Football eh! 53 days ago (at time of writing) I slumped into the depths of my sofa after we not only lost to Watford, but were outplayed, outclassed and seemingly out of ideas. It was a result that made me think that the hangover I was nursing actually wasn’t so bad and drove me to get the rum back out, so much for dry January!
Fast forward to the 23rd February 2026 and I am sitting on the same sofa (minus the rum) and I have a sense of optimism again, Blues have been nothing short of brilliant ever since (bar West Brom that didn’t happen); so what dear reader has changed? Is it Davies adapting his methods to the more competitive Championship? Maybe. Is it Jonathon Grounds new found lease of life as set-piece coach? (don’t look at LinkedIn Jonathon, that’s not your job advertised, honest) Well maybe not to that one! Is it us finally getting the recruitment right? Almost definitely.
And that’s what I’d like to discuss on this new edition of ‘Andrew’s Rants’; the recruitment.
January for me was one of Craig Gardner’s best windows since he has been at the club, he has had some success in other windows, bringing back Gray was an absolute coup and on paper the summer signings were shrewd and exciting; as were the signings we made in the previous two in league one (Stansfield, Cochrane and Iwata being the standouts) and the signing of Paik the January prior to relegation. However in the summer window it left us with quite an unbalanced side, all but two loan signings are still with us at time of writing with Patrick Roberts signing permanently after an excellent start of his Blues career. With January’s signings it appears he and Davies set out to right the wrongs of the summer, Kyogo has been replaced by Priske, we brought in a left back to finally give the injured Cochrane a chance to actually recover, we have signed a different kind of centre midfielder in Solis who looks like he has taken to Championship Football like a duck out of water, Panzo is showing signs of building a solid centre half partnership with Klarer, Osman is a clear upgrade on Koumas and Vicente is just a wonderful, skillful attacking threat. All in all it has been a very successful window, which has coincided with the upturn in form and the promotion bus has been taken out of Fox Hollies depot and is back on the road to the Premier League.
The recruitment at the club has often been derided as spending the money for the sake of it and most of the time on players who look like they have never seen a Football let alone play it, look at Trillion Trophy Asia’s first foray into the market, they went big on Jota, Dean, Colin, Jason Lowe (no, me either) and that was simply on deadline day, add in Marc Roberts, Cheick N’doye, David Stockdale, Jeremie Boga, Sam Gallagher, Issac Vassell (oh, what could have been) and even Craig Gardner himself, the outlay that summer was approximately £18 Million. They even broke our record fee that season in signing the seemingly brilliant Jota (spoilers he was not, and he left for Villa the next season), this was then followed by a another fairly heavy spending window, with Sunjic costing £6.3 Million as well as Blues’ first foray into the Spanish market with the signings of Gimenez, Villalba and Bela arriving alongside Dan Crowley and Gary Gardner. A smaller window then followed the next season when we signed Pederson for £2.5 Million, despite the EFL telling us it would get into trouble, which we did. The season after buoyed by the Jude money we splashed £8 million on Hogan, Halliovic, Mikel San Jose (what a bloke) Etheridge, Ivan Sanchez (can’t believe he left) Adam Clayton, George Friend, Sam Cosgrove, and Leko. I could go on, the next season was littered with free transfers like the marquee signing of Troy Deeney and the signing of Bacuna from Rangers. When you look at this outlay, you’d think we were a team who consistently threatened promotion and not the relegation battles we would become accustomed to. Che Adams and Jude Bellingham’s fees contributed to this, the fees they commanded meant we could spend as freely as we could back then, bar the first window. There are others I have missed but these are the ones that stand out, maybe buying Aneke from Charlton on a free, to then sell him back for an undisclosed fee might have been a touch of genius and that’s why he’s been omitted.
I am the first to moan about recruitment, but when you look back at what we have had previously it is always going to be a work in progress, January for me overshadows the previous ones because of the upturn in form, Gardner has done a lot of the club and I’m sure he will be criticised no matter what he does, he wasn’t there for the reckless nature of years gone by, has he been perfect? No, of course not but he didn’t sign Sunjic on a 5 year deal, nor did he decide that Brentford’s team were better than ours and basically financed their way to the Premier League. Have all of his signings worked out? No, again this isn’t solely down to him for every Klarer, Paik, Stansfield, even a Laird, there’s been a Willumson, Sampsted (not his fault, he was just there so WW had a pal), a Hansson, and even a Peacock-Farrell. He isn’t always going to get it right, Kyogo was a marquee signing in the summer, it hasn’t worked out for him, is that Craig’s fault? Not at all, he just hasn’t been the player that was at Celtic, we have got a shell of that player. Look at Dykes in that respect too, he is a fully fledged Scotland international (with a suspiciously good Aussie accent), he just didn’t work out, and sure he gave us moments, he just never suited our style of play.
There’s signs he is getting it right, all we can do now is sit back and get on the bus to the Premier League.
Keep Right On
Andrew