When championship transfers get done as blues wait for breakthrough

Birmingham City are preparing for their immediate return to the Championship, which will be a new experience for triumphant boss Chris Davies, who guided Blues back to the second tier at the

first time of asking - and with record breakingly minimal fuss. The foundations are in place; the likes of Jay Stansfield, Tomoki Iwata and Christophe Klarer proved to be game changing for

Blues last summer and, while the business isn't likely to be quite as substantial as last year's, there is still work to do for Craig Gardner. Blues won't be returning to the

Championship with the intention of looking over their shoulders all season; they were relegated in 2024 following a series of campaigns in which they circled the plughole before slipping

into League One. This time, they return with a winning mentality and aims to finish much, much higher up the table. Only six signings have been announced so far across the division,

including three loan deals made permanent (Jacob Wright to Norwich, Gustavo Puerto to Hull, Alfons Sampsted to Blues). The other three are free agents; Hector Kyprianou to Watford and Daniel

Iversen and Jordan Thompson to Preston. Iversen’s deal is believed to have been sorted for a couple of months. In other words, it is quiet. The window doesn’t officially open until Sunday,

June 1. It will close again on Tuesday, June 10 because of the Club World Cup and then re-open on Monday, June 16 until deadline day on Monday, September 1. It is expected to get a little

bit more lively next week – Blues will be working hard behind the scenes at their Henley-in-Arden base – but do not expect an avalanche of deals across the division before players start

returning for pre-season training towards the end of the month. This time last year, there were nine deals confirmed in the Championship waiting to be officially processed when the window

opened on June 14 - but then there were only 21 more before the start of July. Ninety per cent of all signings in the Championship were announced after July 1. In fact, 50 per cent of deals

were done after August 1, nearly 40 per cent were done after the first game of the season on August 10 and 25 per cent in the last two days of the window. For context, Blues - who signed 17

players last summer - didn't sign their first, Ryan Allsop from Hull City, until the 18 of June. They then signed Bailey Peacock-Farrell from Burnley 12 days later. July and,

particularly, August were far more fruitful when Blues signed six and nine players respectively in those months. Phil Parkinson, preparing for Blues' fellow promoted side Wrexham’s

return to this level for the first time in 43 years, probably has more work to do than most but he has been preaching patience. He told the Wrexham Leader: “I know the fans will be eagerly

anticipating some signings and things like that but as we know in the past, we have always tried to be patient and bring in the players we feel are right for the club. “What I have noticed

the last three years the Tuesday after the Bank Holiday, the phone calls just go to a different level. Everybody has been waiting for the play-offs to finish, the Premier League finished

that weekend and now the recruitment level cranks up to a certain degree. “As we have always done at this stage of the season, we have some initial meetings with players and agents but it is

still very early in the summer. We are in dialogue with clubs all the time but that's just an ongoing process.” HOW MANY PLAYERS DO BLUES NEED THIS SUMMER? TELL US HERE