It's been roughly 18 months since Birmingham City raised eyebrows around the world by welcoming a giant of American football through the doors at St Andrew's stadium when it was announced that NFL legend Tom Brady had purchased a minority stake (reported to be 3.3%) in the club.
Unfortunately, the sudden presence of a seven-time Super Bowl winner in their midst wasn't enough to prevent the Blues from suffering relegation down from the Championship last season. However, after spending big in successive transfer windows, Birmingham are now responsible for the three highest fees paid for a transfer in League One's history: Jay Stansfield (€17.8m), Christoph Klarer (€4.2m) and Willum Thór Willumsson (€4m). They are top of League One and look well on course to return straight back to the second tier at the first time of asking.
To fully assess the supporters' feelings towards their high-profile stakeholder, ESPN reporter João Castelo Branco mingled with Birmingham fans ahead of the FA Cup tie against fellow League One opponents Lincoln City in mid-January to get a measure of the former New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback standing among the locals.
Brady was brought into the Birmingham front office by the club's owners Shelby Companies Ltd, who are headed up by U.S. financier Tom Wagner. Set up in Birmingham in 2023, Shelby Companies is a subsidiary of Wagner's Knighthead Investment group and was named in reference to the hit TV series "Peaky Blinders," which was set in England's second city.
"The overseas investment from the U.S. guys is making a massive difference to the club," one Birmingham fan told ESPN ahead of the Lincoln game. "You can see from today that it's a lower-league cup game and everybody is still turning up."
While fortunes have been mixed during Brady's tenure thus far, it would appear that consensus among City supporters is that the 47-year-old has had a positive impact since his unlikely arrival in August 2023, just months after retiring from the NFL for a second and final time.
"There were teething problems at first, but we'd been struggling for over 10 years and you can't turn an oil tanker around overnight," said another optimistic Birmingham supporter. "The fans are still turning out because we don't mind. We can accept a few mistakes along the way because the transformation in the club has been amazing. Regardless of relegation, it's got the fans back interested.
"There are more people at the stadium now [in League One] than there were last season, so we're definitely turning. I think we'll be back in the top half of the Championship next year!"
Even relegation to the third tier hasn't dissuaded the majority of City fans, who last saw their team play in the Premier League in 2010-11, the same season the Blues shocked Arsenal 2-1 to win the League Cup final at Wembley. The supporters ESPN spoke to broadly agree that Brady's marquee arrival is among the most positive and exciting things to happen to the club in the years since.
"Brady is a proven winner and he's hopefully instilling that here at Birmingham City. Hopefully we can go and win as many leagues and trophies as he did," said one fan, who admitted that he hadn't followed Brady's NFL playing career closely. "I'm not massive on my NFL but his name is very familiar. I don't watch American football. But I still knew who Tom Brady was, which shows that he's still got a big presence in the U.K.
"Birmingham fans have been wanting investment for a long time, so I think we'd have taken anything, but having Brady as the face of the club is brilliant. It shows we've got high-calibre people trying to get our club where we want to be."
Another fan said: "Tom Brady's involvement really encapsulates what they're trying to do and really shows that the club is on an upward trajectory. You see investment going into the squad and you can see we're getting better because of it."
It's still unclear just how much Brady is involved on a day-to-day basis, although when he made his investment it was also announced that he would become chairman of the club's advisory board. He has been a sporadic presence at St Andrew's so far but has made several conspicuous appearances in the terraces, not least when he took his seat alongside David Beckham for the so-called "Hollywood Derby" against fellow celebrity-owned franchise Wrexham [owned by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney] in League One last September.
"Even if it's just his image, the Brady association is only going to be a good thing," said one Birmingham fan who just so happened to be wearing a wooly Green Bay Packers hat to shield him from the winter chill. "We were here for the Wrexham game when Brady sat in the Paddocks [the lower tier of the Main Stand] next to Beckham. The atmosphere was just amazing. It showed the trajectory of the club.
"It's great to have a name like Brady involved and it will prick up a lot of ears in the States who'll be wanting to know who this club is that the biggest NFL star of all time is getting involved with."
Asked about his choice of headwear, considering Brady's long association with the Patriots, the fan revealed that his decision to support the Packers was almost as cursed as his decision to follow the Blues.
"Funnily enough, I chose to support the Packers because they won the Super Bowl the same year the Blues were relegated from the Premier League and I wanted to cheer myself up by following a winning team," he said. "The Packers haven't won the Super Bowl since. That's just my luck!"