Birmingham City backed to avoid Spurs transfer - Tom Wagner will eye 'bigger and better targets' | OneFootball

Birmingham City have rebuilding work to carry out in the summer, but FLW's Blues pundit doesn't believe that the Spurs forward is the right choice.

Following a disappointing season in the Championship, Birmingham City have work to do this summer on their first-team squad, but there's one striker who FLW's fan pundit doesn't fancy much up front for them next season.

Three wins and a draw from their last four matches may have nudged them up into the top half of the table, but there's little doubting that Birmingham City's 2025-26 season has been something of a disappointment.

Promotion from League One at the end of 2024-25 with a record-breaking 111 points brought with it a degree of optimism that the club might be able to secure a second successive promotion into the Premier League. But despite a reasonable start to the season, the Blues have failed to make much impression near the top of the table, with their latest upswing in form having come too late to guide them back towards a play-off spot.

All of this leaves the club in something of a position as flux as the end approaches. There's been considerable conjecture that manager Chris Davies might not survive beyond the end of this season, with Football League World exclusively revealing that the club are lining up Thomas Frank as his replacement in a hugely ambitious move.

But whoever the Birmingham manager is by the summer, there will be work to be done on a first-team squad which has not performed as hoped this season.

"Not for me" - Birmingham warned off Will Lankshear as an attacking option for next season

Having scored just 56 goals in 45 matches in the Championship going into their final round of fixtures, goalscoring has been a bit of an issue for Birmingham City this season, and one player who could be an option is Will Lankshear, who's been on loan this season at Oxford United from Tottenham Hotspur after having spent the second half of 2024-25 on loan at West Bromwich Albion.

But Football League World have spoken to our Birmingham fan pundit Jason Moore about Lankshear, and he isn't enthused by the idea: "Not for me. I've not been impressed that much by Lankshear, to be honest. If it's something the club wants to pursue then by all means go for it, but I think they're looking for bigger and better targets."

For one thing, Jason believes that Auguste Priske, who signed for the Blues from the Swedish club Djurgårdens IF for an undisclosed fee in the January transfer window but who has yet to score his first goal for the club, will come good: "I think Priske will come good. He was a case where if we didn't get him in January we weren't getting him at all because there were Premier League clubs sniffing around him. So Priske will come good, I've got absolutely every faith in that."

Our Blues pundit feels that his team's big issue hasn't so much been their strikers as the support they've been getting, and that the summer may see the club address that issue, which could alter Jay Stansfield's role next season: "And I think next season, Stansfield is a striker as well.

"I don't think he does this supporting striker role. I think he's only being forced to do that currently because our options in the number ten position are shocking. We brought in Fujimoto, who doesn't play, and I think Ducksch will be gone, so I think Stansfield will be a striker next season, and we'll go and get a couple of number tens to play in that position."

If Will Lankshear does end up at St Andrew's, he'll get Jason's support, but he doesn't believe that he is the right man for the job: "If Lankshear is who the club would want to pursue, I'd back the recruitment. Whoever comes in and wears that blue shirt, I'll back them until there's a reason to think 'you're not good enough, you've got to go.' I wouldn't personally be looking for then go for it, I'll back it, but if you're asking me right here right now, then I'd say not for me."

Will Lankshear has been a success at Oxford, despite his club's relegation

With relegation back to League One confirmed before the final weekend, this has been a far from successful season for Oxford United, but Will Lankshear is one of their players who will emerge from it with his reputation intact.

Lankshear has scored 11 goals in 43 League appearances for the Us this season, an excellent return for an attacking player in a struggling team, especially one having his first full season as a regular in a senior first team. But that form coupled with Oxford's relegation would appear to make the prospect of him staying at The Kassam Stadium for next season a fairly remote possibility.

With their own relegation potentially looming, it may well be that Spurs want to keep hold of the striker for next season, should they end up in the Championship. In that eventuality, it would certainly be useful for them to have players with experience of the division, but it seems likely that their status for next season will be undecided until the Premier League season ends on the 24th May.

And it's certainly true to say that Auguste Priske has not yet caught light for Birmingham since his January arrival at the club. Priske has made 16 appearances for the Blues since his arrival, eight of them starts, but has thus far failed to find the net, and his performances have not been particularly inspiring, either. Kanya Fujimoto, meanwhile, been limited to just five appearances from the bench all season following his arrival from the Portguese club Gil Vicente last summer.

Jay Stansfield and Marvin Ducksch have scored ten goals each in the Championship this season, but these figures underline that the Blues have been struggling a little in front of goal, and especially since the turn of the new year. They've failed to score more than two in a League game since their 3-2 win against Coventry City on the 4th January, a run of 18 matches.

Our Blues fan pundit believes that his club would be better off looking for playmakers over strikers, but finding "bigger and better targets" may prove a challenge. With plans for a new stadium to be open by 2030, there's no questioning the club's ambition.

But that ambition ran head-first into the reality of how difficult the Championship can be this season, and should a giant like Spurs fall at the end of this season things are unlikely to be any easier next time around. Whether it's strikers, playmakers or even a new manager that they need, Birmingham City will need to shake things up in the summer if they're to improve to the extent that they wish to next season.