The Real Food Chain

Yesterday, Barry Bannan, once of this manor but now forever aligned to Sheffield Wednesday, was subjected to boos from the “few fans left” in Birmingham’s 3-0 defeat at Millwall.

The Delusion Derby a couple of weeks ago threw up jeering and cat-calling aplenty for Jama down the Sty, just like Cameron Archer’s successful goalscoring visit earlier in the season.

It’s an odd approach on many levels, not least being Birmingham’s salivating hunger to recruit any player who has worn the claret and blue.

True, they only become an option after not making the grade at Villa Park or because they’re ready to draw their pension.

But even so, a truly astonishing 37 players have been brought in by an ecstatic boardroom, those even only on nodding terms with the first-team at Blues’ top-flight neighbour, are breathlessly introduced as a coup for the ages. That is, until the next one.

So odds are, should Cam and Jama’s careers take a downward turn further than Southampton and Albion, then they too may one day be another casualty that used to be booed by the fans with presumably the shortest memories in football.

Firstly, though, and for the sake of balance, how many ex-Birmingham players have ultimately landed at Villa?

Well, you’ll have a hard time finding many…

Apart from two genuine club-to-club transfers, thirty-six years apart, with the last having come seven years ago there’s the player who spent a short time at Blues’ academy as a teenager, a former loanee who years later became a Villa loanee, a player so desperate to leave Birmingham that he made himself a free agent, an emergency goalkeeping loan for our reserve team in the 80’s and a bit-part striker who moved up in the world to Premier League Wigan from relegated Birmingham before challenging for major honours at Villa.

Kortney Hause, Jota Peleteiro, Scott Sinclair, Emile Heskey, Chris Sutton, Alan Curbishley and Martin Thomas. And that’s it.

Of those, only Emile Heskey made more than 50 League appearances for Villa; the rest barely making, if even reaching double digits.

King Kortney, once on Blues' books as a kid before fleeing down south

Full Player Profile: https://www.avfchistory.co.uk/player/kortney-hause

Jota became the first player that Villa had signed from neighbours Birmingham City since Alan Curbishley in 1983

Full Player Profile: https://www.avfchistory.co.uk/player/jota-peleteiro

Scott Sinclair, one of his SEVEN loans before arriving at VP was with Birmingham,

Full Player Profile: https://www.avfchistory.co.uk/player/scott-sinclair

Emile Heskey, arriving from the mighty Wigan after 78 appearances for Small Heath in the mid 2000s

Full Player Profile: https://www.avfchistory.co.uk/player/emile-heskey

Chris Sutton, joined as a free agent after a 6-month spell across the City

Full Player Profile: https://www.avfchistory.co.uk/player/chris-sutton

Left Birmingham for Villa - the last to do so for 36 years - but could only muster 40 odd appearances in three seasons

Full Player Profile: https://www.avfchistory.co.uk/player/alan-curbishley

Once the Jacamo Adidas Two-Stripe is on the other foot, however, things look rather different, as Blues have raided the Villa back-catalogue like a randy teenager with his mom’s Freeman’s lingerie page …

There’s Finley Thorndike, Scott Hogan. Matija Šarkić, Gary “run the full length of the St. Andrews pitch to celebrate scoring for Villa” Gardner, Jordan Graham, Dan Crowley, Shane Lowry, Nathan’s brother Emmitt Delfouneso, boyhood Villa/Sunderland/Albion/Birmingham fan Craig Gardner, pub-team captain Curtis Davies, Liam Ridgewell, Kevin Phillips, Ulises de la Cruz, Boaz Myhill, Neil Kilkenny, Keith Fahey, Colin Doyle, DJ Campbell, Neil Barnes, Gary Charles, Dwight Yorke, Carl Tiler, Tommy Mooney, Kevin Poole, Phil Robinson, Dennis Mortimer, Peter Withe, Des Bremner, Mark Jones, Tony Morley, David Geddis, Tony Rees, Kevin Rogers, Robert Hopkins, Noel Blake, Ivor Linton, Lee Jenkins.

With a habit like that, clearly, Villa aren’t Blues’ rivals, we’re their idols.

Maybe that’s why they get so antsy all the time and hover over Villa social media like flies around their first-team.

They secretly love us and want to be us. We simply don’t care.

As old as the day is long. It’s the story of plain and simple unrequited love.