Birmingham City will always be thankful Liverpool rejected their £8m bid | OneFootball

Birmingham City were close to paying above the odds for Liverpool's Dutch winger, Ryan Babel

Ryan Babel arrived at Liverpool from Ajax with plenty of promise, but despite making just shy of 70 caps for the Dutch national team, his club career was rather disappointing considering his talent and hype.

The winger cost the Reds £11.5 million as a 20-year-old back in 2007, after coming through the academy at Ajax and making his debut for the Dutch giants aged just 17.

His time at Liverpool coincided with the club battling in the Champions League places and for the title, and starts came irregularly under Rafa Benitez. Ultimately, that derailed his career, and he ended up turning into a little bit of a European journeyman, playing for eight more clubs until he eventually retired.

However, could Babel's career have been different if, instead of moving to Hoffenheim in January 2011, he had found himself at St Andrew's a year prior?

Liverpool actually rejected an £8 million bid for the then-23-year-old in January 2010 from Birmingham City, with Benitez saying that he wasn't for sale at the time. At Birmingham, he'd have been given plenty of game time for a club that had just come up from the Championship in May, whereas the winger made just nine Premier League starts at Anfield that season.

In the end, Babel never made as much of an impact elsewhere, and Liverpool might be frustrated that they were unable to make as much money for him as Birmingham was offering, accepting £6 million from Hoffenheim instead.

But for the Blues, it was a dodged bullet.

Ryan Babel's middling career post-Liverpool

Unfortunately, Babel struggled to settle anywhere he went post-Liverpool, failing to spend more than two years at a club until he found himself at Turkish side Besiktas in 2016 (and even then, he was only there for two and a half years).

Whilst he was a regular starter at Hoffenheim during his year and a half there, he was unhappy with the club's form, sitting mid-table in the Bundesliga, and threatened to quit the club towards the end of his only full year there.

His wish was granted, and he returned to Ajax at the end of that campaign for a year, before then spending time at Kasimpasa in Turkey, Al-Ain in the UAE and Deportivo La Coruna in Spain before the aforementioned move to Besiktas.

Although he did post some solid numbers for some of the clubs he spent short times at, such as scoring 14 and assisting 12 across two Süper Lig seasons for Kasimpasa, and netting four in 11 La Liga games at Deportivo, the fact that he spent so much time bouncing around makes it difficult to see where the success lies.

For Birmingham, their £8 million bid could have been seen as a very expensive mistake, especially given that the club were set to be relegated back to the Championship at the end of the following campaign.

If Babel was unhappy with the performances of a side that were finishing 11th in the top tier in Germany, it's easy to think that he'd have become unsettled immediately at St Andrew's in what would have been his first full season at the club, one that even a League Cup win might not have even helped.

Birmingham City have spent 14 years in the wilderness, but they'll be happy they swerved Ryan Babel deal

Ultimately, that relegation in 2011 resembles the last time Birmingham were in the Premier League. Say what you want about Babel's career, but he did remain at top-flight clubs all the way until his final year at Eyupspor in the Turkish second division.

Babel only spent a further five months playing in the Premier League in his career post-Liverpool, when he scored five and assisted four in 16 games for Fulham in 2019, which could prove that, if he did have regular game time in the division, he could have been a solid option out wide.

There was rarely any doubting of Babel's talent, but his inability to settle at clubs and serve up consistent performances throughout his career is why many believe the tricky wide-man ultimately fell short of truly realising potential.

Perhaps if he did get that game-time at Birmingham, the former Liverpool man would have been a household name in the Premier League, and the Blues may have even prolonged their stay in the top flight.

Ultimately, that's all ifs, buts and maybes, and with Babel's tenure at Fulham coming nearly a decade on from Birmingham's failed pursuit of him, there's no telling that he'd have been able to perform with the same maturity and class as he did at Craven Cottage.

Therefore, it's overall a positive thing that the Dutch international didn't end up at St Andrew's, and Birmingham fans will be hoping that, as and when they do end up back in the Premier League, their transfer strategies are a little better than they were in 2010.