Birmingham City to leave St Andrew's for new 62,000 seater stadium - 'weird change' claim made | OneFootball

Birmingham City are set to leave their home of almost 120 years, and this will mean a change of routine for Blues fans.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

Birmingham City intend to leave their home of 119 years by 2030, but there will be things about St Andrew's that fans will miss.

Things are set to change very rapidly indeed for Birmingham City.

Plans are in place to build a 'Sports Quarter' which will be unlike anything built before in this country, a £3 billion sports hub with a 62,000-capacity stadium as its centrepiece.

Blues fans, then, have a lot to look forward to. This project will transform the club, and has the potential to make Birmingham one of the powerhouses of football in England.

But none of this means that there won't be plenty of reasons to miss their current home, St Andrew's. It's been the home of Birmingham City since 1906, so it's the only home ground that the club's fans can remember.

"I'm going to miss the routine" - Birmingham move will mean a change to the match-day experience for Blues fans

Football League World have spoken to our resident Birmingham fan pundit Jason Moore about the move, asking him to explain what he'll miss most about St Andrew's once the old place has gone. "It might seem like a strange one, but for me I think I'm going to miss the routine of what St Andrew's is like", he told us.

Jason has a very strict routine for attending Birmingham home matches: "For me, I've got a very structured way of how I watch football at the Blues. I'll go to the toilet at the same time, I'll get the same drink and the same pie every time, I'll park in the exact same place, and I'll get to the game at the same time every single week. I think the fact that all that is changing will be a weird change for a lot of fans, because we've been there for years. It's home."

And once he's at the ground, it's the proximity of his seat to the pitch that he'll miss the most: "I also think I'll miss being so close to the pitch. That's really one thing that we keep is being close to the pitch. I don't want to be far away from the pitch, we're literally right on the pitch currently at St Andrew's. Those will be the two things I miss. The routine and being so close to the pitch."

St Andrew's has had more than its fair share of bad luck over the years

Jason might think that his opinion on this is "a bit of a strange one", but in reality his reaction to such a big change to his match-day routine is completely understandable. Fans are creatures of habit, and there's no-one alive who can remember Birmingham City having played their home matches anywhere else on a permanent basis.

The Blues moved into St Andrew's in 1906. Having been formed in 1875, they were relatively nomadic for the first couple of years of their existence before moving into a ground of their own at Muntz Street in 1877.

The club stayed there - with its original capacity of 10,000 increased to 30,000 - until Boxing Day 1906, by which time St Andrew's was ready to use. It was demolished the following year.

The ground suffered its fair share of bad luck over the years. During the Second World War, the ground's Railway End was so badly damaged by bombing that the club had to move out for a while, while an accidental fire in the Main Stand destroyed that a few months later.

In May 1985, on the same day as the Bradford Fire, 15-year-old Ian Hambridge, who was attending his first Birmingham match, was killed during a riot at a match against Leeds United at which a wall collapsed. The ground was substantially redeveloped during the 1990s.

A curse that was said to be held over the ground was finally lifted in 2016, but for all this ill-fortune football grounds aren't called "home" for no reason. The familiarity of the Saturday afternoon ritual of going to the match becomes deeply-ingrained into fans, and Jason won't be the only Blues fan who may miss aspects of that, even if the construction of this vast new stadium does open up a new vista of possibilities for his club.