After taking last week’s international break off Birmingham City is back in action this weekend. They will host Norwich City Saturday, 9:00am, no US TV), followed by a midweek game at West Bromich Albion (Wednesday, 2:00pm, Paramount+).
The Blues’ last game was a close-fought tilt with Middlesbrough, then in 3rd place. Boro ended up with a 2-1 home win, Birmingham’s only goal scored by Demarai Gray on a corner play. The Blues did have the bulk of possession and more good chances but couldn’t quite get it done. That put the home team into 2nd place and the Blues dropped a spot to 11th. Norwich are 23rd and West Brom are 14th (but tied on points with the Blues). This gives the team a strong opportunity to jump a couple of places in the table.
The big news of the week though was today’s event presenting the design for the planned new stadium, and yes that is it in the header image. The 62,000-seat venue is on the former site of a brickworks and the chimneys are intended as an homage to that part of Birmingham’s industrial past. One of the chimneys will have a bar at the top, the highest in the entire city. The stadium will also have a retractable roof and a moveable pitch. It’s not entirely clear why the latter is being included but my guess is it will be much like the new Tottenham Hotspur stadium, where the grass pitch splits into pieces and slides out of the way to reveal an artificial turf field marked for American football. The stadium itself will be the anchor for a much larger mult-purpose entertainment center intended as a year-round attraction.
As a Londoner the design reminds me of my home town’s iconic Battersea Power Station (best known in the US for its inclusion on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals LP). Early reception has been somewhat mixed and a fair amount of (very) earthy British humor has been predictably directed at it. I actually like it. Hey, it’s not a cookie-cutter design.
Here’s the announcement video (produced by the team behind the hit show Peaky Blinders):
