Rubbish is piling up in the streets of Birmingham. An industrial dispute with refuse collectors has led to weeks of uncollected waste and rats running amok in England’s second biggest metropolis.
The football team carrying the city name, however, are embarking on a clean sweep.
Tonight, Birmingham City — the club owned by the American investment firm Knighthead that counts Tom Brady among its minority shareholders — sealed promotion from England’s third tier into the Championship, one rung below the Premier League, thanks to a 2-1 away win against Peterborough United.
That achievement has felt inevitable for months. But this could just be the start of a golden month: Birmingham now plan to wave goodbye to League One as champions and record-breakers under talented young head coach Chris Davies, who forged his reputation as a coach at Tottenham, Liverpool and Leicester City. Three wins from their remaining six league games would see them eclipse Wolverhampton Wanderers’ 103 points from the 2013-14 season, the highest achieved in League One.
And that’s not all. On Sunday, Birmingham could add the EFL (English Football League) Trophy — the knockout competition contested by teams in League One and League Two, plus academy sides from the Premier League — to this season’s honours. More than 43,000 fans will be backing the club at Wembley Stadium in London for the game, which is a swift rematch with Peterborough.
Battered and bruised by the mismanagement of previous years and the embarrassment of relegation last season, it has been some recovery — although this does not qualify as a sporting fairy tale.
Anything other than automatic promotion would have pointed to deeper problems at Birmingham, given the £25million-plus ($32m) investment on signing players who many observers believe would have formed a competitive squad a division above in the Championship.
The involvement of NFL great Brady also ensured that Birmingham received a level of publicity in the third tier that only Wrexham, owned by Hollywood duo Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, can match.
The former NFL quarterback has no day-to-day involvement in the club and holds only a 3.3 per cent stake with no voting rights. He is the chairman of an advisory board, working with Birmingham’s directors and leadership team. The club have also said that he offers assistance to the sports science department on health, nutrition and recovery programmes, with their players also using Brady’s body coach, Alex Guerrero.
“It’s like having a world-class consultant, one of the greats, that I can speak to at any time,” Davies told The Telegraph. “I’ve worked with some top players at Liverpool and Spurs and Tom befits their very similar mentality. There is an unrelenting drive and passion for excellence.”
Tom Brady became a minority stakeholder at Birmingham in 2023 (Cameron Smith/Getty Images)
Brady has visited St Andrew’s, Birmingham’s home stadium, just once this season — for the game against Wrexham, naturally — but when he did, he brought his friend David Beckham along with him, turning the St Andrew’s VIP seats into English football’s hottest ticket.
Birmingham have won few friends among their League One peers this season. Not only did they swipe players from rival clubs — Alfie May from Charlton Athletic was a prominent case — they also distorted the market by paying huge salaries to new signings.
They have gone about their business with a swagger bordering on arrogance all campaign. At the end of September, captain Krystian Bielik told the BBC: “We’re (in) League One but I don’t think there are any players in this team who are League One players. In six months, we’ll be a Championship team and a different animal.”
The fact Bielik has now been proven right has not made his comments any more palatable to other third-tier clubs, although nobody is disputing Birmingham’s quality was a level above the rest of the division, even Wrexham.
Finding a way to win so consistently — shutting out all the external noise and creating a siege mentality — was also hugely impressive.
For large parts of the season, nothing mattered more than preparing well and grinding out victories, albeit through a slender margin. In more recent weeks, Davies, 40, has opened up his side and the goals have flowed; six were smashed past Barnsley on Saturday and four against Shrewsbury Town a week earlier at St Andrew’s, which has been a fortress for Birmingham. They have not lost a home game in the league all season.
The manner in which they sealed promotion at Peterborough tonight was typical of their approach.
First-half goals from May and Taylor Gardner-Hickman gave Birmingham the win they needed and the chants of “We are going up” from the 4,000 travelling away fans started as early as the 19th minute. It was a party atmosphere throughout, with wild scenes at the final whistle.
Chris Davies has impressed this season (Pete Norton/Getty Images)
The promotion celebrations will continue into the summer, not so much to mark what has been achieved but what could follow next season in the Championship.
Birmingham believe they have already laid the groundwork to target another promotion next season, taking them back to the Premier League for the first time since 2011, with a core of the squad — Christoph Klarer, Ethan Laird, Paik Seung-ho and Jay Stansfield, their record £15million signing — all capable of making the step up. Ben Davies and Kieran Dowell, both on loan from leading Scottish side Rangers, also have the experience and know-how to thrive in the setup if permanent deals can be agreed. The FA Cup tie against Premier League Newcastle United in January, which ended in a narrow 3-2 defeat, hinted at Birmingham’s potential.
Either way, the partnerships that have already been struck and the increased revenues they should generate will allow Birmingham to continue spending in the summer transfer window. Once again, the recruitment drive will be aggressive, as it has to be if they are to fulfil Knighthead co-founder Tom Wagner’s prediction that they have the potential to be a top 10 Premier League team.
With phase one now complete, Davies will not let his players slack off in pursuit of an all-conquering season. If that clean sweep does follow, then it will be down to his relentless approach and how his motivational skills achieved full buy-in from the group.
“I think a few of the players have had a few swigs of champagne but we have got another game coming up,” Davies told Sky Sports after the final whistle at Peterborough. “We have got to be careful but they should enjoy it. I’m going to have a bottle of beer to myself and reflect on a special season.”
To achieve promotion with six games remaining is rare. It highlights how Birmingham, as the biggest-ever spenders in English football’s third tier, were always a mismatch for League One.
Next season will pose a sterner test, but nobody at St Andrew’s is feeling daunted.
(Top photo: Alfie May celebrates his goal at Peterborough; Cameron Smith/Getty Images)
