BRUM IS BLUE!

It’s been a busy week for Blues who managed to bring in four players in the space of a week, it wasn’t just any old business either with a splattering of Premier League Winners, Champions League players and England U21 Euro Winners. Another season of buying the league I guess… oh yeah we’ve not even spent a penny.

So far the business from Blues has been very, very impressive. I’d done reflections on Beadle and Doyle but didn’t get a chance to celebrate the re-signing of Demarai Gray before we then brought in Bright Osayi-Samuel as well. I must admit that was one I’d not heard much noise on to be fair so caught me out a bit.

As I mention, Blues have gone for a high calibre of signings. Demarai Gray of course won the Premier League whilst with Leicester City, he then spent time at Leverkusen before a solid spell at Everton. His return to Blues after a spell in Saudi is a statement signing, he wants to get his career back on track, he has always enjoyed his best football in England and I think he’ll be an integral part of any promotion ambitions this year. It’s also another example of Blues looking ahead, not just signing Championship quality players but players with Premier League experience.

Bright Osayi-Samuel is another player who has cut it in the Championship, but he’s also played top flight football in Turkey as well as European football with Fenerbahce competing in both the Europa League and Champions League. He started his career as a Winger but has more recently played in the right-back position, this gives Blues options on that right side and you would anticipate him playing a wing-back position giving Blues that defensive option and ability to play out from the back. That is of course unless Ethan Laird can up his game, he had a great season last season I felt but there were always going to be question marks over him repeating this in the Championship, competition will only ever get the best out of both players. Ironically as well his first QPR goal came against Blues!

The quality of the players brought in is impressive but as I’ve said it’s all come with Wagner not having to pull out the chequebook and write down a big number. Such is modern football that we now don’t just look at players as fans but also at the financials that swim around football. It’s all well and good selling your women’s team but you can only do that once and if you’re punching above your weight to begin with it’s just going to end up creating problems because you’ll be expected to fork out to bring players in.

Blues are setting themselves up at every opportunity to make sure they’re within the FFP rules. They’ve significantly increased their revenue allowing them the opportunity to spend but only when they really need to, the proposition from the club itself, the ambition and vision, seems to be quite enough to convince these star quality players to join. I’m not suggesting that Blues aren’t offering higher wages as a result, but they’re doing it all with a vision of financial growth. The fact that we’ve not had to spend money yet is very savvy, especially after accusations that we brought the league last season (Although again Blues didn’t actually break the bank all that much last season).

Finally then, another positive to take from this busy week is that Blues have managed to bring these players in ahead of their pre-season training camp in Portugal. It gives the new guys time to bond with the existing squad, which is always important, but it also gives Davies more time to fully get to know the new players themselves.

I always feel it’s not great when players are brought in and the season has already started, it leaves them a bit on the back foot and when a team starts well it can even disrupt progress. Getting the players to bed in now gives a chance to hit the ground running when we open the league on 8th August, looking to extend our unbeaten home record into this season.