Lincoln City had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Southampton, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Andrei Coubiş and Lincoln City agree another 4 years.
Lincoln City have made the call to Liverpool. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Lincoln City, and both men came out saying it was fine.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Plymouth Argyle in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Carlos Vicente 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.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
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.
The phone has started ringing about Lee Buchanan again, and this time the name on the line is Lincoln City. Birmingham are listening politely and promising nothing.
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Squad3 Aug 2026
8 new faces, and Birmingham are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
In brief
Transfer targetsA loan move for Chris Rigg is in the works
Tanto Olaofe and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Lincoln City have made the call to Southampton. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
A strip of cloth that decides nothing on the pitch and tells the dressing room whose opinion counts. The manager has made a statement without making one.