Welcome Back, Gary

Gary Rowett returns to Birmingham City to salvage a campaign that cannot be repeated again

It seems that everybody has an idea of what they were doing the day Bournemouth humiliated a Malcolm Crosby-led Birmingham City side at St.Andrews on 25th October 2014.

For most, it’s remembering which pub they ended up in by half-time, or the minute they left the ground.

Me?

I was in Blackpool.

It was a day trip planned for a short while. I don’t remember why, but I hadn’t checked my phone for a period owing to an activity we were doing. It was around 5 o’clock when we got out and I immediately pulled out my phone to check the score.

I burst out laughing. Double checked I had seen what I had seen then laughed again.

Surely not?

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That particularly period of Blues drama coincided with a weird time in my personal life.

I was 20 at the time and not in a great place, only I didn’t understand that until much later. I quit my job working for my Dad – in fairness, I wasn’t cut out for factory work and still come out in sweats at the thought of welding – travelled to Wolves away, started a new job, missed Watford away having rejected a ticket (there were reasons for this that I feel daft for looking back) and ended a year or so long relationship.

People that don’t follow football tend not to understand the escapism that comes with it. My personal wellbeing didn’t improve for some time after those events but football was an escape.

I fell in love with Gary Rowett’s Birmingham City. I wasn’t a season ticket holder at the time but barely missed another game that season and picked one up the following campaign. Young and impressionable, I enjoyed donning a cheap version of the jumper and tie combo.

For all the chaos off the pitch, which I cared little to learn more about at the time, the football team were good. For two years, I was conned into believing better times were around the corner as we competed for a spot in the top six.

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It’s less spoken about than Bournemouth, but I suspect many fans remember where they were when they found out Rowett had lost his job. It was a shock.

I was at work. My Marketing Director said “Gary Rowett has been sacked Ryan” and I thought it was a question, so I responded saying “no, why?” He asked me to look at his screen and I just didn’t believe what I was reading was real, to the point that I returned to my own desk and loaded up the same article.

Surely not? We’ve just won and are still in the race for the top six.

I was coming up to my 23rd birthday at that point. Far more naive than the 2024 version of myself. I had absolutely no idea this was happening and it rocked me.

I can accept the football wasn’t always perfect. In fact, it was getting progressively poorer. That final season saw us continuing to push high up the table but with a left-hand side of David Davis and Jonathan Grounds most weeks and a front two of Clayton Donaldson and Lukas Jutkiewicz.

But I still loved Rowett. He had taken us from the depths of the division and a desperate situation, got us by with little money to spend and it felt like we were one big moment away from a top six finish under his stewardship. And then he was sacked.

The stories came out of the woodwork and it’s unsurprisingly different on both sides. Rowett says he wanted contracts for his team and start the gradual build by championing those already at the club. The club / owners say Rowett was touting himself for other job to leverage more money.

Despite all that, he remains my second favourite Birmingham City manager ever, behind John Eustace. Right manager. Right time. It just felt like he understood the assignment and dragged everybody with him until the end.

Whatever happened behind closed doors between Rowett and the former owners has probably happened at every club up and down the country yet it felt rarer back in 2014 when less of this stuff was reported on. Many haven’t forgiven him for his actions.

These days, we understand more about the business of football. It’s a world in which everybody is in it for themselves, loyalty is rare and the business is murky. You just hope the decisions at your club are made with less haste and more business sense.

Strong football and business minds have often been lacking at St.Andrews unfortunately and the fact that Gary Rowett could leave Blues with our highest league finish since his last full season in charge in 2016 despite being the sixth man to manage a game this season speaks volumes of what has followed his departure.

Everything points to that changing under Tom Wagner and his team. The football was always likely to be the last piece of the jigsaw.

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I’m 30 now. A bit older. Hopefully a bit wiser. I have a long-term partner. I have kids. I have a good job. I’m living out some lifelong dreams.

Gary Rowett returns.

I’m aware of the reality of the situation. We’re in a perilous position. Tony Mowbray has decided to step aside for the campaign to focus on his health. Mark Venus has taken on a heavy toll. The club needs a figurehead and Rowett is out of work. Rowett gets an opportunity to earn some money – I’d be surprised if there isn’t a fat bonus awaiting him if he achieves survival – and put his name back on the map having left Millwall earlier in the campaign.

It’s transactional and hopefully all parties win. We can all shake hands, Rowett gets a nice new job and we move forward as a club.

And yet, when Rowett says he wouldn’t have done this for any old club, I can’t help but believe him. That naivety lives within me still. I want to believe him. I want to believe that our relationship was better than any other he has had in football and if anybody else called for a quick fix, he’d have turned it down.

I know football doesn’t work like that. I know he probably would have helped out somewhere if the money was right. But I still believe him. He just got it.

I guess this is what the club are banking on too. It’s what Rowett will be banking on. Uniting people, from those on the pitch and behind the scenes to those in the stands, just enough to pick up just enough points to avoid the drop.

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I’ve been dead against the idea of an interim manager. Or head coach. Or consultant. Or whatever Rowett is employed as for eight games.

I should probably check the announcement again.

It felt disrespectful to Tony Mowbray and Mark Venus. It also felt like any decision would be another panicked attempt to avoid the fate we have avoided for so many years.

It’s a difficult subject to write about. We all want clarity because we want to know what the club can do to improve our ever decreasing chances of survival but Tony Mowbray’s health is without doubt the most important thing.

All we knew was that there was a 6-8 week time frame for Mowbray’s return. That meant him returning somewhere between QPR and Coventry at home. For the sake of 1-5 matches, was it worth a desperate attempt to bring in yet another new voice and tweaks to the style only for Mowbray to return for the final couple of games and go back to doing things his way? It’s just messy. And felt like a slap in the face of Venus, let alone Mowbray.

It’s much easier to get behind the decision to appoint an interim following the club’s statement. Tony Mowbray was evidently involved in the process. Clarity was provided with the timeline. Wagner and Garry Cook spoke for the clubs decision making. The club leaders have communicated, put egos aside and made one big final decision to keep us in the second tier.

It’s a shame how things have gone since the arrival of Mowbray. It was never going to be plain sailing but he quickly worked out which players he could trust, found a set up that suited them and we played with some confidence. Sure, results weren’t perfect, but it felt like we were building towards having some kind of identity again.

We haven’t really done too much different under Venus. The difference has been that presence, leadership and sense of direction on the side. We have probably seen why Mowbray has survived so long in a game that spits up and chews managers out.

He doesn’t always get it right but he clearly has a sense for what a game needs. He wasn’t afraid to put his beliefs aside to go 5-4-1 against Stoke and see out the result. He wasn’t afraid to risk losing a level game by going for it with bold subs against Blackburn and it paid off. It’s an almost intangible quality to sense what his team needs, what the crowd is feeling and who can step off the bench behind him to provide it.

Under Venus, it was less the starting XI’s or attempts to play a certain way and more the management of the game that became an issue. It felt like there was a lack of accountability. A lack of clarity. We lost winnable games and fell further into the mire. Nobody stood up on the pitch and few felt confident those off it would help. Fans, players and management all looking towards somebody to stand up and be counted but many were shrinking or shifting the blame elsewhere as the pressure honed in.

We’ll never know what conversations took place and I wouldn’t want to speculate. All we know is that the last few weeks can’t have been easy for Mowbray or Venus and if they have both agreed it’s better for them to step aside for the rest of the campaign and helped put plans in place to navigate the road ahead in conjunction with the board, credit to them.

While business continues as normal, Tony Mowbray’s health is unquestionably a bigger priority than what happens on the pitch.

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In Rowett, we have somebody pretty ideal for this scenario.

He knows the club and the division. He’s not pretentious and will focus on organisation & a clear pattern. He’ll fully believe he’s the best man for the job and that confidence will hopefully rub off on others. He’s a good communicator and will use every tool at his disposal to get people on board and squeeze whatever support he can get out of people.

He has a fantastic number of options. Even with doubts over the fitness of Marc Roberts, Krystian Bielik, Oliver Burke, Siriki Dembele, Keshi Anderson, Alex Pritchard and Lukas Jutkiewicz, we still have 20 or so players that have played first-team football this season. The squad is so big that excuses really aren’t valid as far as options for positions are concerned.

The biggest question remains about leadership. Part of the reason Rowett has returned is to provide some leadership. Every club needs a leader in the dugout but the quality of leadership in the dressing room and on the pitch is as important as ever to drive standards and let management lead in different ways. Blues let the likes of Deeney, Friend and Dean in the summer while Long was let go in January. That leaves the experienced men in the dressing room as Ruddy, Roberts, Gardner, Pritchard, Jutkiewicz and Hogan. Sanderson is Team Captain while Laird, Bielik and Sunjic have also been looked towards as leaders at times.

Roberts, Jutkiewicz and Bielik are likely out for the foreseeable, there is no timeline on Pritchard while Gardner and Hogan have spent much of the season with splinters in their backside, if selected at all. Rowett has a job working out which players he can rely on each department, get onto them over the next couple of weeks and build off that structure. We all recall the roles Kuszczak, Morrison and Donaldson played, and they had a lot of support around them too given the experience and knowhow of the squad.

The other consideration is the contracts. Of the 10 players mentioned above as potential leaders, only four are contracted beyond the end of the campaign. We are expecting around 12-15 of the current squad to depart in the summer. Rowett has to tap into whatever he can to motivate players that know their contract, or time at Birmingham City, is almost up.

The midfield is a big question ahead of his first game too. Andre Dozzell is unavailable due to the terms of his loan deal from QPR. Jordan James will be involved in an emotional couple of games for Wales in the middle of the park. Paik Seung-Ho plays away in Thailand on Tuesday while Juninho Bacuna is part of a training camp in Turkey with Curaçao, playing against Hull City and Antalyaspor. That leaves Ivan Sunjic and Gary Gardner, who has played less than 700 minutes of competitive football in almost two years, as players to have a full window of training under Rowett. And with a game on Monday to think about, one at home in front of an expectant crowd, it remains to be seen what decisions Rowett makes.

My belief is that he will simplify things. We’ll play when we can play but fewer risks will be taken. It’s less likely to be man for man, with us dropping off to stay tight and organised. We’re likely to play with more width than through the centre of the pitch.

We’ve played with a back four all season and now isn’t the time to complicate things. Sanderson likely returns to provide a physical presence, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Marc Roberts start when fit. The key decision is probably whether Laird or Drameh play right-back, albeit Rowett may surprise us by playing Drameh or Buchanan at centre-half with the latter having excelled there when called upon.

The base of midfield will be tighter and likely to see less of the ball, particularly in receipt from the centre-backs. I’m expecting Sunjic and one other in there, likely James or Dozzell. The 10 has always been important for Rowett, offering control in the final third so I anticipate Miyoshi, Pritchard or Paik in there. That frees up Bacuna, Dembele, Anderson, Hall, Burke, Stansfield, Hogan and Roberts to battle it out for the final three spots, offering pace and / or directness in the final third.

Exactly who starts remains to be seen. Everything I’ve just said could be totally wrong. So long as the decisions made create a team on the pitch that looks and feels like an organised unit capable of scoring a goal and keeping them out at the other end.

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So how does this all pan out? I really don’t know.

I can only go with the feeling inside of me which has felt resignation since that defeat and performance against Middlesbrough. Expectation has gone. I enjoyed the performance against Watford and was happy with the fight shown, but the result was the same as we slipped closer to the relegation zone.

There’s little denying that Rowett is a safer bet on paper and he should help secure the 8/9 points we probably need to avoid the worst possible fate.

But he’s taking on a group that has endured far too much change. Overhaul of playing staff. Managers and interims. Playing styles. Positions. Training ground. Leaders. Playing status. And now we’re throwing the dice one last time, opting for one more big change in the hope that it inspires one final turn in form and keeps us in the division.

While there has been some misfortune along the way, the summer debrief will be an important one to ensure we never have a season quite like this again. The final big contracts from the TTA era will end, leaving us with a fairly clean slate to build upon. The current recruitment team will have been in place for over a year. Key parties need to work together to create structure, identity and balance to allow the football team to move as far forward on the pitch as Wagner, Cook, Dale and others have moved it off the pitch.

All that is for another discussion. There are too many variables and unknown to go through that at present.

For now, it’s time for the fanbase to unite behind the latest man in the dugout, a man loathed by some, who hurt others and remains liked or even loved by the rest.