Darren Carter talks about his desire for Birmingham City, the regret he felt for Wast Hills and Tony Mowbray.

The two senior teams of Birmingham City have arrived at pivotal junctures in their individual campaigns. While the ladies are still vying for a spot in the ladies’s Super League, the men are preparing for another round of relegation.

After losing two straight games prior to this international break, there isn’t much space for error, therefore Sunday’s matchup with Crystal Palace is important.Blues Women are four points behind second-place Palace and five points behind the leaders in WSL 2, despite having a game remaining. The only team promoted to the top flight will be the second tier winners.

It was always going to be expected of Darren Carter and his team to perform even better this season after missing out on promotion by one point the previous one.That was the expectation that Tom Wagner established when Knighthead took over the club in July. With seven games remaining, they are leading the pack.

Blues Women manager Carter stated on the Keep Right On podcast, “We need consistency.” Of course, we play the teams who surround us. Our next game is against Palace, and we still have to travel to Charlton, but right now the league is quite unpredictable.

“I know it was getting stronger throughout the season because I spoke with coaches in the Championship before we entered it last year. This year has proven that once more, since teams are now investing in one another and the quality of opposition is increasing competition. In the later half of the season, I believe there will be a lot more shocks.

The Blues have not had a good international window. Carter has been left to stew over a rare home defeat to Southampton while most of his players have jetted off to play for their countries.

With many of them not returning until Friday, Carter will only have two full days to be ready for the Palace game. The news that Jamie Finn, a key midfield player for the Blues, suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury during an Ireland training session also shocked them.

“It seems like there’s a lot of international breaks within the women’s game and it’s very stop-start,” he explained. “For me personally it’s a double-edged sword, we are very privileged to have a lot of internationals within our squad which is great for them going away representing their countries, but it does leave us with very few numbers for training.

“From a personal standpoint, I don’t really enjoy the international breaks because I lose a lot of players, which clearly affects how well you can prepare for the following game. The building is only reopened on Friday, the day before our Sunday match against Crystal Palace.

Since Knighthead has boosted support for the women’s team during the last seven months, expectations are high.The vastly experienced former England manager Hope Powell was hired as technical director and Brazil international Ivana Fuso was among the high profile signings made last summer.

Take a listen to the podcast Keep Right On.

“Investment was needed in all sorts of areas, probably every area,” Carter said, honestly. In my opinion, it was desperately required. The women’s squad was in the worst situation it had ever been when I joined in November 2021. It needed a rejig and a reset, and it needed taking care of because it had just been left to rot.

Sometimes it has been difficult to keep things moving forward. When Knighthead came in and the plans they have in place to improve everything at the club, including the women’s team, it was a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s going to take time because there’s so much that needs to be done across the club. It’s going to take a while to fix the years of neglect, especially with the women’s team.”

He added: “The biggest thing I could probably say, when I first came back to the club it just felt like everyone was to their own entity – the men’s first team, the men’s academy, the women’s team. It was off the back of Covid with bubbles and everything like that, but it just didn’t feel like the football club I knew growing up supporting and being part of.

“It just didn’t feel like Birmingham City and I remember saying if I could pick us up and take us to another site on our own I would do that, because you had a lot of people who were super drained because they had been completely overworked, under-resourced and underfunded. To see the change now, and to see where the football club is heading, is worlds apart from what I walked back into.”

The redevelopment of Wast Hills has also been bankrolled by Knighthead. It is almost a year since a fire ripped through Blues’ training ground and forced the men’s first team to relocate to Henley-in-Arden. The women’s team and the academy have had to muddle through.

“Wast Hills at the moment is very much a building site. Women’s staff and academy staff are in Portakabins for offices, which is fine because we’ve seen the plans that are in place. You can take that for the interim.

“There is a lot of work going on. The groundsmen, Dale Ketteridge and his team, work incredibly hard across the two sites to keep the pitches in good condition and in the best possible standard that they can. You just feel like, yes there is still a transition happening, but it’s for the greater good. The investment is there, the plans are in place and everything is being done to get it ready as quickly as possible.

“There’s things that will be ready at the end of this month, things will be ready at the end of April and throughout the summer more stuff is going to be completed. By the end of it, it’s going to be a proper facility and a facility that will allow the academy and the women’s team to flourish.”

Aside from talking about his routine as a manager, Carter reflected about his days spent working for Tony Mowbray.Carter is revered by Blues supporters for his 2002 Championship play-off final winning penalty, yet five years later, he participated in another version of the wealthiest football game.

In 2007, Carter played for Mowbray’s West Bromwich Albion team, who lost 1-0 at Wembley to Derby County. Carter’s lone regret from his playing career is leaving for Preston North End that summer.

“When I was there, Tony took over for Bryan Robson, and he made it obvious from the start how he wanted to play with his philosophy,” the man stated. It was exciting to me as a midfield player who preferred to have the ball rather than play a transitional game. From a coaching standpoint, the ball was involved in everything. You used the ball to get your conditioning.

“Up until that point, he was the only manager I had had who actually wanted to know you as a person and would ask questions about your personal life. Your old school managers, Steve Bruce, Mick McCarthy, and Bryan Robson, were the ones I had before, but Tony was a forward-thinking coach who wanted you to know that he cared about you in addition to wanting the best out of you.

“Dude, we lost to them in the play-off final that year. When I spoke with Tony in the summer, he had cycled the team and the roster a lot. Preston was showing interest at the time, and they were vying for a spot in the Premier League. I recall taking the action.

“I had planned to go to Preston and start every game, so it wasn’t like I left on bad terms or anything.” Even though I don’t have any regrets, looking back, Preston missed the play-offs and West Brom ended up winning the season. I would have stayed at West Brom under Tony if I could go back in time and possibly change my mind. If I had any regrets about my career, that would be the only one.

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