![\"Demarai](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/0_IMG_9650jpeg.jpg\")
Demarai Gray in action on his Birmingham City return against Burton Albion. Credit: BCFC.com(Image: BCFC.com)<\/p>\nBirmingham City have now played three pre-season friendlies and all of their signings bar Kanya Fujimoto have featured<\/p>\n
10:55, 14 Jul 2025Updated 16:08, 21 Jul 2025<\/p>\n
Demarai Gray in action on his Birmingham City return against Burton Albion. Credit: BCFC.com(Image: BCFC.com)<\/p>\n
Birmingham City\u2019s three pre-season friendlies have provided some interesting hints as to what squad numbers Chris Davies\u2019<\/a> new recruits will select.<\/p>\n Blues beat Sevilla 3-1 in Portugal on <\/a>July 12 with four of their new signings making their debuts. Phil Neumann<\/a> played the first half, James Beadle kept goal for the second and Tommy Doyle and Bright Osayi-Samuel were eased in with 27 and 18 minutes respectively.<\/p>\n The quartet featured again in Saturday’s double-header versus Burton Albion and Crewe Alexandra, both of which ended in defeat for Blues.<\/p>\n James Beadle played for a second string Blues XI at Crewe, while Neumann, Osayi-Samuel, Doyle and Kyogo Furuhashi all started against Burton. Demarai Gray featured as a second half substitute in the Burton match.<\/p>\n Neumann has been wearing the number five shirt which has been held by former captain Dion Sanderson for the past two years.<\/p>\n Sanderson doesn\u2019t form part of Davies\u2019 plans and has been told he can leave, as reported by BirminghamLive two weeks ago,<\/a> and Neumann looks set to take his number five shirt.<\/p>\n The German centre-back wore number five during his three years at Hannover 96 and occasionally played in it when he was part of Schalke\u2019s second string.<\/p>\n There are other \u2018first XI\u2019 numbers available at Blues this summer and Doyle claimed eight against Sevilla before wearing Jay Stansfield’s 28 at Burton. Tyler Roberts has held the number eight for the past two seasons, albeit he didn\u2019t play in League One for Blues last term, and is among those expected to depart.<\/p>\n Interestingly, Beadle hasn’t worn the number one shirt to continue the trend Blues<\/a> started this time last year. They went into last season without a number one with Ryan Allsop in 21 and Bailey Peacock-Farrell in 45. Brighton loanee Beadle wore the number 25 against Sevilla and Crewe.<\/p>\n Osayi-Samuel wore 21 during his four years with Fenerbahce but, as Allsop currently holds that jersey, the Nigeria international has worn 16 on his back in pre-season.<\/p>\n Demarai Gray<\/a> was number seven during his last stint at Blues but he donned 10 against Burton. It was in fact Kyogo who wore the seven shirt, just as he did during his brief spell with Rennes.<\/p>\n Whose name would you have on the back of your shirt? Let us know HERE<\/a>Get the latest Blues headlines sent straight to your phone<\/p>\n BirminghamLive has its very own Birmingham City<\/a> WhatsApp community to deliver the latest headlines straight to your phone. Just click this link<\/a> to receive daily Blues content and breaking news. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don\u2019t like our community, you can check out any time you like. Click on the name at the top of your screen while in WhatsApp and click ‘Exit Group’. Read our Privacy Notice.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Birmingham City have now played three pre-season friendlies and all of their signings bar Kanya Fujimoto have featured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,1205,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-281238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-birmingham-city-fc","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114894192231612312","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281238","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=281238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}