"I wish" - Phil Neumann makes strong Birmingham City transfer claim after £0 move | OneFootball

Birmingham landed the defender the summer after they initially tried to sign him.

Recent Birmingham City signing Phil Neumann has said that he wishes he'd have been able to join the Championship outfit last summer rather than this one - effectively throwing a shot at his former club Hannover.

One of the 2. Bundesliga's best defenders committed his future to St. Andrew's back in the winter when he agreed a pre-contract move to the then-League One side, that would see him join Blues this summer once his deal with Hannover had expired.

Birmingham had attempted to buy him in the 2024 summer window, and then again in January, but their efforts were rebuffed. Ultimately, they ended up getting quite a good deal by signing the 28-year-old as a free agent to arrive this summer.

Phil Neumann opens up on Birmingham City switch frustration

Hannover were not happy with how Chris Davies' side went about the move, and Neumann wasn't best pleased about not being able to make the switch earlier.

Neumann told Birmingham Live, following his side's 1-0 victory over Oxford United: "It's nice to finally be here. I wish I would have moved here one year earlier, but yeah, now I'm here and I'm really happy to be here.

"The team makes it really easy for me. The first person who came to me right before I joined wrote me messages and said ‘Yeah, we're happy to have you here soon’. It makes me [have] a good feeling.

"When I came in, everybody was really lovely, and it's the same now with every other new player who comes in - you feel settled in really, really fast."

Neumann has started all of Birmingham's games so far this season, with the win on Saturday handing him his first clean sheet.

He seriously impressed against fellow promotion hopefuls Ipswich Town on the opening day when he lined up alongside the captain, Christoph Klarer, who, unlike his defensive partner, was able to make the move from Germany to Birmingham last summer.

The towering German believes that the two of them work well together at the back, saying: "I think it fits good.

"We know each other not that long, but we speak English and German together and I know what he's doing and he knows me really good, so we can support each other.

"It was a really tough game [against Oxford] as we expected - hard opponent. We had to wait for the spaces for creating chances, but we did really well and it could have been much more goals, but in the end it's a win and that's an important thing.

"I think it was a typical game - we've got the better team, we got a lot of ball position, but a lot of long balls from the opponent, hard fights against the strikers. It was a little bit fun. We have had a really good start to the season, for the team and for me, we just keep going."

Phil Neumann statement shows just how appealing Birmingham City are to players nowadays

It really does speak volumes about Birmingham's pulling power that the man that many considered to be the best player in his position in the German second tier was so desperate to join a team that had just been relegated to the English third tier.

We saw from all the other moves that Blues made last summer just how good they are at selling their project and their vision.

That was clearly the case for Neumann, too. He just wasn't allowed to make the move at the time because of Hannover's desire to hold onto him.

It's no surprise that they wanted to hang on to such a key player, and for a club that regularly brings 40,000 fans through the door for home matches, Hannover probably could afford to let Neumann run down his contract and let him go for absolutely nothing - hence that is what they did.