Birmingham City fans had reason to be optimistic early in the 2017/18 season, as the club began the season with Harry Redknapp at the helm.
After escaping relegation on the final day of the previous season, Redknapp set about assembling a squad that he hoped could compete at the opposite end of the Championship table.
Harlee Dean, Maxime Colin, and Jota all arrived from Brentford after he raided one club in particular.
What made Jota so desirable to Birmingham City?
During the second half of the previous season, which saw Blues drop from sixth to twenty-first in the space of five months, Jota continued to play a key role in Dean Smith’s Brentford side, which was consistently one of the division’s more ‘easy on the eye’ sides.
With 11 goals in the Bees’ first season in the Championship, which ended in a play-off semi-final defeat to Middlesbrough, the Spaniard was back to his best two seasons later, accumulating 12 goals and 5 assists in only 21 games.
Who’s to say that if he’d stayed fit throughout the season, they couldn’t have significantly narrowed the eventual gap of 16 points between themselves and the play-offs, given that they were without his talismanic services for nearly half of the season?
How did Jota fare during his time at Birmingham City?
Ironically, the man who brought Jota to St Andrew’s for £6 million would only manage him for three games, as Redknapp was fired after a defeat to Preston that dropped Blues to 23rd in the Championship.
Birmingham eventually survived under the subsequent management of Steve Cotterill and Gareth Monk, but they were the division’s joint-lowest scorers with 38, which was extremely disappointing given some of the creativity on the frontline.
Jota, on the other hand, was responsible for some crucial goals in the run-in against Hull City and Ipswich Town, as well as two assists in the final-day victory over Fulham, which ensured survival.
The following season was a mixed bag for Blues, as they started well but were eventually hit with a nine-point deduction for violating Financial Fair Play rules the previous summer, changing the goal to survival once more.
Finally, Jota demonstrated his abilities once more with eleven assists, but his goals dropped even further to three.
Why will this transfer disappoint Birmingham City fans?
As previously stated, the winger had such pedigree prior to his move to Birmingham, but in retrospect, he will be remembered as one of a slew of transfers from this era in Birmingham’s history that deceived.
What distinguishes this transfer from the others is that, after his second season in Royal Blue, he would reunite with Smith and cross the divide to join Aston Villa following their Championship Play-Off Final victory over Derby County, as the Blue side of the city were left accepting a loss of around £4 million when he departed for Villa Park.
His impact in Claret and Blue, on the other hand, was minimal, with only 16 appearances, one goal, and two assists.
What happened to Jota since then?
Eventually, his career began to wane, and he retired in 2021, with Deportivo Alaves being his final club.
