Frustration for Chris Davies as Birmingham held by struggling West Brom

Birmingham boss Chris Davies admits “there is a feeling of frustration” after his side were held to a goalless draw by relegation-threatened West Brom.

Birmingham would have gone ahead if Callum Styles did not inadvertently use his hand to stop Paik Seung-Ho’s header from going over the line and referee Adam Herczeg failed to give a penalty as both sides went in level at the break.

The hosts pushed for the winner but saw another effort denied on the line when Charlie Taylor kept out Ibrahim Osman’s effort and they thought they had snatched the three points in stoppage time when August Priske’s header was cancelled out for offside before Carlos Vicente hit the post.

Birmingham missed the chance to move into the play-off places but at least saw their unbeaten run in the league stretch to seven matches.

Davies felt his side deserved to win over the 90 minutes.

He said: “Over the course of the game we felt we could have won that match with the moments we had around their goal.

“There’s a feeling of frustration, we felt we could have got it but in the end we take the point out of it and that’s how it is. We grew stronger as the game went on and lots of late pressure, one of those nights.

“We had another gear to go to in the second half and I think we got there but we need to be sharper and quicker in the first period. The main thing is we managed to finish with some good momentum.”

Birmingham felt they had a number of decisions go against them, including Styles’ handball which was not given, but Davies had no real complaints about Priske’s header being ruled out.

He added: “You could say by the letter of the law there’s a potential offside but you have seen them given a lot in this league.

“There’s a handball on the line with our earlier header, if there’s VAR that’s a penalty. So just little things like that went against us.

“(Taylor’s) goal-line clearance from Osman’s strike was as good as I’ve seen in this stadium, that was a hell of a clearance off the line. There was a lot of moments that didn’t go our way, the natural feeling is we wanted more.”

West Brom boss Eric Ramsay admitted his side rode their luck at times as they picked up a second successive clean sheet and moved two points above the drop zone.

He said: “To get back-to-back clean sheets was huge and fundamental for us to move forward.

“We’re going to need everyone to step up, especially those experienced guys.

“I think up until 92 or 93 minutes we were in good shape. We did ride our luck towards the end to an extent, I can’t pretend otherwise, but we made our own luck by getting to that point. Just desperation keeping the ball out of the net, we needed that.”