Hughes grateful for Given heroics

SHAY GIVEN may have credited his man-of-the-match display at Birmingham yesterday to “luck”, but his Manchester City manager Mark Hughes was not fooled.

Hughes hailed Given for an outstanding performance that featured a string of superb saves – including one from James McFadden’s second-half penalty – and effectively earned City a point.

It again showed why Hughes was willing to splash out £7million last January in bringing Given to Eastlands from Newcastle, as the Eastlands club moved into the Premier League top four.

“I gave Shay a glowing tribute before the game, not that he needed it, but he is an outstanding keeper,” Hughes said. “He has been top drawer for the majority of his career and I am very pleased that he is with Manchester City. He kept us in this game.”

Given, for his part, was magnanimous in assessing his own performance, which will have reassured Giovanni Trapattoni ahead of the play-off double header with France later this month.

“It was a bit of luck I suppose, certainly with the penalty,” he said. “It’s a bit of a lottery, penalties, for goalkeepers, and luckily today I’ve gone the right way and got a strong enough hand to get it away.

“Luckily for us we’ve managed to keep it out and we’ve kept a clean sheet. I think we can play better than we did today so we’ll take a point.”

Hughes’ expensively-assembled side have now drawn four successive league games but he is still happy with the overall progress being made by his team.

He added: “People talk about the four draws but three of them have been away from home so we have still been picking up points.

“We made a flying start to the season and because of that people expected us to win every game.

“That is not going to happen this year and, if you look around, everyone in this league is dropping points.” Birmingham manager Alex McLeish was also full of praise for Given but was delighted with his side’s showing as they followed up last weekend’s victory over Sunderland.

“I have now seen three games in a row where we have produced quality and consistency and only a man-of-the-match performance from Shay Given stopped us from winning,” he said.

“That is why Manchester City paid good money for him. They say great keepers can save you 10 points during a season.

“That has been proven over the years and we have just seen a terrific keeper capable of that sort of thing.”

Birmingham midfielder Barry Ferguson was sent off in injury time for two bookable offences and will now miss the game at Liverpool on Monday week.

The former Scotland international picked up his second booking when blocking an attempted throw by Pablo Zabaleta.

McLeish said: “Barry came in and said he was daft. He knows we will miss him at Anfield and it will cost the team with us having such a fragile squad. We can’t afford to lose players through a silly act of indiscipline.”