Birmingham City warned over potential Brighton swoop amid brutal Louie Barry comparison | OneFootball

The highly-rated Brighton winger shone on loan in League One for Bolton, but Birmingham City are being advised to steer clear of him.

Birmingham City are rebuilding ahead of a push towards a place in the Premier League, but one highly-rated winger who shone in League One last season may be a right-winger too many for them.

The key word over the course of the 2025-26 season at Birmingham City was 'ambition'. Following a record-breaking 111-point haul in League One at the end of the previous season, there had been hopes that the Blues could keep pushing for a second successive promotion and a return to the Premier League for the first time since 2011.

This, however, did not come to pass. Birmingham flirted with the Championship play-off places throughout much of 2025-26, but a run of one win in seven games during the run-in pushed them down to an eventual 10th-placed finish, nine points short of a shot at a place in the top-flight at the end of the season.

All of this leaves the Blues facing a summer rebuild that manager Chris Davies cannot afford to get wrong.

Expectations will be high at St. Andrew's next season, and a failure to hit the ground running in 2026-27 could cost him his job. And with a busy summer expected in the summer transfer window, Birmingham's name will be linked to a lot of players before the start of next season.

Birmingham City sent Louie Barry warning as Amario Cozier-Duberry transfer discussed

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One player who could be of interest to Birmingham is the winger Amario Cozier-Duberry, who earned a lot of praise in League One last season as Bolton fired their way to promotion, and the Championship could be his next step.

There has been a lot of speculation over Cozier-Duberry's future, so Football League World have spoken to our resident Blues fan pundit Jason Moore about whether his club should be in the mix for the services of the 21-year-old.

But Jason doesn't feel that this is a move that his club should be making, telling FLW: "Not for me.

"He could be absolutely fantastic, but I look at Louie Barry, who was absolutely superb in League One. I was screaming from the rooftops to go and get Barry, but he's been absolute pony since then. Granted he's had some injury issues, but he's not for me."

"I think we need to be looking higher than that. If we were going to be knowing that we were playing in the Championship and we didn't have the finances to compete, then sure, go for him, but if you've got the finances, use them and just get yourselves out the league, so not for me, go and get somebody else."

And our Blues fan pundit can't even see where Cozier-Duberry would fit into their squad, given their current personnel, though there is one Brighton player that he would like to see returning to St. Andrew's.

"As somebody coming in to play predominantly on the right, he'd probably be playing third fiddle, because Vicente is clearly going to be our first-choice right-winger, and then you've got Patrick Roberts," Jason added.

"So he's not for me. Go and get a proven Championship left-winger, and if we can, get Ibrahim Osman back."

Cozier-Duberry has huge potential, but Birmingham are already well-stocked for wingers

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If Birmingham City are to overlook Amario Cozier-Duberry this summer, it won't be on the basis of his form in League One for Bolton Wanderers last season.

The winger arrived from Brighton & Hove Albion last summer, and earned rave reviews at The Toughsheet Community Stadium, scoring eight goals and providing ten assists from 34 Championship appearances for Bolton, of which 30 were starts.

His season ended at Wembley, with his team beating Stockport County 4-1 to secure a return to the Championship following an absence of seven years.

But Birmingham are well-stocked for right-wingers. Carlos Vicente arrived from Deportivo Alaves at the end of the January transfer window, while Patrick Roberts, who'd been on a season-long loan from Sunderland, made his transfer to St Andrew's permanent at the end of the same window.

And the Louie Barry comparison is quite apt, if not a bit brutal. Barry has had successful loan stints recently with Stockport County in League One, albeit he has struggled with injuries, whereas when he went to both Hull City and Sheffield United, he struggled in the Championship - a bit like Cozier-Duberry did in 2024-25 at Blackburn.

The Blues may be successful, however, should they return to Brighton for Ibrahim Osman.

The Ghanaian winger may have missed out on a place in his country's World Cup squad this summer, but he had a successful loan at St Andrew's after becoming another winger to arrive at the club in the January window, having already had loan spells in the Netherlands with Feyenoord and in France with Auxerre.

His future remains unclear after having returned to The Amex at the end of 2025-26, but there has been talk that the Birmingham manager Chris Davies would welcome him back, and there's space for his return on the left-flank.

Amario Cozier-Duberry is clearly highly talented, but Birmingham City may feel that, with a season back in the Championship under their belts and expectations hitting stratospheric levels with the construction of a new, 62,000-capacity stadium progressing, their interests are best-served elsewhere as they plot a long-overdue return to the Premier League.