Birmingham City owner: I want Dalglish (… in my photo)

By Nick Harris

5 April 2010

On a journalistic assignment at Birmingham City yesterday, I just happened to be in the BCFC boardroom shortly after the end of the 1-1 draw with Liverpool when Kenny Dalglish came through from the adjoining dining room to say goodbye to his host for the day, Carson Yeung, Birmingham’s owner.

Mr Yeung was eager to know if anybody had a camera, so he could be snapped with the Liverpool legend. Dalglish was one of the players Yeung admired from afar in English football as a teenager in the late 70s; ‘King Kenny’ moved to Liverpool from Celtic for a British record transfer fee in 1977.

Being the only person with a camera, I duly obliged with some pics (below), and while the match result must have come as yet another disappointment for any Liverpool fan (Dalglish included) the atmosphere in the boardroom was never less than cordial.

Statistically, it was not a surprising result: Birmingham are the only Premier League team, current or former, that have never lost a Premier League game against Liverpool under Rafa Benitez’s management.

One other snippet, aside from the general boardroom consensus that Birmingham’s current manager, Alex McLeish, is highly regarded as a major asset. We hear Big ‘Eck might be off soon – to the Continent. (But only scouting, we might add). How does Liege in midweek sound? Not especially glam, until you realise that the Belgian strugglers are playing FC Hamburg on Thursday in the Europa League.

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