As someone once sang, you can’t always get what you want.
For every successful transfer window signing, there are inevitably the ones that get away.
And it’s the circumstances surrounding just how that makes for fascinating and infuriating stories.
Blues have had their fair share of frustrations and farces when it comes to deals that were set up, but weren’t completed.
Let’s start with Mido and Hossam Ghaly.
If you ever want to send Steve Bruce’s head spinning, just mention the Egyptian pair, who were targeted for moves from Spurs in July, 2007, after Blues were promoted back to the top-flight.
Mido was due to be a marquee £6 million signing. Until he read the small print.
Blues wanted the striker, who was earning £25,000-a-week, to agree a pay cut if they were relegated from the Premier League.
‘I sat down with Birmingham to discuss the contract and I totally rejected it,’ he said. ‘I won’t move unless these clauses are changed.’
They weren’t, he went off in a huff. His compatriot Ghaly saw all this and might as well have gone ‘here, hold my beer . . . ‘.
The midfielder arrived at Wast Hills after Blues returned from a pre-season tour to Germany. A fee of £3 million had been agreed. A three-year contract, with a two-year option, was on the table.
As talks rumbled on, Ghaly went out to train. All good. Or so everyone thought.
Ghaly was asked to do some extra work with fitness coach Dan Harris as he had missed a lot of physical conditioning over a number of weeks once the transfer saga gathered apace.
At lunchtime, Bruce had a missed call on his mobile from Ghaly’s agent.
‘His agent left a message and said that he [Ghaly] wasn’t happy with the standard of players here,’ recounted Bruce. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was hearing – and I’ve kept the message on my voicemail.
‘When he had his one-to-one session with Dan, he was moaning we ‘don’t do this, don’t do that’ at Tottenham, it ‘wasn’t right’ and ‘ridiculous’. He had a right petted lip on. Yes, strong words were said and he was told in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t like it, he should clear off.’
And that’s what he did. The board backed Bruce and the transfer was scrapped. As Blues had been waiting on a work permit, his registration had not formally been completed.
One thing Bruce was never afraid to do was call people out publicly if they wronged him or the club.
It was a similar story concerning Emmanuel Olisadebe. He was holed up in a hotel on Broad Street for a while as his transfer from Panathinaikos was negotiated.
Blues, then newly-promoted to the Premier League in 2002, were keen to boost their firepower as a priority (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).
A fee for Clinton Morrison, of Crystal Palace, could not be agreed. So attentions turned to the Nigerian-born Poland international.
The transfer took a dramatic turn when Olisadebe claimed he had passed his medical, agreed a four-year deal, but was kept waiting. He returned to Greece.
Olisadebe complained: ‘The signing was delayed and delayed. I could not bear being treated in this way. It was unprofessional and degrading.’
Bruce responded by revealing that Blues didn’t proceed because his back was knackered and he had a cyst behind his knee.
‘We weren’t going to say anything to protect the lad’. He also added words to the effect of ‘but after he’s said that, **** him’. However, we didn’t quote that part.
Blues then revived the Morrison deal, with Andrew Johnson going the other way in a £4.25 million part exchange transfer.
When Rob Kiernan impressed on loan at Blues in 2015, the club were keen to make his transfer from Wigan Athletic permanent that summer.
The only problem was, with his medical on the go and contract laid out to sign, he . . . disappeared.
Blues were left twiddling their thumbs as they tried to get hold of Kiernan.
It transpired he resurfaced at Rangers, after getting a secret call, and signed for them instead.
Manager Gary Rowett, like Bruce, was not too pleased.
In a later interview, taking about transfers in general, Rowett stated: ‘We had one [signing] that took about five weeks and we had a medical and he got through half of the medical and he disappeared.
‘I won’t name the name but he ended up in Scotland two days later signing for another team. You’ve just got to take it on the chin and crack on.’
Kieran was due to go to St. Andrew’s the day after his medical – which he insisted he completed – to finish all the paperwork, but was hot-footing it north of the border instead.
In Alex McLeish’s time, Blues began to sign big. Carson Yeung bankrolled signings like Nikola Zigic and Ben Foster, generating much excitement.
But after the Carling Cup success of 2011, Blues were relegated from the Premier League and there was plenty of regret over other players they had earmarked, but couldn’t get over the line.
Rising star Moussa Dembele, 23, was a top tier target in the summer of 2010.
I remember on the club’s pre-season tour of Hong Kong and China, McLeish was trying to convince Yeung that Dembele was worth the £5 million outlay to AZ Alkmaar.
McLeish and his chief scout Paul Montgomery argued that Dembele’s value would eventually double.
I was summoned by the club’s MD Peter Pannu, thus: ‘Colin, the boss wants a word with you’.
Yeung was seeking a second opinion about Dembele’s price tag, and whether it was realistic.
There were Bond villain vibes as I was ushered into a hotel room, where Yeung regally sat with his entourage around him (he had no cat on his lap, though). He looked up at me and in his broken English slowly and deliberately said: ‘Howwww much?’
The Belgian forward went to Fulham instead and moved on to Spurs for £15 million a couple of seasons later. And, yes, I did say he was worth it!
Cacau was another forward that Blues had on their hit list, in the May.
The Brazilian-born German striker flew into Birmingham for hush-hush talks about a Bosman transfer and was shown around St Andrew’s and Wast Hills.
He promised to make a decision quickly thereafter. A contract was drawn up and the feedback from his representatives suggested he was excited by the challenge of the Premier League.
But he got cold feet and stunned Blues by penning a new deal with Stuttgart after initially turning down a contract there at the turn of the year in order to seek pastures new.
Blues pulled out of a proposed £5 million move for the dynamic Palermo striker Fabrizio Miccoli in the June, due to concern over a knee injury.
Miccoli went back to his club in Italy and held a press conference, stating that he rejected Blues.
‘This was the most important decision of my career. I spoke about it with my wife and then the president. I knew I could have earned €10 million over four years, so it was a hard decision.’
Not so, replied Blues. Specialists advised them that a cruciate ligament injury was worse than first feared and would have kept Miccoli out until October.
In an action-packed summer, Blues also held talks with 2006 World Cup winner Mauro Camoranesi, of Juventus. They were unsure of committing a hearty salary to the 33-year-old Italian who was available on a Bosman.
That one withered away, but Blues were more forthcoming about handing an improved new deal to another 33-year-old around the same time – a certain Stephen Carr.
Charles N’Zogbia became a cause célèbre when Blues were chasing him, also in that frenetic 2010 window.
And the Wigan Athletic wideman did himself no favours by agreeing to join Blues, then rejecting the transfer . . . before asking for a second chance.
McLeish and the club were having none of it.
It all came to a head just before August 31 as N’Zogbia tried to gain a reputed £500,000-a-year hike on his wages as the £9 million move painstakingly neared completion.
N’Zogbia’s representative got back in touch with Blues on deadline day admitting that his client had made a mistake. Too late.
McLeish commented: ‘I thought it was a done deal. Charles seemed happy to come. Then all of a sudden I heard they moved the goalposts in terms of the money situation.
‘You’ve just got to stick to your principles at times and nobody is bigger than Birmingham City Football Club.’
That same deadline day, McLeish was successful in signing Jean Beausejour, Alexsandr Hleb and Martin Jiranek (the latter two on loan).
Sometimes, the overall cost of a player can be prohibitive and make a club’s hierarchy break out in a cold sweat, even if managers and supporters have a contrary view. In the January window six months earlier that proved to be the case at Blues.
Roman Pavlyuchenko was rated at £13 million by Spurs. Adding on the cost of his salary over three-and-a-half years, £23 million was simply too big a figure for Blues to bear.
They made offers, going up to £9 million plus £1 million in add-ons, but were unsuccessful due to Spurs not budging on the asking price for the Russian striker.
We all wince now at the memory of that goal by Pavlyuchenko 18 months later on the final day, after he finally got the measure of the Premier League.
Sunderland’s Kenwyne Jones was another option. The fee was around £11 million but Jones was earning a whopping £70,000-a-week on Wearside – incredibly nearly twice Pavlyuchenko’s wage – which Blues could not justify on top of the transfer fee.
Ivory Coast centre-forward Aruna Dindane, of Lens, was spotted at St. Andrew’s as Blues moved down their wanted list. The £4 million-rated striker, who had been on loan to Portsmouth, held talks. He was the backstop to Pavlyuchenko. But nothing materialised as his club wouldn’t agree to a loan with a view to a permanent transfer.
Perhaps the biggest ‘what if . . ?’ concerning Blues centred around their interest in Robert Lewandowski, then an emerging talent. Here, Montgomery takes up the story.
