Editorial: Upsetting the apple cart

As a Birmingham City fan I should feel excited that it’s “game day” – particularly as a Blues fan based abroad knowing that I’m going to be able to watch the match on TV. Yet right now I can’t help but feel doom and gloom at another potential horror show.

Birmingham City FC

I’m writing this before the game because I don’t want to get caught up in the emotions after it. I wanted to write this with a cool head that has not been inflamed by opinion and rhetoric on social media and on the message boards.

Right now it’s difficult for Blues fans.

After just seven games in charge, most people I see on social media are already calling for Steve Cotterill’s head. In seven games Blues have scored twice, won twice, and lost four games. Although they’re not in the bottom three right now, by the time the game kicks off it’s possible they will be.

And yes, while we’ve not had a thumping like the 6-1 defeat to Hull City under the caretaker managership of Lee Carsley, it’s also fair to say Blues have not looked like winning away from home either.

Yet, I can’t help but wonder if the potential sacking of Cotterill would be the wrong thing to do.

It’s not that I think Cotterill is necessarily the right man for the job. It’s more that I wonder if he goes who will be next to take the poisoned chalice – and if I trust the people in power enough to pick the right man; if it’s even possible to pick the right man.

I’ll be honest, my trust in the powers that be at the club has been in decline anyway, even before the article I published on Monday.

At the top we have Ren Xuandong, whose record in China is now massively in question in my eyes; who according to the coaches and management of Winning League was forced out from his position as CEO of the company and of the football club he bought (Nei Mongol Zhongyou) because of incompetence.

Then there is Darren Dein; a man on a handsome retainer (that the club don’t want to acknowledge publicly) who despite having no position within the club wields a massive amount of influence.

And above all that is an owner who is not only faceless but also nameless.

I can understand why fans talk about not being able to do anything; who want to just “keep right on” and support the team. After all, that’s what we do as fans – and we’ve done it through thin and thinner times at the club.

Yet there is this burning thing inside of me that rages that we have to just sit and take it. That we get to watch our club destroyed by someone with no recourse – because “that’s the way it is”.

This tweet by Dan_Badger (which includes some industrial language) sums it up for me. At the miracle of the Macron we were told “never again” should Blues find themselves in that state.

It could very well end up being that way again – who is going to upset the apple cart in the hope of changing things and who is just going to sit and take it?

I accept that I might not be popular with fans or the club, but I can’t just sit and take it.

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