The entirely unexpected upward trajectory of Birmingham City has been inspired and led by manager Gary Rowett and some much needed clarity and change at boardroom level.

To say it's a surprise to find Birmingham City sitting fourth in the Championship ahead of our visit on Saturday would be an understatement. It's a surprise to find them in the Championship at all.

In the week leading up to our last visit here the season before last, the club's owner Carson Yeung had been found guilty of laundering £55m of his fortune by a court in Hong Kong . The judge described the man who passed the Premier League’s “fit and proper person” test for owners just five years prior, when the investigation had already been launched, as a “habitual liar”. He has been in prison ever since.

Members of Yeung's family sat on the board, and his right hand man Peter Pannu remained as CEO, but Yeung's assets were frozen by the court. Pannu, incidentally, was exposed as one of football’s best paid CEOs, taking a salary of £687,611 and receiving a £405,000 “consultancy fee” on top.

Pannu told the Birmingham Mail that the latter amount was “pocket expenses” for staff in Hong Kong. A stock market expert told the paper the payments were “irregular” and “poorly explained”. The Guardian also says Pannu took a £300,000 lump sum out of the club into his own personal account, claiming he was owed the money as a portion of a legal settlement with former owners David Gold and David Sullivan — reported at £400,000 but nearer to £3.1m according to Pannu.

Pannu, said: “Not too much money has been taken away from the club. The fans have got to understand a few things. In Hong Kong, high-powered executives earn a lot of money. Now, when Carson Yeung gave me these contracts the board knew that unless they paid me this I was not going to come and work for him. It is a demand and supply thing. I am on executive terms. Had BIHL not given me these sort of fees, I wouldn’t be in England."

So not only a mess, and a power vacuum at the top of the club, but also a steady drain of money from Birmingham City into the pockets of Hong Kong businessmen. The usual vultures started to circle — our own beloved Gianni Paladini hovered menacingly The Football League, as you would expect, did nothing.

The situation has improved slightly since. Birmingham season ticket holder Matthew Elliott told LFW: "Panos Pavlakis is the man in the driving seat at present. He’s a director and chief executive at the club and whilst he has some links to Carson Yeung, to say they were on speaking terms would be quite far from the truth. He doesn’t work for the parent company Birmingham International Holdings (BIH) though. Ernst and Young have come in to sort the company out - rooting out evidence of corporate malfeasance, sorting out debt and basically getting it back into shape. They are being aided by investment from Trillion Trophy Asia who have entered an exclusivity period and are currently in the process of potentially buying BIH.

"Although the Trillion Trophy Asia backers have not been publicly announced to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the extremely diligent and famous Birmingham City blogger, Often Partisan (@oftenpartisan), has found proof that the backer is a gentleman by the name of Paul Suen Cho Hung, a Hong Kong businessman who specialises in fixing broken businesses

"The plan is pretty much to get BIH relisted on the HKSE, take action against the main protagonists that have caused the issues (Carson Yeung and Peter Pannu), and then get the club sold. It’s a long process, a very long process, but finally the end is in sight."

Against this backdrop you would expect the football team to struggle, and when we were last here that's exactly what they were doing. On a club-record smashing run of one win from 15 home matches, they made that one from 16 with a 2-0 defeat to Rangers and ultimately survived relegation on the final day of the season, on goal difference, with an injury time goal at Bolton to send Doncaster down instead. Their record in the league at St Andrew's for the whole season was two wins and 13 defeats from 23 games played.

That form continued into the following season, with just two wins from the first 14 league matches. Lee Clark was dismissed as manager but any hope of new-manager bounce was quickly extinguished by an 8-0 (eight nil) loss at home to Bournemouth. In 18 months of football on their own ground Birmingham had won three times in 31 games. This was another Blackpool waiting to happen, logically they too should now be circling the drain in League One and planning trips to Accrington next season.

Step forward Gary Rowett. A steady utility player in his day, he'd played for the Blues for two years around the turn of the century and finished his playing career at Burton Albion in 2007 where he was subsequently appointed assistant manager to Paul Peschisolido.

The Canadian had an unremarkable two years as the Brewers struggled to establish themselves as a Football League club, and when Rowett replaced him — temporarily at first before getting the job permanently — they weren't exactly hanging the bunting up along the A38. How, and why, would the assistant manager who'd been working with Peschisolido really be able to turn things around?

Burton are now aiming for promotion from League One into the Championship for the first time, with manager Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink earning plaudits and catching admiring glances from bigger clubs. But it was Rowett who did the groundwork for him, building a team that lost narrowly in the League Two play-off final, and was then surging towards promotion last season before Hasselbaink arrived. He spurned an advance from Blackpool (sensible guy) but couldn't resist when Birmingham came calling.

The Blues' reward for looking down the leagues for a manager doing well with very little to work with has been a turnaround so remarkable it's difficult to believe. Credit them for not picking up one of the old boys club, a supposed big name, or a fancy European — Gary Rowett, from Burton Albion, has revitalised the entire club. The team is unremarkable, but tireless. Simply set up, well drilled and generally fitter than most other sides they play. He's making a Championship star out of Clayton Donaldson in attack and Demarai Gray is blossoming out of the club's youth set up. The turnaround on the pitch is all the more remarkable, given that it has happened while costs have been slashed — a £12m annual loss reduced to £700,000 p/a in the last set of accounts.

"In my business experience I have never seen a company do such aggressive cost cutting but at the same time, since football is the only asset of the company, have such success and progress on the pitch," Pavlakis said, in a recent exclusive interview with the Birmingham Mail.

They come into the game fourth, unbeaten in five away matches, on the back of consecutive 2-0 wins on the road at Brentford and Leeds. Now Birmingham's biggest problem is whether they'll be able to hang onto their manager when others notice what a magnificent job he's doing. A nice problem to have, after a troubling few years.

Links >>> Official site >>> Often Partisan Blog BCFC Forum >>> Small Heath Alliance >>> Joys and Sorrows Blog >>> Birmingham Mail local paper

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TacticalR added 13:59 - Oct 17 Thanks for your oppo profile. Gary Rowett and Alex Neil were both managers from the lower leagues who had amazing impacts in the Championship last season. Neil really caught the eye with promotion, but given the circumstances Rowett's achievement is perhaps more impressive.
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