Football League World
·2 October 2024
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·2 October 2024
One player could have been on the opposite side at St Andrew's on Tuesday
Birmingham City continued their excellent start to the 2024/25 League One season on Tuesday night.
A 1-0 victory over Huddersfield Town - who like them had been relegated from the Championship at the end of the previous campaign - saw the Blues make it seven straight league wins.
That also means they remain unbeaten in the league this season, and leaves them top of the third-tier table, five points clear of second place Wrexham, with a game in hand.
As a result, the belief they can indeed secure an immediate return to the Championship will surely be growing at St Andrew's, even at this early stage of the campaign.
Once again on Tuesday though, there was man in particular who Birmingham had to thank for helping them to another important result.
In what was a busy summer transfer window at St Andrew's, one of those who made an eye-catching move to the Midlands, was Alfie May.
The striker joined from Charlton Athletic after another prolific season in League One, in which he claimed the division's Golden Boot award.
Since linking up with Birmingham, May has continued to score goals at this level, and did so again in this clash with Huddersfield.
After inexplicably missing one huge chance at point blanc range in the first half, the striker would make amends just past hour-mark, when he turned home Jay Stansfield's cut-back inside the area.
In doing, so May scored his fifth goal in eight league games for Birmingham so far this season, to secure a win that maintains their storming start to the campaign.
However, it could be argued that the fact it was he who did that, will have made this defeat more frustrating then for those of a Huddersfield Town persuasion.
Given they too will have their sights set on promotion this season, losing to a potential rivals for a place in the Championship in the Blues is going to be disappointing for the Terriers.
the fact it was May who got the goal though, will only add to the sense of what might have been in this match, and this season, for the Yorkshire club.
Back in the summer transfer window, Huddersfield themselves were reported to have had bids for the striker rejected by Charlton.
Indeed, speaking after Tuesday's game, May himself even admitted that he had been "very close" to joining the Terriers while the market was open.
As a result, in that defeat to Birmingham, Michael Duff's side found themselves dropping points to a player who could have been a potential asset to their own promotion push, as they saw on Tuesday.
Therefore, had things been different and he had moved to Huddersfield rather than the Blues in the summer, he could well have been helping the other side to victory at St Andrew's this week.
That would have been a major coup for the Terriers in their promotion push. As it is though, they have now lost their last four consecutive games.
During that run, they have slipped to 15th in the League One table, ten points adrift of Birmingham at the summit of the third-tier.
If they had been able to call upon the goalscoring talents of May in that period, there is a chance they would have picked up more positive results to keep them closer to the promotion places.
As a result, it seems that not only did this trip to Birmingham deliver another damaging defeat to Huddersfield