Birmingham City are set to have a £20 million budget to work with in the summer transfer window, according to journalist Alan Nixon.
The plan for the Blues was clear enough anyway – get back to the Championship as quickly as possible – but their intent to do so has been rubber-stamped by the amount of money that they are willing to give first-time manager Chris Davies to spend this summer.
Some teams in the Premier League may not reach the £20 million expenditure mark by the end of September, and yet that is what Davies has at his disposal. They have already signed goalkeeper Ryan Allsop from Hull City.
Carlton Palmer – former England midfielder turned pundit – has revealed his thoughts on City’s potential spending, and whether they’re being a bit reckless.
Carlton Palmer’s Birmingham, Ipswich comparison
Given the deep pockets that they have, Palmer can see Birmingham doing what Ipswich Town did and quickly get back to the Premier League, if they get their recruitment right.
“It’s believed that the Birmingham owners are going to back the new boss with a £20 million war chest to try and seal automatic promotion from league One back to the Championship next season,” said the pundit to Football League World.
“You’ve got relegated, what you don’t want to be hanging around in League One for two or three seasons. You want to get out of there straight away, and the best way to do that is to buy better players, and hopefully ones that can play in the Championship.
“It may cost them a lot of money in the short-term, but it’s good business in the long-term if you get promoted, and then you don’t have to bring in a lot of players who can play in the Championship.
“We’ve seen it with Ipswich. They’re a perfect example of good recruitment. Nine of their players who played in League One played in the team that got them promoted from the Championship to the Premier League. That’s because they recruited well.
“If Birmingham do it right and buy good players that are better than the league that they are in, there’s no reason why they can’t do an Ipswich Town.
“It has to be calculated and clever. However, I look at Davies. He comes with a big reputation of being a really good coach. He’s been a coach at Swansea City, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, Celtic and Leicester City under Brendan Rogers.
“He succeeds Tony Mowbray. The club said that he was an outstanding candidate and they interviewed 40 other candidates. He is widely respected within the game, so we’ll have to see how it goes.
“I do have Birmingham as one of the favourites to be in the hunt to get promoted next season.”
Birmingham’s urgency can’t be overstated
The club’s desire to quickly get back to the second tier is not just one that is based on standings ane ego. Of course the ‘We’re too big for this league’ mindset will be present in some, but the need to get promoted from League One is a real one.
It’s a division that has proven to be the quicksand of the EFL at times. If you get stuck but manage to free yourself quickly, then you’ll be fine. Continue to slowly sink, and it becomes harder and harder to get out of. Just ask the likes of Sheffield Wednesday, Barnsley and Bolton Wanderers what it’s like.
A lot of work needs to go into making this team up to standard. Ultimately, they were a bottom-three team last time out. That didn’t come about by bad luck, they just weren’t good enough.
City won’t just walk the league either, even with their financial might. The likes of Rotherham United are going to be really strong next season, as are the usual third tier contenders like Bolton and Peterborough United.
Huddersfield Town will be no slouch with Michael Duff at the helm and those that are coming up from League One present some eventual threat to the league too.
There is a debate to be had about whether they are being foolish in the amount of money that they are willing to spend to get themselves out of the hole that they dug. What it does definitely display is their panic over the thought of more years in this division, and rightfully so.
