Why Jota actually signed for Birmingham City and not Middlesbrough | OneFootball

Blues' only transfer window under Harry Redknapp proved to be one of sheer chaos

Birmingham City's ownership fortunes have certainly been transformed since Tom Wagner's well-documented takeover through Knighthead Capital Management in July 2023, but it wasn't too long ago that the West Midlands club were full of crisis.

After suffering relegation from the Premier League in May 2011, Blues began a period of stagnation in the Championship, only coming close to regaining their top-flight status in 2011/12 in what was Chris Hughton's only season at St. Andrew's @ Knighthead Park.

Although Gary Rowett would, eventually, provide some form of on-pitch stability after Lee Clark's spell of mixed managerial fortunes, those feats came flying out of the window in 2016 when Trillion Trophy Asia took control of the club, swiftly replacing the experienced boss with Gianfranco Zola.

A dire run of form under the Italian then saw the owners act and replace him with Harry Redknapp, who would eventually become permanent manager in May 2017 after winning two of the club's final three Championship matches beforehand to ensure survival.

Given Redknapp's prior status in the game, much was expected of Blues in the 2017/18 season, especially with it being the first full campaign under Trillion Trophy Asia's ownership.

In truth, though, it couldn't have gone much worse or sounded more chaotic, even years later, with former Blues centre-back and captain, Harlee Dean, revealing how the high-profile transfer of his former Brentford teammate, Jota, late in the summer transfer window of 2017, came to fruition.

During the aforementioned summer window, Redknapp completely transformed his squad, acquiring 14 new players in a bid to help Blues push up the Championship table.

After signing Dean for a reported £2.2m from the West London outfit the day beforehand, the experienced boss then completed a triple raid from Griffin Park with the Deadline Day signings of Maxime Colin and Jota, with the latter becoming a club-record £6m addition at the time.

Having lit up the Championship stage many times for the Bees, it felt like a major coup for the West Midlands side to land his signature ahead of Middlesbrough and Hull City, who had been relegated from the Premier League the previous season.

The Spaniard went on to divide opinion in B9, though, and after revealing how chaotic his own arrival at St. Andrew's was, Dean added these words about the addition of his long-time teammate.

"The next day (after I signed) we went in for training, and it just so happened that my father-in-law knew someone down south who Harry is really close with," Dean told the Made in Brum podcast.

"He's come up to me and said, 'I didn't realise you knew Jimmy Tibbs', and put his arm around me and we're talking on the way back in from training.

"He's got me (effectively) in a headlock and gone, 'is there anyone else from Brentford we should go for?', as he obviously didn't know.

"There was me, Jota and Maxime, who had played on the right side for probably two years together, and we knew each others game. But, we knew Brentford's game with each other instead of Birmingham's game with each other, which was completely different and we didn't take that into account," he admitted.

"I was like 'them two, if you can get them, you'll have the best right-back in the league and, in my opinion, the best winger in the league' at that time," Dean stated.

"Max (Colin) has then rung me and Jota was on his way up to Middlesbrough to sign for Garry Monk, then Birmingham came in and he was here.

"You can thank me for Max, because he was proper. Jota was a top player, but he just didn't produce at Birmingham," he claimed. "But, the football we played didn't really help them.

"It was a shame with Jota because I knew how good he was, and I'd seen him do things at Brentford that only a Spanish player would do. It just never really happened for him at Birmingham."

After his move to St. Andrew's, Jota only played 170 minutes under Redknapp before his dismissal just eight matches into the season, with it taking until February 2018 for the winger to produce his first goals for the club.

The Spaniard's output did slightly improve when Monk, who wanted him at the Riverside Stadium, was appointed as Blues boss in March 2018, but he would only accumulate a total of eight goals and 11 assists in 75 overall appearances for the club.

Having failed to justify his club-record price tag, Jota then made the controversial move across the Second City to Aston Villa for only £4m in the summer of 2019, reuniting with his ex-Brentford boss, Dean Smith in the process.

However, he failed to have any kind of impact in B6, scoring once and posting two assists in just 16 appearances before departing the club by mutual consent in October 2020.

After retiring in October 2022, it has been well-documented that the Spaniard is a self-made billionaire, having founded agricultural technology firm, Groinn, with the company reportedly valued at £3bn, as of 2025.