However, after a 3-0 drubbing to Watford on New Year’s Day, Blues lie 17th in the table, nine points off 6th place and in need of an incredible come back in the second half of the year to have a chance of a day out at Wembley.
The run of poor results have brought the toxicity back to the club both online and at the ground. Three successive poor results at home have seen games ending in boos while matters threatened to get ugly at Vicarage Road as Marvin Ducksch had to be led away from confronting fans in the away end.
Naturally with defeat comes blame and the finger of fury has been pointed in various directions.
Head Coach Chris Davies has taken flak for his tactics and player selection and Director of Football Craig Gardner has taken a lot of stick for player recruitment choices not only in the summer but in previous windows.
I wish I had the immediate answers to these problems, but the honest truth is that I don’t. I have no idea as to what will definitively fix things.
However, in a world where online hot takes are a dime a doze and where fan watchalongs are deliberately created to create hyperbolic clips of despair, I feel there is a need for a voice of balance if not reason.
I’m in a fortunate position whereby I still am privy to a fair bit behind the scenes at Blues and I think it’s important to try and offer context to the current situation with the team if there is to be reasonable discussion.
Recruitment
One of the chief avenues for displeasure for fans recently has been the recruitment of players.
Blues went pretty hard for players in the summer, committing big wages if not fees to land players of the ilk of Demarai Gray, Kyogo Furuhashi and Bright Osayi-Samuel among others – and with half of the season gone there is a feeling that far more of the transfers made were misses than hits.
It’s not hard to understand why people are unhappy either.
For all his effort in pressing, Kyogo has looked less and less likely to ever add to his tap-in against Sheffield United in the League Cup.
His confidence levels clearly look shot and while there is an argument he’s not been given as good service as he could be, one would hope he would have taken at least one of the chances he has had.
Similarly, Marvin Ducksch has come increasingly in for criticism for his production on the pitch.
A purple patch of a couple of goals is now long gone and the German’s seeming lack of enthusiasm for the physical side of the game has not gone down well with fans of late.
Then there is the clamour to send back loan players Eiran Cashin and Lewis Koumas to their respective loan clubs due to their perceived lack of skill on the pitch.
While Cashin has had a couple of okay games recently, Koumas has been especially lacking in product and I find it very hard to argue with the idea that he should be sent back.
Then there is Kanya Fujimoto.
While he has made the bench of late, his inclusion seems to have more to do with making up numbers than actually getting game time leading fans to question if Chris Davies had any input into his transfer as he clearly doesn’t fancy the Japanese attacking midfielder.
The age and wage profile of incoming signings very much point to a decision to concentrate on immediate results rather than resale value.
This kind of strategy is a common one and is fine as long as those immediate results are forthcoming.
If, however, more than one or two of this type of signing fails to settle in it immediately not only raises questions about the implementation of the strategy but also comes with financial implications due to the Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) that Championship clubs are bound by.
I feel that the usage of artificial intelligence (AI) by the club in scouting is also somewhat problematic.
Although using AI can be helpful in sorting through masses of data and statistics, I feel that there are intangible aspects to players that it cannot process and as such there are issues with over-reliance on AI.
For me an example of this is Ben Davies.
As I understand it, his re-signing for Blues was difficult and the club decided to pursue other avenues such as Jack Robinson and Eiran Cashin (who was in fairness a long term target).
The fact that Ben Davies hasn’t pulled up trees with Oxford suggests that Blues may have been right not to be held to ransom by Rangers; however I do wonder if enough store was put into the quality of the partnership he built with Christophe Klarer last year. After all, the best teams are greater than the sum of their parts.
I’m yet to understand how AI could put into tangible statistics this kind of data – which leads me to think that there has to be a lot more work done on top of researching AI.
I also wonder how much the club have underestimated the difficulty of signing players in the Championship compared to League One.
In League One Blues had a much more prestigious “Project ™” to offer than other clubs in the same division so wages / location / other intangibles were less important.
In the Championship Blues are having to compete for a smaller pool of players with more clubs with similar if not greater levels of ambition.
This means that the club has to also compete on factors like wages as well as intangible factors like prestige of location or perceived quality of coaching.
The upshot of that is that Blues have undoubtedly missed out on targets, forcing them to potentially offer more money than was previously desired or to go back to old standbys such as known agents and players for signings.
I’m not convinced that the replacement of Craig Gardner and / or his staff is the panacea to all of the club’s recruitment problems that some people think it is.
I think that there needs to be a proper period of reflection from the club management into what was done, what wasn’t and what needs to be improved upon; with a view to improving club infrastructure and procedure to make things better in the future.
My fear is that there might be a temptation to throw more money at the problem in a desperate attempt to change things in the short term with the very real possibility of further filling the squad with deadwood that can’t be shifted.
Squad Management
Given the issues outlined above with regards to recruitment, it could be quite easy to absolve Chris Davies of any blame with regards to the way the squad has been managed.
After all, if he’s got an unbalanced squad full of players who aren’t quite good enough then how is it possible for him to succeed?
As much as I understand people being faithful to Davies after his 111 point season last year, I also think that it’s important to recognise where he has made mistakes.
It goes without saying that one must play with the cards they are dealt – and it is always possible to play a bad hand well.
I’m no tactical genius; I’ll leave discussion of game tactics to people like Ryan Deeney who know what they’re doing.
However, there are things that even I can see and pick up on and need to be spoken about – such as the way players have been managed with regards to fitness and form.
One of my biggest gripes with Davies last year is his absolute commitment to sticking with the same players for as long as he can.
It’s not hard to understand why either – why change a winning team, and Blues did a lot of winning last year.
There are issues though when teams are not rotated.
The obvious one is that giving players too many minutes in too short a period of time can cause injuries to happen.
Some might mock the idea of football players getting fatigued but I think such are the levels of athleticism required it’s inevitable that fatigue and injury will set in if rest and recovery is not built in.
Then there are the issues caused by having players not being any kind of consistent runs of minutes in the team. It can be very hard for players to come in from the cold as it were to play at peak performance.
This has meant that when players have had to come out of the team due to injury or suspension, the drop off of match quality can be exacerbated further.
This has led to players being rushed back from injury into the team faster than maybe they should have been – which has caused injuries to then reoccur.
A good recent example of this has been Alex Cochrane, who has twice been reinjured in his first match back from an injury-enforced layoff.
However, the biggest issue I have with Chris Davies right now is his absolute refusal to try players he wouldn’t normally play.
In the last two games Blues have had two or more u21 players sat on the bench available to him as well as Kanya Fujimoto.
As I privately expected, none of those players have had a sniff of getting onto the pitch which leads me to wonder what the point is of putting them onto the bench other than to make up the numbers.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that those players will absolutely definitely make a difference.
Indeed, I think it’s more than likely that that they wouldn’t have.
However, the chance of those players making a difference rises from zero if they’re actually given a chance to try.
Furthermore, by denying those u21 players a chance to play a few minutes Davies is telling current and prospective u21 players that there is no pathway to the first team – which I think is damaging to our longer term goals.
I understand that right now Davies is under a lot of pressure to turn the results around and he’s going to what he knows.
I get that it’s hard to go to an u21 player that almost certainly isn’t first team ready – but I think we’re at the point where maybe it’s worth a shot to see if the unlikely can happen.
Young players and the Academy
On the face of it, the Blues Academy should be seen as a bright spot for the club.
Not only is the Academy now Category 1, but my understanding is the first audit of the Academy went extraordinarly well and that everyone connected with that should be congratulated.
However, it’s also clear that there is a disconnect between the first team and the Academy system with players not able to make the step up from one to the other.
Part of this is undoubtedly where Blues are feeling the longer-term effects of the under investment in the youth setup under the previous ownership.
Not only can Blues not currently compete with the fees laid out by local rivals for players at Academy level, but the club is also dealing with years of losing the cream of the crop to those better funded local rivals.
That being said, I think that there are other issues which Blues need to deal with which are more endemic to football and wider society.
I’ve long held the opinion that mental strength and discipline is of the big things which separates the players who make it in professional football from those who don’t.
It’s one thing to have the skill and talent to be able to play professional football; it’s another entirely to be able to deal with the pressure that comes from playing professional football.
I look at Jude Bellingham as the obvious poster boy for a player who had the mental strength to deal with being a first team footballer at 16.
While his skill and ability was incredible at that age one of the key repeating factors in opinion pieces about him was the maturity Bellingham showed.
Much of this was down to having strong parents in Mark and Denise who helped to not only advocate for him but also to keep him grounded.
For other players, it’s not as easy.
As someone who grew up in Chelmsley Wood, I completely get it.
While I didn’t grow up in deprived circumstances my family certainly weren’t rich and as a consequence when I finally did get money in the form of a student loan when starting university, I went wild.
The consequences of that were far reaching – not only debts that took me years to pay off but my off-the-rails behaviour leading me to be booted out of not one but two unis.
Nearly 30 years later I’m still not great with money and as much as I’d love to go back to university to finally get a degree it’s now virtually impossible for me to do so.
Now imagine being 16 or 17, growing up in inner city Brum without much money but a lot of skill at football.
Imagine being told thaty you’re the best thing since sliced bread, having more money than you can imagine being showered upon you – and having to remain disciplined enough to not spend any of it on the fun stuff all your mates are doing.
That’s going to be hard enough if you come from a strong family background, attending a good school with lots of positive role models in the background.
Imagine doing that without any of that help; without any of that grounding.
For me the biggest investment that needs to be made right now is in the duty of care we have to every kid within the academy.
I’m hopeful that the move to Category 1 has helped with that in the longer term, but in the shorter term I think we need to find a way to deal with some of the problems the club has (unintentionally) created for their biggest prospects.
Otherwise, we will continue to lose potentially very good players in the same way we lost Romelle Donovan to Brentford.
Equally, it’s important that as much as the first team is demanding of discipline, some grace is given to players who have not been afforded the chance to grow within a culture of discipline.
From what I’ve seen and heard, I think this might be hard for Chris Davies but for his growth as a coach I think it’s something he needs to work upon.
Having gone on for nearly 2,500 words about some of the issues the club faces, it’s important to repeat that realistically, Blues are in the best position for a long time – maybe my entire lifetime.
Likewise, it’s important for me to reaffirm that for once I have faith in the people at the very top such as Tom Wagner to lead the club forward and upward.
My only hope with this brief return from exile from writing is to make the same points I’ve often made in the past; that there are very few simple answers.
As much as the club do need to make some changes, I think it’s really important that they’re calm ones and not made for knee-jerk reasons.
As ever, patience is the key – and keeping right on to the end of the road.