American nightmare! Birmingham are staring relegation after Tom Brady's takeover

This was sold as the year Birmingham City would embrace the American Dream but the reality is proving a nightmare.

When NFL great Tom Brady, a minority owner of the Championship club, joined fans for a pint at The Roost pub before the 1-0 win over Leeds last August, it should have been the start of a great sporting partnership.

Yet since sacking John Eustace in October with the club lying sixth in the Championship, very little has gone right for Blues.

They have plans worth £2billion to transform the club but those big ideas will take some launching from the third tier of English football.

Beating Norwich on Saturday will be a tall order and if Plymouth and Sheffield Wednesday win, even that will not be enough to keep them out of League One.

Had Tony Mowbray, the club’s third manager of the season, not had to step away from the job in February to receive medical treatment, it is doubtful Blues would be in this predicament. They collected 10 points from six matches under Mowbray and had they maintained that form, Birmingham would have been safe long ago.

Yet that does not mask the huge error made by the Blues hierarchy, led by chairman Tom Wagner and chief executive Garry Cook, that effectively derailed the club’s season. Bewitched by big names and apparently desperate to find a sporting icon to match Brady’s fame, they hired Wayne Rooney as manager last October, even though there was no basis at all for doing so.

Cook promised a ‘no fear’ approach under Rooney but that label must terrify him now. Because fear was exactly what Rooney’s appointment spread throughout the club.

First among the players, who had understood their jobs inside out under Eustace and were suddenly expected to turn into Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona. Then