Birmingham City - The Blue's will Prevail

In the summer of 2002 Birmingham City ended their longest period without top flight football by winning the play off final. The season started off well in the Premiership as well and Birmingham fans were going wild as on 16th September Birmingham recorded their second win of the season with a big 3-0 win over city rivals Aston Villa. Clinton Morrison grabbed the opener after 31 minutes before Peter Enckelman fumbled the ball across the line to make it 2-0. Birmingham icon Geoff Horsfield then got the all important third goal to make it a night to remember for Birmingham fans. For two in particular fans it was certainly a night to remember as it was the night Birmingham youngster Jude Bellingham was conceived. Who would of thought that that baby who was born 9 months later at the end of June 2003 would go on to become one of the hottest talents in English football and be the latest player off the Birmingham conveyor belt of English talent to come through the youth ranks at the club.

This save will revolve around Jude Bellingham and seeing him fulfil his potential at his boyhood club and pull them out of the Championship and take them to Champions League glory. If we're able to attract any other players who have come through the ranks here such as Jack Butland and Nathan Redmond then we will do our best to attract them as the more home grown talent we have the better. We will also be looking to promote from within as well if when we bring through suitable players for the first team and hopefully be more future Internationals.

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Squad Overview

Goalkeeper

Our weakest area of the team in my opinion as we have Lee Camp as our current number one who at 34 won't be having his contract renewed come the end of the season and then we have Moha Ramos on Loan from Real Madrid who isn't going to become a world beater. We also have David Stockdale who is currently out on loan to Wycombe but we may look at recalling his loan if we can to provide proper cover for Camp or to sell him.

Fullbacks

Our main RB this season will be Maxime Colin who has all the attributes of a decent wingback which will fit my formation perfectly.We then have youth product Wes Harding who will provide suitable cover and my even take over. At LB we have Danish defender Kristian Pedersen who will again become a good wingback for us with his back up Cheick Keita looking good as a back up and hopefully be sold at the end of the season. We also have Jonathan Grounds as 3rd choice LB so we will be looking to sell him as soon as possible.

Centre Backs

Harlee Dean will be one of our two CB's along with Marc Roberts who will hopefully pick up their relationship from last season. We also have Jake Clarke-Salter on loan from Chelsea and Wes Harding again who will be our backups and get some game time in the cup's if people need a rest.

Central Midfield

So first name on the team sheet will be Jude Bellingham and alongside him I will be looking to play Ivan Sunjic with him as they are both young and hungry with plenty of energy. We have plenty of backups as well with Craig and Gary Gardner, Josh McEachran and Dan Crowley. Again we also have David Davis out on loan we will look to recall and sell as well.

Attacking Midfielders

Here we have Kerim Mrabti who will be the main player here unless we can bring in a cheap alternative. For backup we will be able to push Jude Bellingham up the park to take care of the AMC role.

Wingers

An area we could do with a bit of cover for so will look at the loan markets for this but down the right wing at the moment we have Jeremie Bela. Down the left we have Jacques Maghoma who have a few clubs looking at so may look to sell, we also have Jefferson Montero in on loan from Swansea for the season but I will look to cancel it hopefully as he's on £24,000 a week which could be used elsewhere.

Fran Villalba is currently out on loan who will come back at the end of the season into the team.

Forwards

Up top we are also a bit light as we have Scott Hogan in on loan who will hopefully be able to do a job if he can refined his form a few seasons ago at Brentford. We also have Lukas Jutkiewicz as cover who scored 14 goals last season so at 30 still can do a job for us If we can bring a player in on loan we can.

Tactic

I'm going to look to play a 4-2-3-1 and see how we go but it may rely on us getting another player or two in on loan.



Jude

So the main man himself is only 16 and already looks like a beast of a player and could develop into one of the best players in the world if given the right training and playing time.

Preseason

Staff Transfers

I have been extremely busy with bringing in a lot of new staff including Adrie Bogers to become my new assistant manager and he brings a wealth of experience with him. The other big addition to the coaching staff sees Dennis Bergkamp return to English football and he will lead the attacking coaching. We also had a complete revamp of the coaching setup which was vital as we had one of the worse in the division. One final piece of business we did here was tie current HOYD Kristjaan Speakman down to a new long term contract as well.



Transfers out

We ship out a number of youngsters on loan to try and get them a bit of experience. The big movements though were Maghoma leaving to join division rivals Derby for £2,200,000 but with his age then he wasn't going to be at the club much longer. WE also sold Jonathan Grounds for £300,000 to Colorado Rapids as we didn't need another LB. We also recalled David Davis from his loan and then sold him straight away to New York City FC for £1,800,000 as he was surplus to requirements and the money can be used better within the club. Finally we also cancelled the loan of Jefferson Montero who was on £24,000 a week so that can be used to bring in other players on loan as well.



Transfers In

With Maghoma and Montero leaving then it was vital the we bring in another Left Winger so we went straight to the loan market and snapped up Angel Gomes and Curtis Jones to cover that position. We then come across Rober at Real Betis for the Right Wing who had a £1,100,000 release clause we quickly activate it as there were another number of teams interested like PSG. He looks like he could develop into a world class player. To provide a bit more cover upfront we brought in Joshua Zirkzee on loan from Bayern along with Nicolo Armini from Lazio to again provide cover at the back.



Preseason Results



We have a really successful preseason as we claim some big wins which is good. The only blemish on our record was a very respectable 2-1 loss to Lazio. It gives us a lot of confidence going into the season.

Expectations

Our expectations seem pretty standard and we should achieve them. We're not expected to challenge at the top of the table but I feel that will come over a couple of seasons as we build a younger and fitter squad



Takeover Rumours

We have had a number of rumours over the course of preseason and who knows whats going on as the chairman has denied the latest rumour to rock the club.

August



The start of the month saw Jude Bellingham make his debut against Brentford for him to become the youngest player in Birmingham's history to pull on the shirt.

We get off to a strong start with going undefeated through the month. We Start off with 2 solid draws as we still break in the new signings and the team still adapting to the new training and formation. We also get a nice big win away to Watford in the Carabao Cup which has given us a very favourable draw at home where we will be facing Lincoln City FC.

Game of the Month

The game of the month though really has to be the Barnsley game where we played out a boring first half which saw neither side trouble the goalkeepers. In the second half though we had a total of 7 goals. Things really didn't look good for us though as Halil Dervisoglu scored a quick fire double to put Barnsley ahead after 66 minutes. With things going against us I looked to the bench and got Curtis Jones and Rober to start warming up to add a bit of pace to the wings. By god did it work as within 5 minutes of them both coming on Rober had an assist and Jones had got us back into the Game. It was next Jones who got the assist off the Left Wing for Rober before Rober is the one with the quick fire double to put us 3-2 in front. Lukas Jutiewicz didn't want to be left out either so he showed the type of form that got him 14 goals last season. With the final touch of the ball Dean rose above everybody else in the box to head the ball into the bottom corner of the goal to finish it off and give us a very impressive 5-2 win.



League



September

September



It was a nice quiet month for us thanks to the international window so we had a total of 4 games this month. We got off to a nice start by coming back from 1-0 down against Charlton with Zirkzee finally finding his scoring boots as he scores an excellent solo effort in the final minute of extra time to get the 3 points. We then falter a bit against Preston as we play out a 0-0 draw where both sets of fans went home wondering why they paid to watch either team. We bounce back though in the cup with a very good win against Lincoln City which saw us fully rotate our squad to give some of our players a kick up the arse after the Preston game. The big bonus saw Scott Hogan come in though for Zirkzee and he managed a very respectable 4 goals to show he can still cut it just now. Finally we finish off the month with a very disappointing defeat to Derby County who just tore us apart as we just couldn't handle them at all.

In the next round of the Carabao cup we will be travelling to league leaders Leeds United which will be a tough game and could be our end in the tournament.

League



October

October



Its a bit of a mixed month as we pick up 3 great 3-0 wins against Wigan, Middlesbrough and Luton but the loss to Blackburn was annoying as we were actually 1-0 up with 15 minutes to go and then we managed to blow it and concede two poor goals from Set pieces as Camp came out to challenge and ended up flapping in midair and being at fault for the two goals. The Leeds game on the other hand was just not a game we turned up for at all and the extra quality really showed as they really punished us and managed to put 4 goals past us. In the Cup game we travelled to Leeds again hoping we would perform better than the last time but sadly we didn't but at least we did only concede two goals rather than 4. the big stand out performer this month though has to Zirkzee as he managed a great 5 goals in 5 games.

League



Establishing ourselves in the top half of the table now and not too far away from the playoff positions either which is good

November

November



A rather disappointing month here as we only claim 7 out of 15 points available but again it is increasingly showing that we need a new Goal Keeper as Lee Camp is becoming more and more of a liability. Ramos is also not the required quality of becoming the number 1 either so the position will certainly be one of interest in the next couple of months in the run up to the winter transfer window. Out of all the results though the Sheffield Wednesday game was the most disappointing as we managed to throw away a 2-0 lead but I guess we still walked away with a point.

The shining light in the darkness though this month has to be Rober who manged to score 3 goals across the 5 games along with 2 assists.

League



Even after a disappointing month we're still in touching distance of the playoff positions.

December



Board Improvements



The board has shown their faith in me as they've agreed to upgrade our facilities that will see us move up a youth level to the top level. This will hopefully bring good things though in the years to come and help us bring through the next generation of homegrown players for the club.

December



A much better month as we only drop 2 points here across the whole month. Whats even better though is Camp obviously knows that we're in the market for a new keeper and has seriously upped his game as he managed to keep 4 clean sheets across the month. We did really well across the busy Christmas period as well with showing our squad depth with most people getting a run out to make sure that everybody was kept with fresh legs as there is still a long way to go here.

The big result in my eyes though has got to be that we finally managed to beat Leeds United. This was all down to Bielsa walking away to join Everton in the middle of the month and what worked really well in our favour was that they hired their new permanent manager the day before we faced them and thankfully the went for somebody who is an ex player who hasn't managed at club level in 9 years. Gordon Strachan may manage to derail their promotion bid so it will be interesting to see how he does with them over the course of the rest of the season.

League



The league is looking a lot better now as we hold 3rd place with a cushion of 2 points and only 11 points behind Leeds now as well.

January



Youth Intake



The youth intake looks promising with us having a wing back who is highly rated and a goal keeper that looks like a great prospect so it will be interesting to see what the intake is really like come March.