There was a lot of news about Birmingham City this week. On Monday, the draw for the FA Cup fourth round brought up the intriguing possibility of Blues being the away team at St Andrew’s if Coventry win the third round replay. The FA confirmed that Coventry would be the home team if the tie goes ahead. A club announcement said that the Middlesbrough game would be moved to Tuesday evening, 21 January.
On Tuesday, the accounts were published and revealed that “freehold land and buildings” had been sold to Birmingham City Stadium Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Birmingham Sports Holding Limited. This raised questions about the application to register St Andrew’s as an Asset of Community Value. A post on the Blues Trust website explained the timeline for this and said,
“The failure of the Club to tell the fans that the ground had been sold … is a continuing example of the unwillingness of Directors to engage with supporters. We understand that the EFL had known for some time that the ground had been sold, but because the sale value does not appear to have been inflated, the EFL had no issues with it. So why was this information withheld from Supporters by the club?”
Blues Trust also published a link to an article in the South China Morning Post, which included a reference to the Blues Trust statement.
A new group of Blues fans, 1875, set up a new website and sent a letter to Birmingham Sports Holdings Chairman Zhao Wenqing, requesting him to improve the situation at Blues. They believe that writing to the powers that be will be more effective than moaning on social media.
The Birmingham Mail published some articles about the EFL charge and other matters at the club. One had a large headline that said, “The fans deserve to know what’s going on at Blues.” I agree with that.
Amid all this disturbing news, there were some reassuring quotes from Pep Clotet. He said that Marc Roberts should be available for the Cardiff game, Blues’ next home fixture on 18 January. And, commenting on the EFL’s charge that the club had breached the imposed business plan, Clotet said the staff and players had been informed “there is nothing to worry about and what we need to do is focus on our job which is trying to win games.”
I hope that today they will try to win their game against Luton and will succeed in doing that.
