It’s a half hour walk from Birmingham New Street station up to St Andrew’s and that’s enough of an acquaintance with the city to understand the depth of its unfulfilled potential.
From the derelict Smithfield Festival Site to the sea of graffiti and rubbish sacks spilling out in Digbeth, the sights speak of a place whose council is bankrupt, crying out for investment. It’s the kind of city centre scene that Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool all shed years ago.
It’s also why Knighthead Capital, the Birmingham City ownership group led by Tom Wagner, with Tom Brady as a small minority investor, bring hope transcending football, despite their team’s barnstorming first half against Newcastle coming to nothing on Saturday evening.
There is huge potential for a transformation with football at its core. The population of Britain’s second city is 1.14million and HS2 will put it within 49 minutes of London in eight years, if the schedule is met. That looks like serious inward investment appeal.
The question is whether Knighthead will have the patience to wait for their football club to become profitable, continuing to lose millions during a climb back to the big time which will be complex, with so many other aspiring Premier League clubs for competition. Saturday evening was a reminder that Brum won’t be built in a day. Blowing apart the third-tier transfer record with £15million for Jay Stansfield counted for nothing when a golden chance came his way. He missed.
Birmingham City’s new ownership group, led by Tom Wagner (pictured), have brought hope to the city
Tom Brady and Wagner were both at Birmingham’s ‘Hollywood Derby’ with Wrexham in September
Blues boss Chris Davies was encouraged by his side’s performance in their 3-2 defeat on Saturday
Some of the Knighthead proposals and figures are perplexing. The cost of the new stadium complex is ‘£2bn to £3bn’ and Wagner has spoken of the club moving in there by 2029.
The entire investment sum Knighthead have under their management is £9billion, so that’s going to need other investors.
The timeframe is also extremely ambitious, with formal planning applications yet to be submitted and the project dependent on local authorities agreeing to set up new transport links, which they’ve dithered about for years.
There were reports heading into Saturday’s game of Wagner wanting to lay a tunnel from New Street to the new stadium at a cost of £20million. A development like that – which doesn’t seem necessary – would cost vastly more than that.
The departure of Garry Cook as City’s chief executive, announced three weeks ago, wasn’t encouraging. Cook, leaving for ‘personal reasons’, is a serious operator, who persuaded the Abu Dhabis to buy Manchester City and had recruited some of his former Etihad Stadium executive team here. His departure, shrouded in mystery, is a loss.
But none of that obscures the transformation of St Andrew’s. The old place was bouncing on Saturday and seemed light years away from the rank incompetence and abject decision-making of previous Chinese owners, Birmingham Sports Holdings.
Wagner’s bullishness about the long-term prospects of Birmingham – with its a ‘highly educated, diverse, dynamic economy’ – inspires. His pleas for a less obstructive planning system, to awaken the city’s ‘animal spirits’, chimes with current Government thinking. And unlike American-owned Wrexham, City are not dependent on documentary-making potential to maintain their owners’ presence.
For 45 minutes, City went toe to toe with Newcastle. ‘We want to go on a journey and get out of League One,’ said manager Chris Davies after the 3-2 defeat.
Knighthead Capital have proposed a new stadium complex, costing up to £3bn, that would be completed in four years
The League One side put in a spirited performance against the in-form Magpies on Saturday night
St Andrew’s was bouncing as home fans saw their players contribute to a thrilling FA Cup clash
‘If we continue to play with this spirit, we will go somewhere.’ Spirit won’t be enough, of course. Newcastle, with Joe Willock’s two goals and Danish under-21 international Will Osula’s threat, exposed the standard.
At the site of the city’s old Bird’s Custard factory, on the way up to the stadium, stands the John F Kennedy Memorial mosaic, Birmingham’s most visible American link. ‘A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on,’ it states. If the Wagner and Co’s idea bears fruit and both club and city are restored in tandem, they will be immortalised around here, too.
