Birmingham City boss hints at Alex Jones departure
Birmingham City manager Gary Rowett indicated earlier this month that the club could be prepared to sell the on-loan striker.
Jones is on loan with Vale until the New Year and has been a big success with eight goals already.
Back on October 8th, Rowett indicated that the club may be interested in selling the striker.
The key points of Rowett’s interview
- Jones is not close enough to the first-team
- Sometimes you have to let players move on
- He has a career but it could be away from Birmingham
- Birmingham’s u23 squad should provide players to sell on as well as ones for the first-team
On Tuesday night, Port Vale owner Norman Smurthwaite indicated an interest in a permanent deal for the striker. Smurthwaite commented: “I had a meeting with the CEO of Birmingham and we’re putting a proposal forward as we speak. The way to go forward would be to acquire his services in January.”
By reading between the lines of Rowett’s comments, it appears that Vale should be fairly confident of landing their man.
What Rowett had to say…
Below are details of the Blues’ boss interview with the official Birmingham City website.
“We got to the point with Jonesy where we felt he wasn’t getting enough game time and not getting close enough to the first team.
Sometimes you have to say ‘To be fair to you, go and have a career somewhere’. We have done that with quite a few…
“In all fairness I don’t think he’d done enough and I would hope he would understand that himself.
“Would he be playing in front of Clayton ? Would he be playing in front of the likes of Diego ?
“At 22 at some point you have to say ‘You have got to go out and play some games and see where you are on the footballing ladder’.
“If he play 50 games at League One and goes and scores 15 goals you could quite comfortably say then maybe his level is top end League One, maybe even Championship and fair play to him.
He has shown he can definitely have a career somewhere. Whether that career is with Birmingham City or whether that career is elsewhere.
“You have to remember we have a lot of players at the Club that sometimes you have to say ‘To be fair to you, go and have a career somewhere’. We have done that with quite a few.
“Sometimes you just have to let players move on. Jonesy is one that is inbetween at the moment. He is still under contract to us.
“I still believe our Under 23s, if we do it properly, not only should it provide players for the first team squad, it should also provide players that at some point we can sell for money as a sound football business.
“That is something I have looked at, Leicester did it really well two or three years ago in the Championship.
“They would sell players for 50-grand, they would sell players for 100-grand and it just keeps recycling that business side of the club.
“That’s also something we will always look at when we recruit players at that level.”