The Blues Are Still Blue
The arrival of Carson Yeung at Birmingham City was a disaster which threatened the existence of the club itself, and from which it may only just now be starting to recover. Mark Murphy was following the case closely.
Laurence Bassini: When Larry met Danny
Another week, another train-wreck Talksport Radio interview by putative Birmingham City FC owner, Laurence Bassini. Followed by a ‘Blair Witch Project’-style video message to Blues fans. Even by his low standards, Bassini had some couple of days last weekend. When...
Why can’t football just tell Lawrence/Lauence Bazini/Bassini to s*d/sod off?
The football track record of Walter Mitty’s more fantasist brother, Laurence Bassini, has waved a May Day rally’s worth of red flags in football authorities’ faces. And his current attempt to buy Birmingham City is waving some more. Yet the authorities still seem...
Midlands Week – Birmingham City: Still a Mess of the Blues
Aitor Karanka's third tour of duty in the EFL Championship has turned out to be his shortest yet. After just seven and a half months he's left Birmingham City after failing to steady a ship that has been listing for some considerable time. It doesn't seem likely,...
Birmingham City: Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues
If convicted money-launderer Carson Yeung Ka-Sing’s gruesome tenure as Championship strugglers Birmingham City’s main shareholder taught the club’s fans anything, it was ‘be careful what you wish for.’ West Midlands football is currently a Chinese hotbed,...
Birmingham City: A Mess Of The Blues
Since relegation from the Premier League at the end of the 2011/12 season, life hasn't been particularly easy for the supporters of Birmingham City. A fourth place finish the following season was a decent enough return to the peculiar world of the Football League...
Birmingham City: Taken Over At Last
“Birmingham City takeover saga drawing to a conclusion” ran the Birmingham Mail newspaper headline. “A sale looks increasingly imminent,” the article claimed. “Blues…director Panos Pavlakis returned to Hong Kong…at the start of the week…that in itself is significant,”...
Birmingham City: The Receivers Take Control
So. Farewell, then. Peter Pannu. This time, for good and forever. Probably. Receivers are now in charge of Birmingham International Holdings (BIH), the Hong Kong-based corporate soap opera that is Birmingham City FC’s parent company. And these are the best two pieces...
2014: Football’s Annus Excrementilis
200% is a powerful website. On December 10th, Mark Murphy asked Peter Pannu to “please **** off from Birmingham City. On December 12th…he…pissed off from Birmingham City. Co-incidence? Or will the following rant have a similarly desired effect on some of the...
Blues’n’ Trouble – The Continuing Story Of Birmingham City
When I last wrote about Birmingham City things were grim, on-field and off. In the intervening seven months, NOTHING has changed… apart from the entry in the club’s record books marked “heaviest home defeat.” On May 3rd, Blues avoided relegation to League One by about...
Basket-Casery And The Football League Championship
To do so much as glance at the Football League Championship table can often be a most disorientating experience. At a glance, should be a considerable amount of orthodoxy in this division. On the one hand, the Championship swallows up the lion's share of the...
Birmingham City & The Self-Importance Of Being Peter
Birmingham City’s still-acting chairman Peter Pannu recently dismissed Birmingham City supporter protests as something of a norm for English football. More of a norm for English football, however, is Pannu’s sense of self-worth, which is only matched by whoever is...
Birmingham City & Rangers: A Bad Week To Be A Bluenose
Both sides of what could soon be a proper international border, it is tough being a “Bluenose” just now. The odds against Rangers seeking the financial sanctuary of administration, or the sale and leaseback of major assets, as solutions to their latest book-balancing...
Birmingham City Fans Can Delay No More
“I’m as mad as hell and I can’t take it anymore,” said Peter Finch’s character Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network. Birmingham City fans clearly can’t either. The Blues are mired in a Championship relegation battle. The club and parent company, Birmingham...
Peter Pannu Is *Still* Considerably Richer Than You
I do appear to have invoked plenty of memories “for those of a certain age” in recent articles. And I’m about to do so again. In January 1979, the then Prime Minister James Callaghan returned from a summit in Guadeloupe to a Britain entering its infamous “winter of...
Birmingham City: Carson In Court & Paladini In Panto
In May, I wrote parts one and two of an article on Birmingham City’s multi-titled, multi-remunerated Peter Pannu. And I promised a part three. Only last week did I realise that part three never made it from my clapped-out PC to the site. And the article, along with my...
Birmingham City: Peter Pannu Posts – Part Two
Part Two of our series, documenting the wilder extremes of the comments made by the Birmingham City director, Peter Pannu.
Birmingham City: Peter Pannu Posts – Part One
Birmingham City’s acting chairman Peter Pannu recently responded to media focus on his financial affairs with a lengthy statement on the club’s website. It said much about the man, his attitude and the Blues’ off-field problems – little of it good. Mark Murphy comments on it all.
Peter Pannu Is Considerably Richer Than You
Birmingham City supporters haven’t had very much to celebrate over the course of this season, but one of the club’s directors, Peter Pannu, has had an excellent season. Well, for himself, at least.
Birmingham City: Peter Pannu In A Pickle
It is exactly three years since the press-release heavy article in the Birmingham Mail newspaper announcing Birmingham City’s new sponsorship deal with Chinese sportswear manufacturers X-Tep. But even allowing for the spin, it shows how large a failure Carson Yeung...
A Mess Of The Blues: Birmingham City’s Slide Continues
The Rao family at Blackburn Rovers have long since garnered the awards as the most gullible fallers for English Premier League (EPL) hype. But the original remain Hong Kong hairdresser Carson Yeung and his band of merry distant associates at Birmingham City. Yeung and...
Dispatches & The Football League: Not Quite A Smoking Gun, But Possibly A Start
Perhaps the least surprising aspect of this evening's "Dispatches" programme on the subject of the London Nominees Football Fund has been the almost jaded reaction that it immediately received in some quarters. This isn't a criticism of those offering such weariness...
Singing The Blues: When Is A Conspiracy Theory Not A Conspiracy Theory?
Since I first ventured onto these hallowed pages back in about 1924, there have been those amongst the readership convinced that I’ve had to move aside my Aston Villa season ticket and “Champions 1981” coffee mug to get to my keyboard, whilst Peter Withe winning the...
Questions About Birmingham City’s Financing…
When Bates “reoccupied” Leeds United in 2007, he employed all sorts of accounting “techniques” to effectively clear most of the club’s debts, such as a quick in-and-out of administration (I’m assured that’s not the correct technical term). This seemed wrong to...
Are Birmingham Running Before They Can Walk?
One of the least dull points to emerge from the recent Soccerex talk-fest in Manchester was the importance of ‘local identity’ to the financial well-being of football clubs. But this was only thought true of the second-highest echelons of European football; the...
Birmingham City: The Pornographer vs The Hairdresser
Mark Murphy looks into the circumstances surrounding the takeover of Birmingham City, which aren’t necessarily as straightforward as you might have initially thought as a war of words threatens to break out between the old and the new at St Andrews.