He Is Not The First Person! Another Former Birmingham City Player Gave A “Terrible” Prediction About The Blues

He Is Not The First Person! Another Former Birmingham City Player Gave A “Terrible” Prediction About The Blues

Birmingham City are going places – I’d love to see them back in the Premier League

Stephen Clemence has outlined his hope that he sees Birmingham City return to the Premier League where he competed for them throughout his distinguished playing career. Former midfielder Clemence joined in January 2003 from Tottenham Hotspur and proceeded to make 135 appearances for Blues across four and a half years at St Andrew’s.

Clemence remained indebted to his Blues boss Steve Bruce, who offered him the platform on which to perform in England’s top flight, and he has since followed him to various clubs as a member of his coaching staff. In October 2022 Bruce and Clemence were relieved of their duties by West Bromwich Albion and it was at that point that the 46-year-old set out his intentions to branch out into management himself.

Now at Barrow in League Two, Clemence is building up a reputation as a fully fledged manager, but he reflects fondly on his playing days and those years in which Blues established themselves, under Bruce, as highly competitive Premier League outfit – a level he desires to one day see regain the status of.

“They’ve got a good manager in place, someone I have a lot of respect for,” Clemence told BirminghamLive of boss Chris Davies. “I think they’re going to be going places again. It’s great to see because they’ve got great supporters, they were unbelievable when I was there. I have great memories of the place. I’d love to see Blues back in the Premier League one day.”

Clemence, who has also worked at Aston Villa, Newcastle and Hull with Bruce – the experienced boss is currently in League One with Blackpool and who is preparing for a reunion with Blues this season in the league and the FA Cup – was granted his first taste of EFL management by Gillingham last year. This year, he is with Barrow and has them competing in the middle of the table with aspirations to finish in the top seven.

It’s a great club,” he added. “It’s been in the Football League now for four or five years. It had a couple of years of struggle to survive firstly, but the owners have come in and done an unbelievable job, they’ve backed the club and in the last two years they’ve just missed out on the play-offs. We’re just going to see if we can try and take it that next step.

“It’s not easy. There are a lot of teams in this league that are competitive and some teams have been well backed, but we’ve got something good going here. It’s a difficult place to come, we’ve got a great group of lads, good players. We’ve unfortunately conceded a few late goals, otherwise we’d be top of the league.

“We had a great cup run, and we ended up playing Chelsea, which financially was great for the club. We’ll come again, I’m sure, we just need to get back to winning games again.”