Tom Wagner’s entrance was initially only noticed by those closest to the director’s box as the Blues chairman eased down the steps to his front-row seat. <\/b><\/p>\n
Once the rest of the crowd spotted the American, there was a huge roar – this was a long-awaited moment.<\/p>\n
The toll his illness has taken on the 57-year-old was plain to see, with a prominent scar on his head and his left arm sporting a sling. <\/p>\n
His presence in the stadium mid-recovery was nonetheless significant, serving as a sign that Knighthead’s ambitious plans for the club can reasonably be assumed to be on track.<\/p>\n
The club’s owners are not a one-man band. But Wagner is the figurehead, the charismatic presence and the man capable of influencing political and business leaders. <\/p>\n
His return to St Andrew’s was inevitably emotional, borne out by almost tearful tributes paid by goalscorer and record-signing Jay Stansfield in his post-match media duties. <\/p>\n
Everyone involved with Birmingham City needed to see Tom Wagner. And he knew that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Wagner’s entrance was initially only noticed by those closest to the director’s box as the Blues chairman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1191756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":["post-1192172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-birmingham","tag-birmingham","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117232195571091564","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1192172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1191756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1192172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1192172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1192172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}