The week unwrapped

Have we turned the corner or is it another false dawn? The 2-1 win over Leicester City last week put us within striking distance of safety, but more importantly Matt Bloomfield has helped galvanise fans and players for the task ahead.

Despite being linked to a number of players, including Faroese central defender, Andriasa Edmundson, we haven’t added to the squad, but with the mood is good so we go into Saturday’s game with Birmingham with hopes high.

And you know what hope does, don’t you?

Brumfacts

The Brexit Wrexham are in town on Saturday for their first visit since beating us 7-1 at The Manor 28 years ago. Birmingham are brash, loud and ambitious, their owner Tom Wagner wants to Make Birmingham Great Again (MBGA) and thinks that top clubs should be protected at all costs, although presumably only when they’re one of them.

Despite big spending and graceless bragging about how they’re only in the Championship for a short stop before their inevitable ascent to the Premier League, they’re currently tearing up the rule book like the average mid-table bad boys they are. Their problem is their away form with just two wins, the last being in October. Their transfer window has been typically aggressive, pumping over £13m on two new signings, so there’s no lack of ambition. 

See, and I didn’t even mention Tom Brady… damn it!

Football friend | Paul Tait

Paul Tait was famous long before his arrival at The Manor 1999. In 1995 Birmingham City were in something of a golden period, a takeover by porn barons David Sullivan suddenly had suddenly enriched them. They appointed the eccentric Barry Fry as manager, who, legend says, signed sixteen players in his first month. 

Paul Tait was already at the club, but was recalled from a loan spell at Millwall. Tait was a Birmingham fan with a wild past. During a period out with injury in the early 1990s he numbed the boredom with drink and drugs and fell in with Birmingham’s notorious hooligan firm the Zulu Warriors.

Fry’s Birmingham suited him; in 94/95 they surged to the Division 2 title and reached the final of the Auto Windscreen Shield final at Wembley against Carlisle. The game went into a golden goal extra-time. In the 103^rd minute winger Ricky Otto crossed to Tait whose glancing header beat Tony Craig and went in to win Birmingham the trophy.

Tait lept over the advertising hoardings towards the Birmingham fans and pulled off his shirt in jubilation. Underneath he was wearing a t-shirt with the legend ‘Birmingham City, Shit on the Villa’. The reveal caused a tabloid uproar.

The following November, in an Anglo Italian cup game, Tait reacted to a foul by Ancona Marco Sesia which resulted in a 24 man brawl, and including the Ancona manager. The scrap resulted in the referee breaking his finger and Birmingham officials and players were arrested before fleeing the country.

If Tait was trying to escape the chaos, he picked the wrong club in Oxford United. Joining in January to replace Dave Smith, Oxford were in one of our usual financial freefalls. His second game was against a star-studded Chelsea side. We took the lead through Dean Windass, but a controversial last minute penalty saw us draw 1-1. Tait, never far from the action, picked up an eye injury after being kicked by Celestine Babayaro. 

Injuries and sending off would punctuate his time at Oxford, he was sent off in October 1999 and then had a knee operation which kept him out of the side as we slipped to relegation. In a team which had lost its fight, his battling qualities in a failing team endeared him to fans.  

During the calamitous 2000/01 season he had the good sense to break his leg in a 0-0 draw in October which would keep him out for four months. He struggled to recover as the club suffered another relegation to the fourth tier.

He was sent off the following season against Shrewsbury in Oxford’s second game at the Kassam after Nigel Jemson, by then at the Shrews harangued the referee into making a decision against his former team mate. Tait would limp through to the end of the season where he was released to finish his career in Cyprus.

From the archive | Birmingham City 0 Oxford United 1 (1998)

By 1998, we were broke and hanging on by a threat in every sense. Going into our visit to 3rd place Birmingham City we were second from bottom and given no hope. Behind the scenes, things were becoming increasingly grim. Maxwell was long gone, the stadium project had stalled and the club were being held together by pieces of string.

We hadn’t won on the road all season, but against every conceivable odd managed to scrape a miraculous 1-0 win with a goal from Matt Murphy in the 3rd minute. The win was such a relief from the pressures off the pitch, Nick Harris, at the time a director at the club, burst into tears at the final whistle.

The return fixture was less than a month later at The Manor. By this point, we’d sold Phil Whitehead to West Brom to keep the financial wolves from the door and brought in Mike Salmon from Charlton on loan.

Already chastened by the defeat at St Andrews, the Birmingham players were further enraged by the Oxford players warming up in Santa hats. They took their anger into the game and were 4-0 up by half time with two goals from Paul Furlong and two more from, em, Gary Rowett.

Refusing to take their foot off the gas, they added three more before Dean Windass scored a consolation, his celebration in front of the London Road failing to lighten the mood. The game was so damaging for Mike Salmon, he promptly retired from football.

I, on the other hand, drove home and was run off the road by a Birmingham fan who was a recently qualified driver and in the wrong lane going onto the M40 at Wheatley. It was not a good day.

Oxford were relegated at the end of that season while Birmingham finished third and were knocked out in the play-offs.