Birmingham City: Moment of the Season – Part Four

As my fellow writers have indicated, this season hasn’t been the best for Birmingham City. I must admit, I thought the drama that Lee Clark put the Blues’ through wasn’t going to be matched for a long, long time and yet we find ourselves again going into the last game of the season needing to get a positive result. For all of the negativity surrounding the club, we can at least be thankful to Gary Rowett as those points in the earlier part of the season may well just keep us up after Gianfranco Zola has tried his best to lose as many matches as he can.

But there have been a few shining lights of the season. This may not seem big to most people but getting Steve Cotterill in is a very good appointment. As many have speculated I do believe that Cotterill is the long term plan to succeed Harry Redknapp and he has done wonders in his previous jobs so I think this is a very good sign. We have also had some good victories too along the way. Albeit mostly at the start of the season and that feels like such a long time ago.

My moment of the season seems a bit of an unusual one but it is:

The Signing of Cheick Keita.

I know when I was asked to do my moment of the season, this wasn’t what initially sprung to mind. I did think about the Wolves victory and so forth. But I was thinking what has happened in the club set up that I have thoroughly been excited about and one of the only things is Cheick Keita. The young lad joined in January and I think he was Zola’s best signing. I know this doesn’t say a lot about Zola’s transfer policy, but I am a massive advocate of bringing in young players and guiding them in the right way.

Cheick Keita is one of the best young players I’ve seen at the Blues’ and it shows he good he is when other youngsters are thrust into the first team and can’t handle it. I think Jack Storer is one of those players. But Cheick Keita took to it like a duck to water. He showed no fear whatsoever in every game he played and this was something that Zola seemed to try and suck out of the team. Cheick Keita was fearless and really did try to get the team going down that left hand side which has been a weakness particularly when Maghoma was out for a period of time.

Yes, results do matter and the victories that I have mentioned are great. But they are celebrated all week and then forgotten if we lose the following Sunday. Whereas I was always excited to see Cheick Keita and he really is the type of player that we need at the Blues’ to get some more energy back into the side. I have high hopes for the future.