Birmingham City failed to heed 2022 Hull City warning: View | OneFootball

Birmingham made the same mistake as Hull, with both making bad managerial decisions, but the former ended up suffering more than the latter.

In the summer of 2023, Birmingham City were in a similar situation to the one Hull City were in at the start of 2022.

In January 2022, Acun Ilicali completed his purchase of Hull from the Allam family, who probably needed to sell following a mixed spell at the MKM Stadium.

The majority of the Tigers' fanbase saw this as a positive change, with part of the Allam's reign being marred by off-field turbulence.

There was even talk about a potential name change, which caused a lot of controversy.

With this in mind, Ilicali's reign looked set to be a more stable and less turbulent one.

Birmingham also had a change of ownership back in the summer of 2023, with Tom Wagner leading a consortium to purchase the Midlands side from Birmingham Sports Holdings (BSHL).

Many Blues fans were opposed to BSHL for much of their spell at St Andrew's, with the club failing to kick on and often battling relegation under their stewardship.

Communication was also poor during their time in charge - and it looked as though things could only get better when Wagner and Knighthead took over.

That sale has probably helped to secure Blues' long-term future, but both Birmingham and Hull made huge mistakes during the early stages of their time under their current owners.

Acun Ilicali and Tom Wagner made similar mistakes at Hull City and Birmingham City

When Ilicali arrived at Hull, there was a good feeling around the place, with the Turkish businessman being unveiled on a night when the Tigers secured a 2-0 home win against Blackburn Rovers.

He saw then-manager Grant McCann follow that up with an impressive away victory at promotion candidates AFC Bournemouth, but that didn't prevent Ilicali from axeing him after that game at the Vitality Stadium.

Shota Arveladze was his replacement, and although he managed to get off to a good start to life in Yorkshire with a win against Swansea City, he wasn't an upgrade on McCann.

McCann was sacked when the Tigers were 10 points clear of the drop zone - and they were 14 points clear when the 2021/22 season ended - with some underwhelming results keeping the club in the bottom half of the division.

With this in mind, some would argue that Arveladze's reign wasn't a bad one at that point, but a poor start to the following campaign saw him sacked in September 2022, with the Georgian leaving the Tigers in relegation danger.

During the early stages of the 2023/24 season, Birmingham had made an excellent start under John Eustace and managed to climb into the play-offs, but he was sacked and replaced with Wayne Rooney, who proved to be a disastrous appointment.

Blues slid down the table under Rooney, who was finally sacked in January 2024 following a defeat against Leeds United and a horrendous spell in charge.

Unfortunately, they didn't really recover from that torrid spell under the Manchester United legend.

Birmingham City suffered bigger consequences from new ownership's managerial decision

Hull were able to stabilise themselves after Arveladze's departure, bringing in Liam Rosenior as his successor.

Rosenior was a very shrewd appointment and his sacking in the off-season was rightly seen as very harsh.

However, the decision to replace McCann with Arveladze could have had very bad consequences, even though the former was seen by many fans as someone who was very replaceable.

Rocking the boat by sacking McCann wasn't worth it - and it didn't produce the results that Ilicali would have wanted.

Birmingham's decision to sack Eustace whilst they were in the promotion mix was an even more baffling decision.

Rooney had done a decent job at Derby County, but his CV wasn't impressive enough to warrant him coming in for a manager who was doing very well at St Andrew's at the time.

Rooney's appointment, among other factors, played a big part in Birmingham's relegation at the end of last season.

They are in the process of rebuilding now and could be a success under Chris Davies, but winning promotion from League One won't be easy.