Birmingham International Holdings today confirmed that they expect to record a substantial increase in loss for the year ending June 2017. The increase of operating costs including spending on player’s registration and player wages was largely blamed for the increase.
Paul Suen Cho-hung has been a busy bee of late. Not content with his mass of Hong Kong listings, he has now launched a bid to buy a London-based casino from Hong Kong listed company Landing International for a whopping HK$2.5billion (£242million).
Birmingham City were exceptionally busy in the transfer window, with 14 players coming into the club while the same number left on loan and permanent deals. With all that action going on, how much money did the club spend and is it likely there is much more available?
August wasn’t only an exciting month in Birmingham – for shareholders of the holding company in Hong Kong it’s been interesting too, with shares rocketing up by 50% in the last three days of last week. Are HK investors excited by potential promotion?
Harry Redknapp said he wanted new players, and he got them. Deadline day brought the busiest transfer window in Blues history to a conclusion. Four players came in and five left in the last 24 hours to make a total of 28 players going in or out of St Andrews over the summer months.
Harry Redknapp was not a happy man after Birmingham City collapsed to a 2-0 defeat at home to Reading in the Championship. The result left Blues lying in 20th heading into the first international break of the season, with only four days left in the transfer window to bring in new players.
During the current lull in activity in Birmingham and Hong Kong, I wanted to add a quick post to talk about plans for my writing for 2018 – in particular, details of a potential sequel to “Haircuts and League Cups”.
It’s been no secret that the government of the People’s Republic of China have targeted companies in an attempt to scale back their investment activities abroad. News has broken in the last day that this has now been somewhat clarified, with investment in sports clubs including football in the “restricted” category.
Birmingham City faced transfer heartache on Wednesday when news emerged that Ogenyi Onazi was refused a work permit and thus could not sign for the club. While Onazi captained Nigeria in their last competitive game and has played many internationals for them, he was hamstrung by Nigeria’s poor FIFA ranking over the past two years.
An opening day defeat to Ipswich left Birmingham City manager Harry Redknapp disappointed with the result – and cursing the paucity of strikers he currently has to choose from. He told Radio WM that “it hadn’t been for lack of trying” that they had not signed a striker, but that he “was not prepared to pay” huge sums for players.
