{"id":878605,"date":"2026-04-07T19:49:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T19:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/878605\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T19:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T19:49:17","slug":"says-it-all-birmingham-citys-season-summed-up-by-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/878605\/","title":{"rendered":"Says It All &#8211; Birmingham City&#8217;s Season Summed Up By Player"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: right;\"> Matt McNulty\/Getty Images <\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"single-quote\" style=\"display: block; margin-block-start: 1em; margin-block-end: 1em; margin-inline-start: 0px; margin-inline-end: 0px; margin: 30px 0px; font-size: 20px; font-weight: bold;\">Former <a style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/insidefutbol.com\/championship\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Championship<\/a> striker star Sam Parkin believes that skipper Christoph Klarer has by far been the best player of the season for <a style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/insidefutbol.com\/birmingham-city\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Birmingham City<\/a>, which tells the story of their campaign.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It has been a season of ups and downs for Blues, who at one stage were putting in a serious push to finish in the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>However, a rapid decline in their last eight games has seen the Birmingham-based team slide down to 16th, almost ending any thoughts of getting into the top six.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Parkin, <a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/insidefutbol.com\/2026\/03\/29\/too-much-ex-striker-pessimistic-over-birmingham-city-and-norwich-city\/708907\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">who has already indicated that it may be a step too far for for Birmingham City to get into the playoffs<\/a>, gave a further damning assessment of the team, as a whole.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Making a special mention of their skipper Klarer, Parkin insisted that the 25-year-old, as a central defender, has been their best player of the season.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Birmingham_Christoph_Klarer_620_ofg.webp.webp\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Klarer being Birmingham\u2019s top performer, in Parkin\u2019s view, goes a long way towards summing Blues\u2019 season up.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe [Chris Davies] made seven changes [to the lineup for the Ipswich Town game] and I think a lot of these changes were the ones that the supporters desired\u201d, Parkin said on <a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/6oOG1JlmuhpkPxMmlSt0mo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">What The EFL<\/a> (18.39).<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<tr>\nClub played for<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"border: 2px solid #ddd; padding: 12px; background-color: #fec368; color: black;\">Southampton<\/td>\n<td style=\"border: 2px solid #ddd; padding: 12px; background-color: #fec368; color: black;\">St Polten<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"border: 2px solid #ddd; padding: 12px; background-color: #fec368; color: black;\">Fortuna Dusseldorf<\/td>\n<td style=\"border: 2px solid #ddd; padding: 12px; background-color: #fec368; color: black;\">Darmstadt<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"border: 2px solid #ddd; padding: 12px; background-color: #fec368; color: black;\">Birmingham City<\/td>\n<td style=\"border: 2px solid #ddd; padding: 12px; background-color: #fec368; color: black;\">\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<p>Clubs Christoph Klarer has been at<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[Jhon] Solis coming back into midfield, [Phil] Neumann coming back into the heart of the defence alongside Klarer, who has far and wide been their best player this season.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhich tells the story, the big centre-half has been the most consistent of the lot.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Birmingham_Chris_Davies6_620_ofg.webp.webp\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Despite the 2-1 defeat against Ipswich Town, which was Birmingham\u2019s third in-a-row, January signing August Priske <a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/insidefutbol.com\/2026\/04\/07\/birmingham-city-star-sees-lot-of-positives-despite-loss\/709909\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">saw the positives to take from it going forward<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Birmingham are now set to face Wrexham, a team that got promoted together with Blues last season, but are well on course to make the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Davies will want Birmingham to finish as strongly as possible as he tries to make a case to be allowed to go again into next season at the highly ambitious club.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Klarer admitted in December that Birmingham <a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/insidefutbol.com\/2025\/12\/15\/birmingham-city-star-admits-side-trying-to-live-up-to-increased-expectations\/700839\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">are trying to live up to increased expectations<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt McNulty\/Getty Images \u00a0 Former Championship striker star Sam Parkin believes that skipper Christoph Klarer has by far&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,10461,393,4884,16426,16,15],"class_list":["post-878605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-birmingham","tag-birmingham","tag-britain","tag-christoph-klarer","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-sam-parkin","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116365162529051972","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878605","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=878605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}