Birmingham City bought 17 players in the summer to effectively replace a comparable amount who left following relegation.
Birmingham City’s squad is almost unrecognisable. On Saturday at Rotherham, only three players from the 18-man squad were at the club last year: Keshi Anderson, Paik Seung-ho, and Jay Stansfield, who arrived on transfer deadline day.
Blues are winning as they continue to gel together. They are one of only a few teams in the EFL to remain unblemished after six games, and they are only now getting going. It’s an endorsement of the work manager Chris Davies (another new face) has been carrying out on the training ground, as well as the potential inside the group formed by Knighthead and the club’s recruitment team.
Blues have defeated Wrexham and Rotherham in a week and will face Peterborough United on Saturday (3pm) in front of a sell-out St Andrew’s stadium, aiming for their sixth consecutive league win since 1985. Under Ron Saunders, they were promoted to the old First Division the same year.
Recruitment has played a significant role in establishing the early tempo. Indeed, decision makers and investors have worked hard to rewrite the script and start again – and the recruitment is reflected in the squad’s numbers and total value. The experts at Football Transfers, who have developed a model that uses a variety of metrics to estimate a player’s value, believe Blues are, ahem, on the rise.
They created the Player Valuation Model, which estimates the value of nearly a quarter of a million football players worldwide, with values updated monthly based on performance and a variety of other factors such as experience, contract status, league strength, and position. This is combined with a machine learning engine that has analysed up to 600,000 prior transfers and seeks trends.
In short, the Blues’ roster is estimated to be valued just shy of £60 million, an almost £5 million gain over the squad that was relegated last season. They’re 61st on the list of ‘fastest rising squad values’, trailing numerous Premier League clubs – for comparison, Ipswich Town are third on the list, trailing Brighton and Juventus, with their value having risen to almost £180 million following promotion and the summer window.
In terms of value, Football Transfers ranks Blues as the 146th most valuable squad among all clubs and players analysed. For comparison, £60 million is more than the combined valuation of 15 Championship clubs, including West Brom, Norwich, Watford, Stoke City, and QPR.
Individual rates may be contestable! Blues will almost certainly not accept offers in the €800,000 range for Paik in the near future. Stansfield, the club’s record transfer, is undoubtedly the most valuable at about €11 million. Christoph Klarer, Dion Sanderson, Lee Buchanan, and Bielik are all valued close to €4 million, as is loanee Luke Harris. Willum Willumsson ranks second after Stansfield with €5.2 million.
Read more at: https://sportupdates.co.uk
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