Harry Redknapp’s £11m Birmingham City spree: Were Blues robbed blind? | OneFootball

Harry Redknapp's stay at St Andrew's was brief but eventful, featuring a triple-raid on one club at the end of the 2017 summer transfer window.

Harry Redknapp's spell at Birmingham City was brief but fairly eventful, with some frantic transfer activity on the final day of that summer's transfer window which all involved one club.

Following their relegation into the Championship from the Premier League in 2011, Birmingham City didn't find life particularly easy. Over successive seasons, they failed to impose themselves at the top end of the table, and the 2013-14 season ended with them only avoiding relegation on goal difference.

By the closing stages of the 2016-17 season, they were in danger of getting relegated again. They started the season with Gary Rowett in charge of the team, but Rowett was sacked on the 14th December, even though the team were in 7th place in the table and just a point short of a play-off place.

It didn't take long for the Blues to make a choice over who should replace Rowett in the St Andrew's hot-seat. Gianfranco Zola was announced as their new manager the following day, but things couldn't have gone much worse for them under the former Watford and West Ham boss.

Birmingham lost their first match under Zola, 2-1 at home to Brighton, a couple of days after Zola's appointment, and this rather set the tone for his brief but unhappy spell in the West Midlands. Over the course of a little under five months, he was charge of the team for 22 matches, but only won four of them, and by the time he resigned on the 17th April the Blues were in 20th place in the table and just three points above the relegation places at the foot of the division with three games left to play.

Harry Redknapp was a surprising choice as the new Birmingham City manager in 2017

The slightly surprising choice of replacement for Zola was Harry Redknapp. It had been two years since he'd last managed in England, at Queens Park Rangers, with only a brief as the manager of the Jordan national team in the intervening time, and he'd turned 70 years of age at the start of the previous month.

Redknapp was confirmed the day after Zola's departure nevertheless, and over the last three games of the season he did enough. Birmingham lost his first game in charge, a fiercely-contested derby match with Aston Villa, by a goal to nil, but wins against Huddersfield Town and Bristol City in their final two games of the season were enough to ensure their Championship status for another year.

The manager's contract at St Andrew's had been a short-term one until the end of the season, but five days after their final League match it was confirmed that Redknapp had signed a new deal which would keep him at Birmingham for 2017-18. With all of that complete, the manager went off into the transfer market to rebuild his team for the start of the start of the new season.

Birmingham's triple-swoop on Brentford included a gamble that went wrong for the Blues

Brentford had just completed their third consecutive season in the Championship in 2016-17, finishing in 10th place in the table, but Birmingham City didn't come calling until the very end of the transfer window, by which time the new season was already well underway.

The first was Harlee Dean, who'd been with Brentford for the previous six years, had made almost 250 appearances for them, and had ended up as their captain, though this had been stripped from him for the start of the 2017-18 season because of a refusal to sign a new contract with the club. He arrived on the 30th August for £2.2 million.

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But the next day, a further two Bees players followed Dean. Maxime Colin arrived from Griffin Park for a £3 million fee, but it was the arrival of the winger Jota that was more likely to excite Blues fans.

The fee was undisclosed, although Birmingham did reveal that it was more than the £6 million club record fee that they'd paid for Nikola Zigic seven years earlier.

But barely a couple of weeks after all this money had been spent, Harry Redknapp was on his way out of St Andrew's. Birmingham City had a disastrous start to the season, taking just four points from their first eight matches, and when a 3-1 home defeat to Preston North End on the 16th September marked their fifth defeat in a row, he was sacked with the team one place off the bottom of the table.

Redknapp was replaced by Steve Cotterill at the start of the following month, but he could only hold onto the position for five months before being replaced by Gary Monk, and five wins from their last nine games kept them in the Championship for another team.

Harlee Dean and Maxime Colin were successful signings for Birmingham City. Dean stayed at St Andrew's for six years before leaving to sign for Reading. Colin also stayed at St Andrew's for six years and ran up over 250 appearances for them before returning to France to sign for Metz.

But Jota's experience at St Andrew's was somewhat different to the other two. He fell out of favour under Cotterill, but was revitalised under Monk. When Birmingham beat Ipswich Town 1-0 at the end of March 2018 to stay just above the relegation places, the BBC's report on the match confirmed that, "The most noticeable difference since Monk's appointment has been the greater influence of Spanish forward Jota, who struggled for goals following his club-record move from Brentford in August." Birmingham ended the 2017-18 season in 19th place in the Championship for a second season in a row, five points above the relegation places.

The following season was a little better for Jota, if not perfect. He struggled for consistency throughout the season, managing three goals and eleven assists from 40 appearances in the Championship, compared to the 32 that he'd made the previous season.

But it wasn't a better one for the club. In March 2019 they were docked nine points over a breach of PSR rules. They'd overshot their allowable losses for the period between 2015 and 2018 by £10 million, not far short of the amount that they'd spent on these three players at the end of the August 2017 transfer window. They finished the season in 17th place in the table. Garry Monk was sacked that summer nevertheless.

Jota was on his way from St Andrew's that summer too. He'd managed 75 appearances in two seasons for the club, but Birmingham's bitter rivals Aston Villa had just been promoted back to the Premier League, and he made a controversial move from St Andrew's to Villa Park, where he ended up staying for two years, although his stay there would not be a happy one.

The recent history of Birmingham City is wrapped in irony. Mismanagement of the club throughout the 2010s was rife, and it is striking that the amount of overspend that they'd managed between 2015 and 2018 was covered by the amount they paid Brentford over those two days at the end of August 2017.

But throughout that period, the club didn't fall lower than the Championship. Arguably the even greater irony is that the club were relegated into League One once they finally came under the ownership of the ambitious owners who are now seeking to push the Blues back to the Premier League.

Perhaps the biggest irony of all, though, is that at a time when the club's financial position was extremely delicate, they made the decision to bring in a manager with such a reputation for being a wheeler-dealer as Harry Redknapp had. Jota, Maxime Colin and Harlee Dean were all symptoms of a broader problem, a club that was overspending, and who couldn't get the return on their spending that they needed.