'Built in Birmingham' is an embarrassing own goal

Tom Brady’s five-part series feels airbrushed and modelled on ‘Welcome to Wrexham’, writes a baffled Richard Jolly

- Richard Jolly

“Probably what he knows about football you could put on a postage stamp,” says a Birmingham City fan.

He might be joking but Tom Brady - the man with a greater grounding in the NFL than the EFL - is unaware the other club in the city is called Aston Villa and wasn’t told not to pronounce the “h” in Birmingham. At one stage, in the disastrous first season of Brady's minority ownership, he shows he knows something. “We lose every fucking match,” he laments.

Built in Birmingham, and even the name is a clue to its objectives, is more about Tom Brady and Tommy Shelby - the Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight features regularly - than John Eustace and John Ruddy. Eustace, infamously, was fired by the new owners Knighthead Capital with Birmingham sixth in the Championship.

“Together we will not fail,” declares chair Tom Wagner. They start off by failing, though possibly not together, given the revolving door to the manager’s office. But editorially, they fail too (and it is them, given that Brady and Wagner are executive producers).

As any connoisseur of such documentaries knows, the bad years make for more entertaining television than the good. But in a five-part series, one is devoted to the hubristic demotion of 2023-24, four to the bankrolled cruise through League One. And, given some other owners are asset-strippers, or burden clubs with debt, or have other nefarious purposes, it is worth noting that Knighthead has invested. Brady's manager is damning of their inheritance. “They have a fucking shipping container as their lead performance centre,” he says, and Wagner and co have improved facilities.