Jermaine Pennant made 60 appearances for Birmingham City before going on to play in the Champions League final with Liverpool
Jermaine Pennant during his time at Blues(Image: Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)
Jermaine Pennant insists Birmingham City should be looking at a top-six finish as a ‘minimum’ following their encouraging start to the Championship.
The former Blues winger, who spent an eventful 18 months at St Andrew’s during the Steve Bruce era, has been impressed not only with how they have started this season but with their activity in the transfer market.
The 42-year-old has also backed Bluenoses to fill the 62,000-seater stadium when Tom Wagner’s Sports Quarter dreams come to fruition giving the club the launchpad to attack the upper echelons of the Premier League.
But first they must get there and in an exclusive interview with the Keep Right On podcast, the ex-Arsenal and Liverpool star says they’re in with a shout of promotion this season.
“I think they’ll fare well,” he said. “They’ve shown already that they can fare well. They played against an old Premier League outfit in Ipswich and they should have won that game.
“I think the penalty was ridiculous. Then the goal should have stood, to give a foul on the defender like that is crazy – and the handball as well so Birmingham should have felt hard done by.
“I think they’ve got enough in the tank, they’ve made some big signings, I think Demarai Gray is going to be a big hit, I think he will come good 100%.
“He’s got a lot of Premier League experience. We know about Jay Stansfield and how good he’s been for the club.
“They’ve got a lot going for them, with the new owners investing well, the fans seem eager again and excited and trust the club.
“So at the moment they’re sitting very pretty, in a great place and without a shadow of a doubt, minimum, minimum expectations is playoffs.”
Pennant sees Gray’s return to St Andrew’s, nearly a decade after he left for Leicester City and went on to Everton, as a portentous signing. The 29-year-old signed a three year deal last month, having ended a two season stay with Al-Ettifaq.
“He obviously saw the project, you don’t come from that to then go into somewhere where you don’t believe they can kick on, achieve great things, or bigger things and aspirations.
“They’d have had conversations, they would have showed him the project and where they want to go and to come away from what you’re getting in Saudi to then join Birmingham he must know something that we don’t.
“Obviously we do know Birmingham want to get back in the Premier League, so he’s joined a club going places.”
One of those places is a short trip to the Wheels site where Knighthead are planning to build their new ground as the centrepiece of a Sports Quarter, a £3bn project that has attracted hundreds of millions of Government funding.
Some scoff at the scale of Wagner’s ambition, not Pennant who knows the untapped potential of the club and the platform that would give them to crack the elite.
Pennant speaking on behalf of best online casinos Casino.org said: “If we can do that, then absolutely. You know, you can put 100,000 stadium the Blues will fill it out.
“The love that they have for this club, the love that they have for football, for the city, for Birmingham, is huge week-to-week. That’s what they live and die for and look forward to.
“With that support and a stadium like that it will just take them to new heights.
“As a player when you’ve got that support behind you, sometimes you need to rely on that and it’s like a twelfth man.
“There’s no better place than St Andrew’s or wherever it will be when the fans get behind you like that, it goes a long way.”
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