Birmingham City is a football club transformed. Over 20,000 season tickets have been sold for the forthcoming Championship season, with 14,000 more on the waiting list. Fan parks surround St Andrew’s these days. The buzz around the place is palpable.
There are grand plans to reconnect England’s second city to the club that bears its name, unlocking its true potential. Supporters clubs are springing up around the world, a product of Tom Brady’s presence. And all the talk is of trying to be Premier League ready.
Given this context, with an ambitious ownership and a success-starved support, it is understandable if Birmingham are in a hurry. Excitement brings expectation, not just internally but externally. There is the sense of a club going places. But it takes time.
On reflection, maybe last season was a moment for the club to breathe rather than a case of lost momentum. After all, you must go back 14 years to the 2011/12 season, when Birmingham were in Europe, for a better finish than the 10th-place effort of 2025/26.
“It was our first season back, which people found hard to remember at times,” Birmingham manager Chris Davies tells Sky Sports. He is not talking about the club’s supporters – “they have been great” – but everyone. This is a man carrying a lot of hopes and dreams.
“One thing I did learn was that I can handle it,” he says. “I can handle the ups and downs.” There had not been too many of the latter as Birmingham won the League One title with a record-breaking 111 points, their possession football proving utterly dominant.
Last season was more testing. “You can know about the Championship but to feel it is something different.” England’s second tier asked different questions. Davies and his team did not always have the answers. Plan A worked only some of the time.
“We came up from League One playing total football, having 80 per cent possession with a lot of circulating the ball, a lot of dominating the ball. It was really effective for us because we just controlled games pretty much the whole way through,” he explains.
“In the Championship we were very technical in our recruitment of some smaller players, more technical players, and we tried to use that style. It had really good days and it had days where we just didn’t have enough punch, especially away from home.”
In that context, opening the season with a hard-fought Carabao Cup win at Swansea in which Birmingham scored the only goal having had 39 per cent of the ball was more than just satisfying. It suggested that his Blues side have added different elements to their game.
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The scorer, August Priske, is a robust young target-man added in January who looks to have benefited from that half-season in the Championship. The 22-year-old Dane also netted the opening goal against Barcelona in front of a packed St Andrew’s last month.
“Jhon Solis, Carlos Vicente and August came in at the same time and that little six months that they did have is their initiation to what English football is like, what the Championship is like, and now they are ready to go. They have all done very well.”
Vicente, a combative Spanish winger, provided the assist for Priske’s goal at Swansea. Solis also scored against Barcelona with the Colombian already proving a popular figure with the fans. He adds presence to Birmingham’s midfield just as Priske does up top.
“When I reflected on the season, I thought for us to take the next step and progress, physicality is going to be really important. The game now is a lot of man-to-man pressing, a lot of set-piece emphasis. You need the physical capacity to deal with it.”
That thinking has shaped Birmingham’s summer too. Supplementing those winter additions, the club have brought in Dael Fry. The expectation is that a 6ft 4in centre-back with nearly 300 Championship appearances to his name will be able to adapt quickly.
The intention is to add to what Davies has already built, rather than pivot completely. “As a team that can keep the ball, it is a lot easier to then move into a more pragmatic or direct style than being a team that only knows how to play pragmatic or direct football.”
That change actually began during the closing weeks of the last campaign. Birmingham were in 17th place in mid-April, but Davies used the brief international break in the spring to make some of these adjustments to their style of play. They went more direct.
Christoph Klarer’s passing sonar shows how Birmingham have become more direct
“I started thinking about being a little bit more flexible with the shape we were using and how we were positioning ourselves, but focusing more on more direct play, more transitions and more set-pieces if possible. So we sort of finished the season that way.”
Birmingham ended the campaign on a five-game unbeaten run, earning that top-10 finish and taking some belief into the summer.
“It is a fine balance because we don’t want to lose what we’re good at. What I won’t come away from is the pressing. I don’t think any team last season in the Championship really played through our press consistently. I thought it was really effective for us.”
But there will be tweaks once Birmingham win the ball back. “I think that hopefully is something that we can have as a weapon that we can use a little bit more. When we get the ball, just to go forward that little bit quicker, hopefully win more set-pieces.”
That explains another addition behind the scenes. Birmingham have brought in a specialist set-piece coach in Scott Fry, with Davies identifying dead-ball situations as an obvious way that his team can become genuine promotion contenders this season.
Solis scored from one against Barcelona. Priske’s winner against Swansea came after a set-piece found Vicente and he squared the ball for the striker. In other words, this emphasis on set-pieces is already making the difference. And Davies has been doing his sums.
“We have a set-piece coach and the idea is to score more from them. We needed to score 70-odd goals really to be in among those top teams last season.” Crucially, that was the total hit by the top six but not the rest of the Championship. Birmingham scored 57.
The task this time around is to find those extra 13 goals somehow. “If six or seven of those can come from set-pieces and two or three can come from counter-attacks, then you only need another two or three from your general football. So it is absolutely doable.”
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Absolutely doable. That sums up the mood. Last time, they were learning about the Championship. Now they know. “It was not just me, several players had never played in it before. Now they have 40 games in the bank. They know what it is like away at Millwall.”
At the training ground, Davies has tried to strip back the buzzwords that once adorned the walls. No more gimmicks is the mantra now. Leaner and meaner, like the squad. The feeling is that there is more continuity now, that this Birmingham are ready to kick on.
Craig Gardner has left as director of football but the club has played down the impact, leaning on the experienced Mike Rigg. Commercially, Birmingham continue to grow, with the biggest revenue of any Championship club not reliant on parachute money.
After storming up and then stabilising, the next step awaits Birmingham City. And now, it feels like everyone is ready for it. “I am confident that we can keep progressing. That is the big thing,” says Davies. “We just need to keep moving forward and getting stronger.”