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Craig Gardner opens the door to Birmingham City copying Manchester City transfer model
Craig Gardner is open to the idea of Birmingham City owners Knighthead going down the multi-club model to aid the club’s recruitment strategy.
Several English clubs have successfully applied the model in recent years to facilitate the trading of players and loans. Manchester City’s owners formed City Football Group which also includes clubs in America, Australia, Spain, France and Italy.
City have benefitted greatly from the arrangement by loaning their fringe players to fellow members of the group and cherry-picking the best players developed for Pep Guardiola’s first team.
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Brazilian winger Savinho is a good example of the model’s success. The 20-year-old Brazil international was plucked from his homeland by Troyes – who are owned by City Football Group – and loaned to fellow member Girona, where he scored nine goals in 37 La Liga outings last season, before being transferred to Manchester City in the summer.
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Blues aren’t ready to implement a similar model yet but technical director Gardner likes the idea. Responding to a question about it at the Open House event on Wednesday, Gardner said: “We haven’t spoken about it if I’m honest. It would be good for me, personally, if we could do that.
"Five to 10 years down the line, if that’s something we could achieve with the way recruitment is going now with players and bringing players from overseas, or the points system that you have to get round, there’s loads of things that we could consider. I think that would be good for us if we could do that.”
Having been a one-man band for a large chunk of his tenure as technical director, Gardner has been given plenty of support in the last 18 months. Blues leaned on data analytics heavily during the summer transfer window to sign 17 new players to suit the style of manager Chris Davies.
