Manchester City pay $9.9M, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Birmingham heard it as anything else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Birmingham this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad7 Jan 2041
Words at Birmingham training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Joseph Wright is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Blake Irow was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad24 Dec 2040
Words at Birmingham training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jay Stansfield is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
A 1‑0 win over Manchester City, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Birmingham know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 12 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.09 at 38, and nobody on the pitch was better.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Birmingham this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nobody at Birmingham will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
A 2‑2 draw with Burnley leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Squad19 Nov 2040
Joseph Wright falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
14 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Birmingham will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Birmingham have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.80 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Tyler Dibling was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 10 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Birmingham will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Birmingham this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
23 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
12 combined actions and 6.59. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
The words a physio says slowly. 23 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Edward Reid will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Birmingham the goodbyes have quietly begun.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Birmingham this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.