David Gold - Football
Blues Magazine, November 2004 Part Three
"We believed that we could get this football club into the Premiership within a couple or three years."
And it wasn't just physical, it was emotional as well. The football club was so damaged emotionally. If you bumped into a Blues fan in the street, he had his scarf hidden inside his jacket, and there were the Villa fans with their scarves waving in the air.
If your club is down that's one thing, but if your serious, serious rival is up, it makes it twice as bad, twice as painful. When your rival is in such good spirits and successful and you're going through such a bad, bad time, from a fan's point of view - and I relate to the fan, the supporter, they're part of this heart and soul of a football club - it's twice as difficult to drag yourself up.
When we got relegated, when your sights were set on promotion, it must have been a pretty difficult time.
Well, at the time of course, it was the most desperate, desperate, desperate thing that had ever happened to me. Here I am at a time of my life when I'm looking to achieve success. I could no longer be a player, I'm too old to run the 100 yards and be an Olympic champion, I can't swim for Britain, but I can now be part of a successful football club.
As fans we'd rather be out there playing but we can't, so the next best thing we can do is to participate in it in some way.
Here we were arriving at the club to become saviours and turn this football club into a great club again. You've been working hard in your business and suddenly you've got this opportunity. It's a great challenge. I can remember thinking, 'Wow! We can have an impact on this mighty football club,' and of course in the first year wc were just getting to grips with issues but then came the dreaded 'R' word, relegation.
Getting relegated was one of the worst moments in my life, I have to tell you.
Coming home from Tranmere, having beaten Tranmere, I felt cheated because I believe Portsmouth put out their reserve team in the last game of the season, enabling West Brom to beat them 1-0 and West Brom stayed up, if you recall and wc went down, I think on goal difference.
Everyone was distraught, especially the fans, they had all dressed up for the occasion and were fantastic. It was an awful, awful moment.
You didn't think of packing it all in! No, definitely not. We were even more determined to get the club into the Premiership. Everybody played their part in the resurgence of Birmingham City Football Club. The Golds, David Sullivan, Karren Brady notably in the early stages, Barry Fry then Trevor Francis, Steve Bruce and so many other people behind the scenes.
Even when people said Barry Fry was never good enough for this and Trevor Francis was too dour for that, but they all played their part, they all left their mark.
Strangely, relegation was probably one of the most important moments in the history of Birmingham City Football Club. It was almost a requirement. What we had been doing was patching up the patient, we were sticking bits of slicking plaster over it and trying to say, 'OK this is a patient who can go into the Premiership'. What I now believe, looking back, it was almost a requirement to go down. Wc had to be put in our place. This is your penance, you've done all of these things bad as a club, you are relegated to the Second Division.
But it really started the rebirth of the football club. What I realised was up until then we were just bumbling along in the First Division. What we needed to do was get well again, wipe the slate clean and start afresh.I can remember feeling terrible, absolutely terrible on that drive home from Tranmere and couldn't sleep that night, woke up at six o'clock in the morning, rang my brother and I said, "What I think we should do is give Barry a million pounds, really attack this division, win the division, win that trophy whatever it was called. (I couldn't remember the name of it at that time, it turned out to be the Auto Windscreens Shield).
We'll win the Second Division Championship, we'll win the Auto Windscreens Trophy and that will be the beginning of the rebirth of Birmingham City Football Club." "David, it's six o'clock in the morning," he said but I was genuinely excited. I put the phone down, then I called David Sullivan, expressed my enthusiasm, he was really down, we were all down and yet I suddenly felt that it was a fantastic opportunity.I saw it rather like the phoenix rising from the ashes. In my view it was the trigger for the rebirth of the Blues.