The last month has been a wild ride for Birmingham City fans. While Blues had to suffer the ignominious fate of being relegated to League One, the ambition of Knighthead to equip the squad with the best players possible remained front and centre with the hugely ambitious capture of Jay Stansfield on a permanent deal from Fulham.
Birmingham City got their League One campaign off to a start with a 1-1 draw with Reading at St Andrew’s on Saturday. A late penalty scored by Alfie May rescued a point for a Blues team that struggled to create clear cut chances despite having the lion’s share of possession.
With the first home game of the season less than 72 hours away the last thing that Birmingham City needed was issues surrounding the distribution of season tickets. Yet despite sending out more than 18,000 digital season tickets on Tuesday evening it appears the club is at a crisis point of its own making.
Marc Leonard became the eighth signing of what seems a very impressive transfer window for Birmingham City on Thursday morning. The 22-year-old Scottish midfielder wrapped up a transfer which had been rumoured for a more than a month to join what appears to be the squad to beat in League One this season.
Birmingham City beat Solihull Moors comfortably 3-0 at the Armco Arena on Wednesday night in the second match of their pre-season programme. Goals from Alfie May, Koji Miyoshi and Lukas Jutkiewicz ensured Blues won the third annual Arthur Cup in front of a busy crowd.
The Daily Mail reported on Monday afternoon that Blues had asked the EFL for permission to play their home League One fixture against Wrexham in America rather than in Birmingham. The report confirmed that the EFL very quickly shot the idea down but that hasn’t stopped a wider discussion of the idea.
Birmingham City announced the first signing of the 2024 summer transfer window on Tuesday afternoon, bringing keeper Ryan Allsop back to his boyhood club from Hull City for an undisclosed fee. After a summer of anticipation is this where the floodgates open?
The last week or so has been incredibly busy for Blues; a new manager has been appointed, season ticket prices have been confirmed and the new first team kit has been launched. While all of this noise is going on in the foreground, the new financial reality of League One continues to govern just what Knighthead and Blues need to do to remain in the black and on the right side of the rules.
On Thursday afternoon Birmingham City announced that they had appointed Chris Davies as First Team Manager on a four-year contract. The announcement ended what felt like an extraordinarily long recruitment process to replace Tony Mowbray, who was forced to step down due to his continuing ill health.
With the football season now over for Birmingham City, the focus has turned to the summer ahead and the challenges to come in the transfer window. Relegation means that Blues have a whole new set of financial rules to comply with which focus on a different methodology of levelling the financial playing field.
