Birmingham City are back where they have often belonged, though sights are set far higher than the Championship. To the Premier League and beyond is the mission and no longer being the second city’s second wheel. Their aptitude for the task of returning to the Championship have been apparent since early this season and spending £25m on 17 new players. A record League One points total is possible, too. Now for Wembley, Sunday’s Vertu Trophy final, again against Peterborough, the chance to complete a lower league double. After that, controls are set for the heart of the sun.
This week has brought echoes of 30 years ago, of Paul Tait’s Auto Windscreens Shields Trophy winner with an estimated 50,000 City fans at Wembley when Barry Fry was the Blues manager. Fry the ever ebullient, archetypal wheeler-dealer is, at 80, still Peterborough’s director of football. The club he joined from Birmingham in 1996 defend their trophy on Sunday at Wembley, where they have never lost. His former club’s fans gave him a rousing reception during a pre-match promenade with chants of “Barry is a Bluenose”.
