Spotty, Blake and Savage

Birmingham City are very much in my mind this evening, as they have been for the past couple of weeks. Obviously, one of the reasons is that they visit The Valley tomorrow, and this is going to be the cause of the little bit of irony that I mentioned a few days ago.

For, almost certainly making his Premiership debut for the Blues will be their new signing, Robbie Blake, who until quite recently was the captain and also by a long way the leading goalscorer, of my second-best team, Burnley. The reason he is no longer a Burnley player is because he was made to feel unsettled by another club, and then decided, despite having assured everyone he had no desire to move, that he wanted to play for Wigan.

Now this recalls the events at Charlton one year ago when Chelsea, seeing Charlton coming up right behind them in the league table, decided to make a bid for star player Spotty Parker, winner of the Greediest Young Player for 2003 Award. Parker suddenly announced that he never wanted to play for Charlton again, and shortly afterwards departed for SW6, leaving Charlton both a richer and a poorer team, if you see what I mean.

At least Birmingham cannot be held guilty in the Blake case, although they have taken advantage of the fact that Blake had been thoroughly unsettled, in this case by the spoiling tactics of Paul Jewell, manager of Wigan Athletic. In the end, Wigan tried to get Blake for about £700,000, and Burnley said no. Birmingham moved in, and a week or so later, Robbie Blake moved down to St. Andrews for about £1.25 million.

So, a star striker whose goals have delighted me and many other Burnley supporters is now in a situation where he might score tomorrow against Charlton. Great.

As for players being unsettled, I have also been following the saga of another Robbie, Robbie Savage, who has been unsettled in a similar way by Burnley's hated local rivals, Blackburn Rovers. Birmingham have been doing the 'over my dead body' routine for about three weeks, pointing out that if Savage needs to be near his sick parents in Wrexham, then Blackburn is hardly any nearer at all. Now Birmingham seem to have caved in, but they are threatening to take up the matter with the Premier League.

Which is a good idea. There should be an end to this unsettling of players by other clubs. These days all you need to hear is that club x are interested in your player y, and you realise that y won't be turning out for you any more. and money isn't that much of a compensation when your whole season is derailed.