Deadline Day Blues

“A week is a long time in football” – that’s what the old cliché says. In the seven days since writing my last bit for this blog it feels like I’ve gone through the whole gamut of emotions as Blues have done their level best to put us through the ringer.

We Are Birmingham

Friday night was great.

An accomplished performance away at Wrexham brought us home three points – and more importantly, a lot of the bitterness I felt post-Brentford faded away. Sure we got tanked by a Premier League team, but were things really as bad as I thought?

I can remember thinking that we might pick up at least a couple of points against Southampton and Wolves and I could maybe write a happy piece on a potential for a redemption arc.

If Friday was great, transfer deadline day declined rapidly by the afternoon.

Even though it looked unlikely we’d get Ibrahim Osman I was cheered by who I thought we might get instead and thought it possible we could bring in two – maybe even three new faces.

Instead to quote the Spice Girls two became one as the club decided they didn’t need both of Mohammed Fuseini and Liam Millar and the Ghanaian was informed that we were no longer pursuing his transfer.

I’ll admit it, I was fuming. People I know who try to be voices of reason within the Blues sphere were fuming. I spent the whole car ride from the office to St Andrews messaging with other upset Blues fans and composing angry diatribes to the powers that be. I might have even sent one.

And yet as I write this watching the transfer window close, I’m back to a place of balance. A good 1-1 draw against a decent looking Southampton side, some good player performances and most of all time to think have left me in a more contemplative mood.

I can’t tell you what happened on transfer deadline day at Blues cos I don’t know for sure. However, I’ve come up with three potential ideas to explain the strategy that unfolded over the window and I leave it up to you as to which you choose to believe, if any.

Hanlon’s Razor

Back in 1980, an American man by the name of Robert J. Hanlon sent in a phrase to be included in a joke and wisdom book called “Murphy’s Law Book Two”.

And while authors like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Robert Heinlein came up with similar ideas much longer ago, it’s Hanlon whose name is most linked to the following adage.

Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.

What that means in simple terms is that people are more likely to act in the way that they do because they’re stupid than they’re evil.

What has this got to do with Blues?

To be blunt – it’s the idea that the reason Blues have ended up not making the signings many wanted isn’t down to someone trying to fuck things up; but more because of people just not being very good at their job.

It’s not hard to understand why people might think that.

I mean, why would Blues leave it until the last day to sign players? Surely the right methodology would be to sew them up all early, so they all get to gel in pre-season and we’re ready to go from matchday one.

Did we spend so long chasing primary targets like Osman and Joe Gelhardt that by the time we looked at alternative options they were all gone?

Likewise, if the club have known since April that Craig Gardner was going to leave, why was a new Director of Football (DoF) not sought after immediately and hired to give Blues some more experience in negotiations etc?

There are many similar questions that can be and are asked by people online searching for reasons to explain why the window worked out the way it did for Blues.

Many can be answered reasonably. For example, the World Cup delaying transfers at the top and thus delaying the trickle down of available players to our level; or the difficulties in hiring top executives.

And yet, I can’t help but wonder if we really have done everything we can.

Despite the implied rhetoric that the club had saved money to be able to bring in the best for forward positions, it feels like we’ve struggled to nail down who we wanted.

Could we have done better with more experienced people? Is Craig Gardner smiling into his chicken nuggets tonight knowing that people might finally realise how much they underestimated his worth?

Make do and Mend

Do you ever remember going out with your parents and asking them to buy you something only to be told you’ve got some at home that are good enough?

I posted this tweet with those parental scoldings in my mind as I thought about Kanya Fujimoto and Marvin Ducksch being on the bench against Southampton.

It’s all well and good wanting a new number 10 for the season – but I could understand why Tom Wagner and co might decide we don’t need to buy one after all.

For all his faults on and off the pitch, Ducksch was top scorer for Blues last season with 11 goals – ten of those coming in the Championship. And while he’s never ever going to be a number 10 in the classic sense, there was a feeling that he could do okay behind a main central striker.

Kanya is a much more difficult player to justify due to his lack of minutes on the pitch, but I can understand that one of the Knighthead stats nerds might have pointed to some AI-dredged data to show that Kanya can offer something.

A friend remarked to me that his poor performance against Brentford might be in part because no one seemed to pass to him and I’m intrigued to learn from one of the resident Blues analytics geeks if that has any basis in fact.

Another frequently made point I see online is that the depth Blues have isn’t great – and that we needed to bring in someone to help ensure we had good players to call on throughout the team.

After all, are we a recurrence of a shoulder injury for Paik Seung-Ho or a calf injury for Max Bird away from being very light in midfield?

And while I can see that point, it made me think of how other teams deal with injuries.

We know all Championship clubs can only have 25 players over the age of 21 (loanees included regardless of age) – and Blues currently have 27. Sure, we will leave out Taylor Gardner-Hickman and Marc Leonard due to the nature of their long-term injuries but we still have a full squad.

That to me means that teams need young players who can step in and fill gaps if necessary – and I guess is the crux of our issue.

For whatever reason, Chris Davies has been loath to play any player from the u21 squad which means we have to make sure our 25 overage players cover EVERY eventuality.

There is probably truth in the argument that many of our u21 players would struggle with the rigours of the Championship – but if we never play them how will we know for sure?

Furthermore, would it not have made more sense to try to recruit a few more u21 players who are a bit better than we have, who would grow with our young Blues and help to step up when needed?

For what it’s worth, I was impressed with summer u21 signing Finn McGreevy when I saw him play for the u21s against Alvechurch in pre-season.

Could we not afford any more punts like that?

As someone who wants to see growth from within, I do hope we can improve with what we have and I hope that Chris Davies is the manager who makes that happen.

Keeping the powder dry

Since Knighthead have taken over Blues, they’ve been pretty ballsy in the way they’ve thrown money around. Spending eight figures on Jay Stansfield on transfer deadline day two years ago was a huge statement of intent and has helped to shove expectations up to massive levels.

Earlier in the window, I thought they might do it again.

A large fee was agreed for Joe Gelhardt only for him to get cold feet when Hull City came calling and as such I think we have to accept that there was money there to be spent. It wasn’t empty rhetoric.

If I’m really being honest, there was a tiny part of me that expected Tom Wagner to come over in his private jet, pop on down to Brighton and drop a huge metaphorical wad of cash to secure Ibrahim Osman from the Seagulls.

The figures I’ve heard mentioned as a valuation were more than we paid for Stansfield and would have represented potentially a ballsier investment.

When it came out that we were to take Mohammed Fuseini on a loan-to-buy arrangement, I was pretty happy with the sensibility of that proposal.

I didn’t know enough about Fuseini to know he’d be a success, but the hope would be there and it could be another situation like Jhon Solis where we find an unpolished gem that we can bring to a shine ourselves.

And while I was initially mad that we decided we didn’t need both Fuesini and Millar, as I thought about it I wondered if this was just another incidence of Blues being more careful.

Think about it.

Think about the players we’ve bought in recently, only to move on six to twelve months later because they weren’t good enough / didn’t fit in / were too expensive for what they were.

Think about how much money we’ve spent on those players that maybe we didn’t need to spend.

Is it not a good idea that Blues were a bit more rigid in deciding not to overpay for players, or to hold to wage structures?

Looking at some of the mental amounts paid for players in the summer window I can’t help but think maybe holding our powder a bit longer wasn’t too stupid an idea.

And while the dopamine hit of a huge deadline signing is an amazing thing, I hate it when it gets toxic against players cos they don’t immediately settle or perform.

Of course, the tricky bit is maintaining a position there or thereabouts so an assault can be made if the right players become available in the winter window.

There is also the fact that the winter window is notoriously harder to find the best value players in.

Only time would tell if that was a gamble worth taking.

Regardless of what you believe happened in the window there is one fact that is unaltering – that the world will keep spinning, time will keep moving forward and things will go on.

And while some might think about opportunities missed or mistakes made, there will always be time in the future for people to do things to put them right.

With apologies to Oasis, don’t look back in anger.

Look forwards in hope for better things.