you let off him and given the space and time he needs to do the things that he has been doing.

The homegrown talent, who has recently been linked to Celtic, can cause problems to the Birmingham defence as he looks to continue his good run of form.

The Blues have conceded nine in their last five games so players like Andreas Weimann, Semenyo and Chris Martin will all look to be adding to their goal tally as they look to put behind them their two back-to-back defeats.