I saw with my own eyes bad characters plaguing Birmingham City - they'll build on this reset
Birmingham City had forward Lyle Taylor on loan in 2022 and he scored five goals in 14 appearances while at Blues
Former Birmingham City forward Lyle Taylor is delighted to see the success his old club are having after years of neglect suffered under the previous regime - something he experienced first hand.
Taylor spent the second half of the 2021-22 season on loan at Blues from Nottingham Forest, and scored five goals in 14 appearances under Lee Bowyer.
Taylor, who is still producing for Colchester United in League Two - he has scored 13 goals this season - was taken by the club during his time at St Andrew's, despite what were difficult ongoing circumstances; under Trillion Trophy Asia, the ground was in disrepair and the lack of a clear direction in recruitment meant Blues circled the Championship plughole for years before their eventual demise.
In Taylor's short time at the club, he witnessed what he considered to be a 'plague of bad characters' which stemmed from the previous ownership and meant that Blues, on the pitch, made little progress. Fast forward to the present day, and he is pleased to see that the reset in League One, under Knighthead, has had the desired effect.
"It's good to see a club like Birmingham, a really, really big club with a lot of history, who have been floundering with bad ownership - it's good to see them having success now," Taylor told BBC Radio 5 Live. "The target for me now, surely, from here is to get nine more points and get the League One record points tally. That'll be in the back of their minds.
"They'll have enjoyed Tuesday night. I'm sure there'll have been a few who were a little bit worse for wear, but they've got a massive cup final this weekend to win which would see them probably doing the double. That's all Birmingham City fans want to see.
"I absolutely loved my time there and the fans were fantastic. It's a really good group of fans and a really, really good football club which seems to be going in the right direction. The club was plagued with bad characters. I saw it with my own eyes - people who were very much in it for themselves and not in it for the betterment of the football club.
"That comes from previous ownerships, who handed out contracts that put players in positions of power, whereby 'I know now that I'm bigger than this football club, and more important'. If you have an ownership that does that, you're setting the club up to fail.
"Birmingham City has always been the working man's football club. It's not glitz and glamour. The fans just want to see you try really hard, run around and have a go. That's what I saw from my time there. There was no 'we're the biggest club in the Midlands' - they just wanted their team to work hard and try to win a few football matches.
"They've had a really good reset, and I think they'll build forward successfully now - but they'll want to get promoted to the Premier League next season."
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