Birmingham ride wave of stardust to salvation with eyes on top flight

With NFL legend Tom Brady on board the Blues have bounced back emphatically to win the League One title

- Ben Fisher

On day one in the job, as Chris Davies surveyed St Andrew's for the first time last summer, the Birmingham City manager was struck by a damning statistic courtesy of the club historian, Malcolm McHenry: no league side had lost more matches across the previous five seasons. Birmingham were relegated to League One a month earlier after circling the drain for a while. "When you hear something like that, it's powerful because you think: 'Wow, there are 92 teams," Davies says. "Everyone has suffered so much... I suppose I saw an opportunity to change that and this season we've won more games than any other team in the country."

Talk about a turnaround. Birmingham, runaway champions, have returned to the Championship at the first attempt and it is now 30 league wins and counting. Only Leeds have scored more goals than Birmingham this season across the top four tiers and only Arsenal, Leeds and Burnley have conceded fewer goals.

"I walked into a club that was feeling down," Davies says. "People were depressed and everybody was looking out for themselves. There was a real concern around the place but underlying that there was an optimism that there could be a reset."

The American owner, Knighthead Capital Management, fronted by Tom Wagner, is behind the rapid renaissance but holds long-term ambitions, namely regenerating the local Bordesley area, where it plans to build a £3bn sports quarter featuring a 60,000-seat stadium which, ultimately, it hopes, will host Champions League football. For now, it is one step at a time.