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<\/p>\nBirmingham City held their annual awards dinner at the ICC in Birmingham on Sunday evening<\/p>\n
09:30, 04 May 2026Updated 09:44, 04 May 2026<\/p>\n
![\"Christoph](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0_JS395945320.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Christoph Klarer retained Birmingham City’s Player of the Season awards at the club’s awards night on Sunday<\/p>\n
Christoph Klarer was the big winner at Birmingham City\u2019s<\/a> awards dinner for the second year running.<\/p>\n Blues captain Klarer<\/a> retained his two Player of the Year awards \u2014 one voted for by his peers and the other by the fans \u2014 as the club celebrated its 150th year at the ICC in the city centre.<\/p>\n The women\u2019s team had greater cause for celebration than the men this year after Amy Merricks\u2019 side earned promotion to the Women\u2019s Super League with a final day victory over title rivals Charlton on Saturday.<\/p>\n It was roles reversed from last year when the men were the stars of the show after a record-breaking season in League One. The women had to show up 12 months ago hours after they had missed out on promotion in a final day shoot-out with London City Lionesses.<\/p>\n Merricks enjoyed this year\u2019s bash a little more.<\/p>\n “When I think back to this night last year, that was really challenging, really challenging,” Merricks told BirminghamLive.<\/strong> “We actually didn’t lose to London City last season either. We deserved to win the league last season and I truly believe that, unfortunately sometimes that happens in football.<\/p>\n “We made sure we made it count this season. After feeling such sorrow last year it makes it feel even sweeter this year.<\/p>\n “I was just sharing a table with Chris (Davies)<\/a> there and he was saying that a lot of teams when they just miss out, normally the second year there’s a crumble and there wasn’t, we came back stronger, we came back fighting.”<\/p>\n Lily Crosthwaite was the big winner on the women\u2019s side, claiming all four awards. Klarer was joined in the winners\u2019 enclosure by Jay Stansfield \u2014 who claimed Young Player of the Year for the third year running \u2014 and Alex Cochrane for his thunderous volley versus Millwall.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t quite the euphoric evening of last year, but it was a world away from the surreal experience of two years ago when Stansfield cleared up the day after the club was relegated.<\/p>\n Everyone turned up hoping to hear something of an update on Tom Wagner<\/a> who hasn\u2019t been seen or heard since suffering a stroke in February.<\/p>\n Chief executive Jeremy Dale<\/a> at least offered up something: \u201cI have been asked about 50,000 times to send best wishes to Tom and I can assure you I have done that. He cannot wait to be back at St Andrew\u2019s with us.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrew Shannahan was in the building to represent Knighthead<\/a> but the American left Dale to do the talking.<\/p>\n Dale briefly touched on the men\u2019s first season back in the Championship which, for some, hasn\u2019t lived up to the expectations Knighthead\u2019s words created. Whether those expectations were realistic is another matter.<\/p>\n Dale said: \u201cI have heard many of our fans say this has been a good year of consolidation.<\/p>\n \u201cMy reaction: Consolidation? You must be kidding. This has been a year of progress. We measure progress by more than our men\u2019s first team.<\/p>\n \u201cWe posted record revenues for 2024\/25 and I can assure you this year we\u2019ve grown more than we even dreamed of.\u201d<\/p>\n In focusing on the positives Dale also drew attention to the improvements made at St Andrew\u2019s which has seen sell out after sell out in the last two years.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cA former employee recently returned to St Andrew\u2019s and couldn\u2019t believe what it looked like now.<\/p>\n \u201cThat former employee was Jude Bellingham and he loved seeing St Andrew\u2019s as it is now.\u201d<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, that went down rather well.<\/p>\n The evening was slicker than usual in terms of timings, helped by a solid debut from host Lara Davies, and everything was announced by 10:30pm.<\/p>\n Plenty stayed to enjoy the entertainment, but plenty dispersed in different directions. A small group of players headed for the ever popular Albert\u2019s Schloss to toast a season\u2019s work.<\/p>\n For now they will rest, reflect and recharge because no one was hiding what the aim is for next season.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re excited for next year and we know we will push on,\u201d Dale said with a nod to the men\u2019s team in his address.<\/p>\n Pushing on equals the play-offs at least. The ambition is still there, in fact Dale has recently claimed that no football club in the world has greater ambitions.<\/p>\n Over to you again, Chris Davies.<\/p>\n 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. 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Read our Privacy Notice.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Birmingham City held their annual awards dinner at the ICC in Birmingham on Sunday evening 09:30, 04 May…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":936817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,1205,748,393,4884,84056,2676,8161,16,15],"class_list":["post-936816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-birmingham","tag-birmingham","tag-birmingham-city-fc","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-jeremy-dale","tag-jude-bellingham","tag-tom-wagner","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116515619672714109","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936816","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=936816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/936817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}