Kyogo Furuhashi and Tomoki Iwata are together again for Birmingham’s Championship return
Japanese football has a sharpening sense of player development. Earlier this year, concerns over playing time in Japan’s J1 League inspired the creation of a J.League Under-22 select team to play against student representative opponents and an Under-18 side to tour in Europe. An Under-21 league is under consideration.
It’s not their purpose but those matches will provide the scouts of European clubs with new opportunities to cast an eye over players in the world’s most fashionable footballer marketplace.
Tottenham Hotspur signed defenderKota Takai fromKawasaki Frontale in the highest-profile J1 transfer of the year but the influx of Japanese players was already picking up speed. The imports who’ve proved their worth in Europe are even more attractive.
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PromotedChampionship sideBirmingham City are not fucking about. After leading Hollywood-powered Wrexham up from League One, the Blues are planning a more successful second-tier season than their last.
Birmingham have wealthy and ambitious ownership of their own. While brash statements of intent are more commonly a harbinger of inevitable failure – Blues supporters know that as well as anyone – the sheer weight ofreally meaning it can go a long way.
Fronted by chairman Tom Wagner, Birmingham’s ownership group forced the issue after relegation to League One and smashed transfer records left and right to construct a team that couldn’t fail.
Money is football’s most reliable indicator of probable success but it’s no guarantee. Birmingham’s promotion wasn’t just the outcome of spending big but also of spending well. They’re doing both again this summer.
On top of loan moves for James Beadle and Tommy Doyle, the Blues have brought in Nigerian international Bright Osayi-Samuel, Hannover defender Phil Neumann and prodigal son Demarai Gray, as well as a pair of Japanese players with European football pedigree.
Former Celtic striker Kyogo Furuhashi cut short a brief and unhappy spell at Rennes and midfielder Kanya Fujimoto was acquired from Portugal’s Gil Vicente.
Fujimoto arrived on a free transfer, a low-risk and low-cost shot to nothing, but Kyogo is a coup.
The 30-year-old will link back up with international teammate and former Celtic colleague Tomoki Iwata, who moved to Birmingham from the Scottish champions last summer and was a shrewd signing who had a major impact.
Tomoki Iwata is the on-pitch tactical brain of the Blues
Birmingham were promoted as dominant League One winners by playing a quick and technical brand of football that was aggressive in possession.
Amid the storm, Iwata is the sanctuary. He defines the Blues’ shape and rhythm with and without the ball and manager Chris Davies appreciates the strategic importance of the 28-year-old.
Iwata is a tactically disciplined holding midfielder with a terrific football brain, composed on the ball and able to play quickly under pressure. Davies uses him to control the centre of the pitch, where he can keep Birmingham moving when they have possession and operate effectively as a defensive screen when they don’t.
He plays a crucial role in Davies’ system. Birmingham play with a back three out of possession, sending right back Ethan Laird up the flank and shifting the left back alongside the central defenders. Iwata holds. Davies explains it as a matter of tactical balance.
With 40 appearances in League One last season, Iwata’s importance to Birmingham’s promotion push is beyond debate. The midfielder has won league titles in both Yokohama and Glasgow, and Davies will surely lean on his experience as the Blues seek to make a better fist of the Championship in 2025/26.
Kyogo Furuhashi is Birmingham’s key addition
There’s no secret to what Birmingham will be getting from Iwata’s former Bhoys teammate. Kyogo is a deadly finisher full of fabulous movement and smart running, an endlessly energetic sniffer of attacking opportunities before they reveal themselves.
Like Iwata, Kyogo’s technical ability is excellent. It’s evident in the quality of his link play and the cleverness of his passing, but the bottom line is that Birmingham have signed the former Vissel Kobe man to score goals.
He didn’t score any in his meagre six appearances for Rennes after an ill-fated January move away from Parkhead but he scored 63 times in 116 matches in the Premiership for Celtic despite a quieter 2023/24 after 27 goals in the season before.
Kyogo scored ten Premiership goals in the first half of last season and has, at times, scored at a rate of a goal every 90 minutes.
Even as a four-time Premiership winner, Kyogo has plenty to prove. He bounced back after a less prolific season in Glasgow and he must do it again in the wake of what was little more than an unsatisfying holiday in Ligue 1.
If anything, any question marks lingering over Kyogo’s ability will make him more dangerous than ever in the Championship. He’s good enough to be one of the division’s leading scorers and presumably fired-up enough to show it.
A test for Chris Davies
Kyogo is as wily a signing as Iwata was a year earlier and Birmingham have a young manager who’s showing all the signs of having a bit about him.
Even with money, even with Iwata, Birmingham wouldn’t have been promoted last season without someone as astute as Davies at the helm.
Having been forced to retire from playing at 19, Davies is 20 years into his coaching career. He too worked at Celtic before Brendan Rodgers departed the Premiership and took Davies south to Leicester City.
After coaching at Spurs under Ange Postecoglou, who took both Kyogo and Iwata to Celtic and has no doubt influenced their current situations, Davies was an intriguing appointment at the outset of Birmingham’s rebuild. He has earned the faith of Blues supporters after a single season. When it comes down to it, he’s just very convincing indeed.
Davies faces some obvious challenges as pre-season begins and one of them is to unearth and revive Kyogo’s game and goalscoring instincts after a chastening spell in Brittany.
He might have to deploy him centrally, where he’s proven himself time and again but would be in direct competition with England Under-21 striker Jay Stansfield. They are players with very different profiles and the Championship is a long season; Davies has choices but it’s a puzzle he has to solve.
Birmingham need to stay on their current trajectory, which means continuing to maximise an expensively but cannily assembled squad. They’re tooling up for the Championship and Davies is not short of backing in the transfer market. His goal is to make his team as well oiled a machine as it was in the third tier.
Adapting to the Championship is not easy. There have been teams whose momentum has carried them to back-to-back promotions to the Premier League but more numerous are the teams that come into the division from either direction and take a while to find their feet.
Davies and Birmingham are under immediate pressure to thrive, not just survive. That’s the natural consequence of heavy investment and upward momentum.
They might not be openly targeting another promotion but Birmingham’s owners will have dismissed any notion that avoiding relegation is good enough.
Every test for Davies is new and this one is no different. Equipping him to skip around the outside of the usual hurdles might make it easier but Wagner and Birmingham’s owners will expect him to run faster too.
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