Birmingham close to £500,000 signing with medical already completed

Birmingham City are closing in on yet another signing as they continue their busy summer following relegation to League One, it has emerged.

Birmingham aiming for instant Championship return

Relegated from the Championship on the final day of the 2023/24 campaign, new manager Chris Davies will be looking for an instant return to England’s second tier.

They had not been in the third tier since 1992, and have been backed to be crowned League One winners come the end of the campaign. To achieve that, they have been busy in the transfer market, signing seven players already.

Alfie May has arrived from Charlton Athletic, and marked his arrival with a pre-season winner against Rangers, while ex-Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday shot-stopper Bailey Peacock-Farrell has also been recruited and started against the Scottish giants.

Also named in the starting XI were new signings Emil Hansson, Alex Cochrane and Willum Willumsson, while Christoph Klarer and Ryan Allsop both came off the substitutes’ bench to contribute to the pre-season win. Now, they are all set to be joined by an eighth new face before the first game of the season kicks off against Reading on August 10th.

Leonard on verge of Birmingham switch

That comes as Marc Leonard is on the verge of arriving at the Club from Brighton. The young midfielder watched the pre-season friendly from the stands and is set to complete a switch to the midlands in a deal worth a total of £500,000, according to transfer reporter Fabrizio Romano, with a medical already having been completed.

In fact, Birmingham boss Davies has already confirmed that Leonard is on the verge of arriving at St Andrew’s. “That one is pretty close. That will be our eighth signing of the transfer window so it’s a huge volume of players but we need more,” he said.

“We had a lot of youngsters coming on so it’s important that we have depth. The volume of games we’re going to play this season could be touching 60 so we need a strong squad to do what we need to do. We need a few more but he (Leonard) gets finalised and that’s another good player that joins us.”

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Still just 22 years old, Leonard was into the final 12 months of his contract at the AMEX and will leave with just two senior appearances for the Seagulls, both coming in the 2021/22 campaign.

He has spent the last two seasons on loan with Northampton Town, helping them get promoted out of League Two and then ensuring that they avoided relegation in 2023/24, meaning that he is likely to come up against plenty of his former teammates this season while in Birmingham colours.