Tom Wagner addresses Birmingham City's transfer plans amid Jay Stansfield question
Birmingham City are expected to invest in Chris Davies' squad this summer and they could make another big splash
Tom Wagner has not ruled out breaking Birmingham City’s transfer record for a second successive summer.
Blues made huge headlines last year when they completed a deadline day deal for Fulham’s Jay Stansfield with some claiming a fee in the region of £20million.
Sources close to the club have always played that figure down, with the exact fee never actually confirmed, although depending on add-ons it’s likely to be in the region of £12-14m.
Whatever the precise figure, what is clear is that Blues at least tripled and potentially even quadrupled the League One record set when Sunderland bought Will Grigg from Wigan Athletic for £4m in 2019.
Stansfield has gone on to having a very good season, with 23 goals in all competitions including one for Fulham against Blues, and 18 in a league campaign that saw the team win the title with six games to spare.
They will be back in the Championship next season and having seen his club suffer disappointment in the Vertu Trophy final at Wembley on Sunday, chairman Wagner is in no mood to take his foot off the accelerator.
Asked if Blues could make an even bigger splash when the window opens he told BirminghamLive: “If we have the headroom, we'll do it.”
The answer is a reference to the fact in League One Blues were able to operate under a different set of financial regulations and that next season they will be governed by the Profitability & Sustainability Rules similar to the ones they fell foul of under the previous owners.
Those rules are based on maximum allowable losses, which means Wagner’s Knighthead have been desperately trying to increase revenue on the basis that more money in means more money to buy players. It will be interesting to see how much ‘headroom’ Blues have.
“We'll see. I think at the end of the day, a lot of it is thinking about what do we spend this year versus what we spend in future years? Where's the talent? What's the price? Where's the value
“All of those are questions that can't be answered until the window opens, but you know we do have high ambitions and at the same time we will be seeking great value.
“I think we did an exceptional job with that last summer and I think we'll do a very good job with it this summer.”
Wagner also emphasised the relationship between revenue and spending and insisted the recently-announced Amazon Prime documentary is a key pillar of helping that balance, as are sponsorship deals with the likes of Delta Airlines and Vertu.
”I’ll say the following. Without having had the tail wind of the documentary series distributed by Amazon to over 200 countries, we would have already been on a path to have the same level of revenue as parachute clubs next year in the Championship which is something that has never happened before.
“With the tail wind of a doc series and so many global partners that we have, we’ve got a lot to come on the revenue side.
“People might say 'Why do you keep talking about the revenue side of things?' But without revenue we don’t get the players.
“We are focused on making this a commercially viable club. I will not rest until we are the most powerful revenue-generating club in the Championship by a wide margin, including those who get parachute payments.”