Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. The best way to follow his journey is by subscribing here
At one corner of St Andrews, now known as Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park for reasons that will become clear, a yellow road sign has been placed with Birmingham City stickers added to two corners. “Corporate guests” are signposted towards an entrance 100 yards away.
On this night more than any other, it will be kept busy. David Beckham is the VVIP guest of honour, but there are too many others to name. Thirty minutes later, Tom Brady does a lap of the pitch and signs autographs for those who chose to get here early. Later he does a TV interview and looks exactly like a superstar of one sport quickly learning how much this one means.
Were this any other third-tier fixture, visitors Wrexham and their Hollywood entourage might be the star attraction. Not tonight. Sky Sports, their broadcasting trucks filling a car park, have sold their coverage as the biggest League One fixture in history and you can see their point. Over the course of three months, Birmingham City have supercharged themselves to the point of national notoriety.
This summer, Birmingham spent more on transfer fees than Premier League champions Manchester City. It started with Northern Ireland goalkeeper Bailey Peacock-Farrell and last season’s League One top scorer Alfie May. It continued with European imports Willum Willumsson and Christoph Klarer (around £6m combined) plus Lyndon Dykes, Ayumu Yokoyama and Tomoki Iwata, each costing a little below £1m.
It ended with Jay Stansfield arriving in the final hours of the transfer window for a guaranteed £15m plus add-ons. If those are met, Stansfield would be the most expensive signing in Championship history and he’s been bought by a League One club. This was the most ambitious transfer project in the history of England’s bottom two Football League divisions and it’s not even close.
For supporters of League One’s other 23 clubs – even Wrexham – Birmingham City’s summer has them crying foul about financial doping, wondering how on earth a club can commit in the region of £30m on transfer fees at this level. Much of that will come laced with implicit jealousy – which is our right as fans – but you see their point.
The details offer some reason, as unlikely as that initially appears. Between June 2020 and June 2024, those years (documented at length here) of ownership chaos and carelessness, Birmingham spent roughly £14m on transfer fees and in that time sold Jude Bellingham, an academy product, for around £25m of pure profit. Relegation or no relegation, American owners Knighthead were always going to invest heavily this summer because they could.
That was aided by the allowances of amortisation – Stansfield has signed a seven-year contract – but also by further departures. Jordan James – £4m rising to a potential £8m – was another pure profit sale. Junior Bacuna, Siriki Dembele and Koji Miyoshi left for fees. Scott Hogan, Ivan Sunjic, Alex Pritchard, John Ruddy, Gary Gardner and others, all on Championship wages, left after the expiry of their contracts. With 16 players out and 18 in, Birmingham overhauled their entire first-team squad.
Relegation, albeit evidently unplanned, made that process easier. If that sounds counterintuitive, understand that the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) that apply in the Championship are different in League One. There, Salary Cost Management Protocols (SMCP) mean that a club can only spend 60 per cent of its revenue on player wages, plus prize money, broadcasting fees and net transfer profits. They also allow equity from owners to be included.
Whether Birmingham City can stay on the right side of the line if and when they return to the Championship – and thus fall under the PSR umbrella once more – remains to be seen. But then that plays into the additional elements of the grand revamp.
In the 15 months since their takeover, Knighthead have invested heavily in both the stadium and the training ground. The latter enables Birmingham City to make itself more attractive to potential signings, as seen by this summer’s work. It also enables a clear focus on academy player development. As we have seen at the top of the Premier League, that scout-develop-sell for pure profit approach is PSR gold dust.
The former, including upgrading hospitality sections and exploring commercial sponsorship opportunities at St Andrews, was a no-brainer after the inertia of previous owners because it significantly increases Birmingham’s revenue potential. According to most estimates, it will hit a record high this year even after relegation.
I wonder if there is another reason for this comparatively vast spend. For all the joy at Knighthead releasing Birmingham from the grip of previous misery, their first year in charge went appallingly as the club were relegated to the third tier for the first time since 1995.
Knighthead sacked John Eustace (now at Blackburn Rovers and doing well), appointed Wayne Rooney, sacked Rooney, appointed Tony Mowbray, got some terrible luck with Mowbray’s sad illness diagnosis and then appointed Gary Rowett as an interim. They were fifth when Eustace left in October and they took 21 points from 28 games between then and the end of March. It was an uncaveated calamity.
PR is vital to new football club owners (and seems particularly important to American investors). One way of providing a different narrative to “we just did what nobody else managed and took you down” is to promote a vision of relegation being a mere blip in the bigger project.
As such, if you buy a squad that you believe is capable of competing in the top half of the Championship, it becomes far easier to sell that vision. Perhaps Stansfield was an apology from owner Tom Wagner for the mistakes of last season, a missive to stick with them.
“I can understand why people might see it as an apology for the relegation of last season,” says Daniel Ivery, Birmingham City supporter and writer for his almajir.net website.
“Appointing Rooney turned out to be an incredibly dumb decision made with horrendous timing and there were questions over how Rooney got the job bearing in mind the visible connections between Rooney and Garry Cook. Going down was a bitter pill to swallow and stuck in the craw massively after all the good stuff surrounding the takeover.
“However, I remember the day we went down well and as heart wrenching as it was to go down in the manner we did, I also remember meeting friends for drinks after and there being a definite mood of hope in the air.
“I think regardless of what division we were in, it was always the case that Blues were going to go big with signings in the summer and I think Tom Wagner knew he had to back up his words from April of how relegation would only be a blip and that the investment would be there.”
Not everybody will enjoy the emphatic pazzazz of the occasion, particularly in the pre-match fever of light show and fire that does feel a little forced – Birmingham are hardly alone here.
In the build-up to the game, CEO Cook remarked that it would have been a “great idea” for the fixture to be played in the US. To those of us who value the heritage and tradition of the EFL, it is a rotten idea. Ambition must have its limits.
But to say that you can feel the new mood at St Andrews on matchday is an understatement. Having visited this stadium in the Championship, under two different owners, this is a revelation.
Birmingham concede early but the atmosphere remains electric. It roars on a home team that responds in kind, scoring three times to take Birmingham close to the League One summit with a game in hand. It is louder than I can ever remember, even in the Premier League.
Birmingham City 3-1 Wrexham (Monday 16 September)
- Game no.: 18/92
- Miles: 92
- Cumulative miles: 2,848
- Total goals seen: 46
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: The audial treat that Birmingham City offer to every opposition substitution. No spoilers, but go and hear it for yourself.
“The frightening thing for other teams is that I don’t think Blues have fully clicked as a team yet; I think there is more to come,” says Ivery. I’m not the only person to have realised this and I think it’s lifted the crowd massively.
“After years of fear and uncertainty about the direction the club is going it’s like a weight being lifted off of us – and now it’s fun to go to the football again. As more and more people realise this, it’s only going to get better. I remarked to my friend after the game that it felt like one of the Europa League nights. I only hope it continues.”
There is inherent risk in every expansion project. There is evident danger in spending big in search of progress in an environment with so many factors beyond your own control and it is a trap that other American owners have fallen into. Birmingham City plan on being in League One for a good time, not a long time. For this all to work, a certain set of circumstances have to be met in an accelerated timeframe.
But…what if they meet them? Stansfield scores twice against Wrexham, a poacher’s finish and a glorious running header after half-time to kill the game. He scores a wonderful chip against Rotherham United in Birmingham’s next game and they win that one too.
After the match, Rotherham manager Steve Evans describes them as “’the best League One side I’ve ever seen”. They are already overwhelming favourites to win the division. And then what? Momentum is a mightily powerful beast.
Most importantly of all, you cannot blame supporters for getting giddy and deliberately putting the potential risk to one side.
They have seen it all here: an owner sent to prison for six years, 11 managers in seven years, points deductions, closed stands due to serious safety concerns, a British Virgin Islands-registered investment vehicle Trillion Trophy Asia who delivered a trillion fewer trophies than their name suggested. There were protests provoked by anger and fear that never felt like it would leave for good.
Birmingham City are being noticed again. If that comes with scrutiny over the financial outlay and scorn from those who don’t like it, those within St Andrews will take it. Far better than the overpowering sympathy that began to suffocate them through kindness. If this can go wrong, what value is there in focusing on what might not be when you can finally dream of what might?
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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