Chris Davies saluted Paik Seung-ho’s “international quality” as the South Korean midfielder earned Birmingham their first home league win of the season against Oxford.
The midfielder stroked the ball past Jamie Cumming four minutes before the interval, converting after good work from Ethan Laird on the left.
Birmingham dominated in terms of possession, but Kyogo Furuhashi missed two clear-cut chances in the opening half-hour before his colleague in the home engine-room broke the deadlock in the 1-0 victory.
Davies said: “It was an excellent finish. Paik’s been exceptional since I’ve been here. He works so hard, he gives us so much in the middle, him and Tomoki Iwata.
“But it was in a really nice finish, it was a pass into the goal.
“So many arrive there and try and smash it as hard as they possibly can and it maybe goes over the bar, but he’s obviously seen a gap and he’s passed it firmly into the net. I think he took it really well.
“We’ve been talking about getting him higher up the pitch in certain situations and he has good technical quality off both feet. But he’s got international quality, definitely.”
Davies was happy overall with what he saw from his side, who had to remain patient against a well-drilled Oxford outfit.
He added: “The game turned out as I thought it would. I thought we had good control. We dominated the ball again, but I liked us.
“I thought we followed the right kind of process against that set-up, how to work the ball, when to play forward.
“We created good chances. It could have been more than 1-0 but overall, I thought it was strong again.”
Oxford boss Gary Rowett was also pleased with what he saw and said that his team would not be judged on the outcome at St. Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park.
“I thought for 35 minutes we competed incredibly well,” Rowett said. “We changed our system and we’d not worked on it for more than a couple of days.
“I was actually really pleased with a lot of it. I thought we were brave on the ball.
“But you can’t concede a poor goal before half-time against Birmingham. That was disappointing.
“But they are very good at finding spaces, making it hard for you to jump out at them and have much of the game.
“They dominate and make it hard for you. As disappointed as we are with the start to the season, I saw parts that we can build on.
“And we showed we were competitive. We won’t be benchmarked against Birmingham City, I don’t think.”
