Hearts and minds don’t come cheap in football. For Birmingham City’s American ownership group, the bill is being paid one pint at a time. A fortnight ago, at an away game of transatlantic interests, that arrangement caused a scene of mild amusement. The expedition to The Turf pub in Wrexham had been led by City’s chairman, the billionaire financier Tom Wagner, and he was accompanied by an assortment of his commercial partners.
That’s been a routine since Knighthead Capital took over in the summer of 2023 – Wagner will fly in from his base in New York, usually once a week, and before getting to each game he picks a spot for a drink close to wherever Birmingham are playing. Ahead of League One’s ‘Hollywood derby’, that proved to be expensive. ‘Tom put his card behind the bar,’ a senior figure at the club recalled to Mail Sport this week, with the added detail that Wagner and two executives from Delta Airlines received a round of pantomime boos from the natives when they stepped out of their cars. They were more popular a couple of hours later.
‘I can’t tell you precisely how much it cost, but there were fans from Birmingham and Wrexham in there and it ended up in the thousands.’. It was a similar story when Birmingham played Preston away prior to relegation last season – that bill had reached around £2,500 by the time they left. And same goes for most home games, which will include today’s FA Cup fourth-round tie with Newcastle United.
A resurrection on the pitch has cost a relative fortune for a League One club, but winning over the fans was written into the business plan after the dire neglect of the last ownership group, Birmingham Sports Holdings. Whether these are optics or something more meaningful will only be told over a sustained length of time. But the moods and ambitions around Birmingham City have lifted dramatically – being a street clear at the top of League One helps.
So have £24million-plus of signings, the surreal presence of Tom Brady among their stakeholders and plans for a new 60,000-seater stadium in 2029, compared to a ‘spaceship’ by Wagner. In the longer term, he is already lobbying the government on proposals for a £3bn ‘Sports Quarter’, which will be built on a 48-acre site in the east of the city, featuring the new stadium and training ground above a network of underground transport tunnels.
In the past week alone, Wagner has moved to buy a 49 per cent stake in the Birmingham Phoenix cricket franchise. Wagner’s broader goals amount to one of the most fascinating projects in British sport, not least for his willingness to fire up expectations. If Birmingham City have long held a status as a weak link in the region, dwarfed by the histories of Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest, then efforts to change the order will not be done in silence.
As Wagner told Mail Sport this week: ‘Birmingham City is going to be one of the biggest stories in world football in the next decade. 'Games against teams like Newcastle United in the FA Cup, being viewed around the globe, are important to showcase what is starting to happen at the club.’. They are big claims, especially in light of how this journey began. The teething problems under the Knighthead regime are still fresh in the memory – sacking John Eustace when the club were sixth in the Championship was one error.
Another was the starry-eyed misadventure that saw Wayne Rooney in charge for 83 days, putting City into the tailspin that landed them in the third tier for the first time in 30 seasons. The embarrassment of that period was best encapsulated by the experience of Brady, whose 3.3 percent stake in the club was raised to a wider audience the day after relegation. When Netflix filmed a ‘Roast’ show in his honour, one of the guests making gags at his expense was the great Bill Belichick, the coach with whom Brady dominated the NFL for two decades.
Taking the microphone and looking across to Brady, Belichick said: ‘I see your soccer team, Birmingham City, got knocked down to another tier in the English Football League. 'For those not familiar with English football and the intricacies of their system, I’ll put it in English for you - they suck! Not so easy running a team, is it Tom?’. In the here and now, Birmingham are bouncing after the fall. Led by Chris Davies, a 39-year-old manager poached from Ange Postecoglou’s coaching staff at Tottenham, they have lost only twice in the league this season.
Wagner’s previously stated hope is to reach the Premier League by 2026 and one of his close confidantes at the club was only slightly more reserved in predicting to Mail Sport that it will take three years. The source spoke of a ’20-year project, not a buy-and-flip’. The figures involved in the pursuit of these targets have been astonishing. The £24million spree on 14 players in the summer window was wildly unique for the division and peaked with the transfer of Fulham striker Jay Stansfield for around £15m, trebling the League One record.
