Birmingham City is finding that life in the Championship is just as hard as it was two seasons ago. Today they finish a stretch of 3 games in 7 days and the first 2 were not great.
Last Saturday they fell 0-3 to Coventry City. The Blues went down a goal early and then hamstrung themselves with a second-yellow red card to defender Jack Robinson in the 42nd minute. After the break it got worse with an own goal by right back Bright Osayi-Samuel just 4 minutes into the second half. A late goal capped it off for the home team and Blues fans returned home less than happy.
Then on Tuesday what looked like an easy matchup against 23rd-place Sheffield Wednesday nearly ended in disaster. Jay Stansfield got the first goal of the game in the 9th minute and Birmingham dominated the game with 71% possession and 20 shots to 5. But they managed to go down 1-2 as Wednesday were able to convert 2 of those 5 shots. The home team needed a goal by Demarai Gray 9 minutes into second-half stoppage time to scrape by with a draw.
The Blues have now dropped to 11th on 8 games and need to figure out a way to get back on track. The rough start has some fans calling for Chris Davies to be sacked. That would be somewhat premature and tends to suggest that the fan base has forgotten how tough life is in the EFL Championship. It’s a very competitive league.
A chance for a signature win comes this afternoon as the Blues head to fellow promotee and docuseries rival Wrexham (2:00pm, Paramount+). Wrexham have found the going even tougher, sitting in 15th with just 2 wins so far this season. The Red Dragons won’t look quite the same as they have the last few seasons. For a start, Paul Mullin has been loaned to League One side Wigan Athletic. Ollie Palmer was released at the end of last season and is now at League Two side Swindon Town. The starting striker is now Welshman Kieffer Moore. Moore has 5 goals in 9 total games and is a definite threat.
The Blues also have some injury issues to deal with. In addition to their involvement in Tuesday’s game, both Stansfield and Osayi-Samuel picked up leg injuries and were forced out of the game. Both are questionable. Ethan Laird is the team’s first choice at right back but he is also out with a hamstring problem. That position could well be a major issue.
On the other hand, Wrexham are also plagued with injuries; 5 key players could be missing this afternoon.
Off the pitch not much is happening, although the team did get fined £20,000 for a melee at the end of the Cambridge United game at the end of last season. The team is also under investigation for a recent confrontation with Ipswich Town, which was the first official game after the Cambridge game. The fine was 8 times the normal penalty (Cambridge were fined £5,000) on the grounds that bench staff were also involved, not just players.
Owner Tom Wagner has made a couple of interesting comments this week. Among negotiations over changing the so-called pyramid payments system (at the UK government’s urging) he stated that lower league clubs should not take too much from the Premier League teams. That might seem like it would annoy his fellow owners but what he was really referring to was the power of the newly established Independent Football Regulator (IFR) to set those payments. The IFR was created by law over the summer (the Football Governance Act) and is not a replacement for the FA, but is intended rather to work with it. Its primary focus is apparently management and financial matters but time will tell how that all shakes out.
Wagner also noted that playing a game outside the UK is a possibility he wants to pursue and is further promoting the idea of a single global TV deal for the EFL to expand its reach.
