Birmingham City midfielder Daniel Crowley believes that the club can achieve promotion this season and they are the underdogs for it.
Crowley, 22, was recently talking to the Times about how Craig Gardner persuaded him to join the Blues. And he also spoke confidently about the possibilities of Premier League promotion.
He said: “Craig’s been a great help with his coaching. He’s the link between the players and the staff, the middle man, and I think that helps in a team.
“The Gaffer (Pep Clotet) is a really intelligent guy. The stuff we work on in training during the week, you can really feel it working on a Saturday.
“I think we can get promoted. We’re the underdogs as well — no one thinks we’ll go up.”
From the Netherlands to Birmingham
Crowley, a product of the famed Arsenal youth academy, joined Birmingham from Dutch side Willem II this past summer. He arrived for an undisclosed fee and signed an initial two-year-long deal at the club.
This season, he has played as many as 14 times in the Championship. He has racked up a tally of three assists, even though he hasn’t scored a single goal yet.
Crowley started off his professional career with Aston Villa and Arsenal. He spent loan stints at clubs like Oxford United, Barnsley and with Go Ahead Eagles in the Netherlands, before joining Willem II in the summer of 2017.
For the Eredivisie club last season, Crowley had appeared 34 times in the league. He racked up a tally of five goals and seven assists.
TIF Tactics
Crowley is right in one aspect, but wrong in the second. Birmingham are underdogs, but it seems unlikely that they make the jump into the Premier League at the end of this season.
They are currently 12th in the league but are only five points behind sixth-placed Bristol City. They are also only eight points behind league-leaders West Bromwich Albion.
But the Blues have scored the fourth-lowest number of goals in the league, finding the back of the net only 16 times. Even defensively, they are right at the middle of the table for goals conceded. They have shipped 20 goals, which is the 12th-best in the league.
The numbers show that Pep Clotet’s men might just finish in the upper half of the table this season, although still fall short of a play-off spot.