Martin Grainger left unhappy at Birmingham City situation - "Brady charged me £6,800 for the lights & stewards" | OneFootball

Martin Grainger spent 10 years playing at Birmingham City

Martin Grainger has shed more light on his 2005 Birmingham City testimonial match, revealing that he was charged "just under £7,000" to hold the game at St Andrew's.

The club was under the ownership of David Gold and David Sullivan, who sold their shares in Birmingham back in 2009, ending a 12-year stint as owners.

However, their relationship with the Blues fans was incredibly complex, and decisions like these didn't help to get them back onside.

After a tough start to life at Birmingham, Grainger soon became a popular figure and was part of the Blues side that, in the 2001/02 season, earned promotion to the Premier League for the first time since its inception a decade earlier.

He didn't play much for the Blues in the top-flight, but was well-liked enough that the Birmingham fans welcomed the idea of a testimonial towards the twilight of his career, once he'd passed ten years at the club.

Unfortunately, though, Grainger's testimonial wasn't handled well at all, and it's still something that irks the former defender twenty years on.

Martin Grainger was forced to pay for his own testimonial

Speaking on the B2B Made in Brum podcast, Grainger went into more detail about how his testimonial panned out in the middle of an international window, whilst the side were embroiled in a relegation battle, rather than in a feel-good pre-season match, as is usually the case.

"I went to meet Karen, and she said that the fans wanted me to have a testimonial, but she said that I had to do it myself, the club weren't going to help me," he recalled.

"I was given an international fortnight in February, I think it was, we were second-bottom in the Premier League.

"I was thankful for the 4,000 who turned up, but it should have been a pre-season game and it should have been full — I never really got a proper chance to say goodbye."

To make matters worse, not only were Birmingham's higher-ups against helping the popular defender plan his testimonial, but Grainger was forced to pay for it, too. Gold and Sullivan would go on to purchase West Ham for £105 million a few years later, so a couple of thousand pounds would have gone amiss for the pair, you'd expect.

"At the end of it all, I got a bill of just under £7,000 to play in the ground; for the lights, staff, stewards...I was thinking 'you're [Gold and Sullivan] collectively worth over £1 billion," Grainger continued.

"So I wrote a cheque for that, and I thought 'thank you.' We got you promoted to the Premier League, which earned you all that money, and you still wanted to charge me to play where I called home for 10 years."

Birmingham City fans still praise Martin Grainger, and the feelings are reciprocated

Despite the sour taste that his testimonial left in Grainger's mouth, he still left Birmingham with an adoration for the fanbase — saying later in the podcast that he "didn't play for the football club, he played for the fans."

Everyone who played a part in the Blues side who secured Premier League promotion in 2001 is well-remembered at St Andrew's, but Grainger, especially, who became a cult hero with his no-nonsense style and ability to pop up with plenty of goals from the back.

His final appearance for the club actually saw him net, too, in a 2-1 defeat against Manchester United.

You get the feeling that, if things were done differently, both Grainger and the Birmingham fanbase would have jumped at the opportunity to do the testimonial right. Unfortunately, the powers that be stopped any of that from happening.