Birmingham City

When Birmingham began their Premiership adventure with defeats by Arsenal and Blackburn 
you could hear the sighs around the country that they would soon be back from whence 
they came. But those sceptics had reckoned without the managerial nouse of Steve Bruce 
and his mix of cast-offs, Nationwide League players and a fantastic team spirit not to 
mention Steve’s powers of persuasion in talking his mega-rich board into subsidising hefty 
wages to ‘buy’ another season after their first.

Bruce’s boldest move was signing French World Cup winner Christophe Dugarry, from 
Bordeaux, halfway through the season, with the team fairly comfortable in mid-table. But, 
before Dugarry made his January bow, in the 4–0 thrashing at Arsenal, Blues had dropped 
as far as 15th and some folk questioned the Frenchman’s aptitude for a relegation ‘dog-fight’.
Indeed it took a while for Dugarry to get going but once he did the wages that the manager 
had to ‘prise’ out of his directors paid handsome dividends.

With Dugarry’s flair, Robbie Savage’s bolshey belligerence, and the probing of Bryan Hughes 
and Paul Devlin Birmingham started to make progress. After consecutive defeats by Bolton, 
Manchester United and Chelsea, in February 2003, the turning point came with a massive 
win against Liverpool, which was followed by victory at Aston Villa. But the good work was 
undone by defeats to Manchester City and Spurs, either side of a win against West Brom 
and the team dropped to just above the relegation zone.

Then Dugarry grabbed centre stage. His first goal was the winner against Sunderland. His 
second goal, in successive matches, set up victory over Charlton and the second of his 
seven minute brace, taking his tally to four in three games, beat Southampton. Dugarry 
then made it four scoring games in a row with the first goal of a 3–0 success against ’Boro 
and Blues were comfortably 12th in the table. So comfortable that they could lose and draw 
in their last two fixtures secure in the knowledge that a difficult first top flight campaign 
had been successfully negotiated.

Birmingham’s second season was meritorious from the perspective that they spent much of 
the campaign in the top 10 and even flirted with fourth place with a very real chance that 
a Champions’ League place could be within reach. Indeed ‘Blues’ were fourth as early as 
October having taken 14 points from a possible 18 before their first defeat, by Manchester 
United. They stayed there through to November 2003 when they picked up just one point 
from 12, and two of their three defeats were to Arsenal and Liverpool. The turn of the year 
saw Bruce stabilising his side in ninth place despite the departure of Dugarry, improving 
back to sixth in March, Birmingham fell away in April to ninth before finishing their second 
Premiership campaign better than the first in 10th place.

Managers

Steve Bruce          December 2001–