Hull City 1-1 Birmingham City: Lukas Jutkiewicz strike earns Blues a point at Tigers

Lukas Jutkiewicz scored a minute after coming on as a substitute to earn Birmingham a precious Championship point at Hull City.

Birmingham, who began the night level on points with third-from-bottom Stoke, struggled to make inroads against a Hull side looking to strengthen its grip on the sixth and final play-off spot.

Caretaker Blues manager Mark Venus had made a quadruple substitution on the hour mark as his team were frustrated, but it was the appearance of Jutkiewicz – who also scored the Birmingham goal in the 1-1 FA Cup draw between these two in January – that proved to be the telling moment.

Birmingham had lost their previous two games to slip into deep relegation trouble, and they knew they could have been in the bottom three after this round of midweek matches if results elsewhere were unfavourable.

Caretaker manager Mark Venus made four changes from the side that lost a seven-goal thriller with Southampton on Saturday, and Juninho Bacuna’s cross almost forced Jacob Greaves into an own-goal in the opening stages.

With Jean Michael Seri forcing a sharp save from Ruddy, neither side seized the early initiative, but Tufan put his side ahead with a controversial goal on 25 minutes.

Tufan had been benched for the previous three games but he popped up at the far post to turn the ball over the line after defender Greaves had headed on a corner.

Ruddy and his defenders protested vehemently that it had been the arm of the Turkey international that had got the goalscoring touch.

Tufan almost made life comfortable for Hull by hitting the post before half-time, but Venus expressed some frustration with his team’s toothlessness by sending on Paik Seung-ho, George Hall, Alex Pritchard and Jay Stansfield before the hour mark.

It was still Hull who came closest to scoring again, as Jaden Philogene teed up Fabio Carvalho but he failed to hit the target.

The arrival of Jutkiewicz, who has four goals despite making only six starts in all competitions this season, changed the course of the game, as Alex Pritchard angled an accurate cross into the box and the striker rose between Greaves and Alfie Jones to firmly head home.

The equaliser means Hull will slip out of the play-off places if Norwich win at Middlesbrough on Wednesday, but it lifted Birmingham up to 19th – a point ahead of fellow strugglers Stoke, Huddersfield and Queens Park Rangers.