Kyogo's Struggles at Birmingham City: A Costly Gamble

When Birmingham City landed Kyogo in the summer of 2025, it felt like a statement. Eighty-five goals in 165 games for Celtic. Champions League minutes in his legs. Movement that shredded Scottish Premiership defences. This was supposed to be the marquee signing that dragged a newly promoted side up to Championship speed in an instant.

He was meant to light up St Andrew’s. Instead, the lights went out almost immediately.

The plan was simple enough: pair Kyogo’s relentless running and penalty-box instincts with the sharp, rising talent of Jay Stansfield. One seasoned finisher, one emerging star, both feeding off each other in a division where chaos in the box often decides seasons.

That vision never got off the ground.

The 31-year-old stumbled through the opening weeks. Touch slightly off, timing just a fraction late, the instinct that had once made everything look easy suddenly deserting him. The early chances came, the early goals did not. Momentum slipped away. So did his confidence.

One league goal. That’s all he had to show before a long-standing shoulder issue finally forced him under the knife and out of the season. A campaign that was supposed to be a fresh chapter became a cautionary tale.

Former Birmingham man Clinton Morrison has watched it unfold with a mix of disbelief and frustration. Speaking to GOAL with Freebets.com, he admitted he simply cannot square this version of Kyogo with the ruthless finisher who tormented defences in Glasgow.

“At Celtic his movement and the chances and the goals he was scoring were fantastic,” Morrison said. At Birmingham, the chances didn’t dry up immediately. The goals did. “He was getting the chances at Birmingham City but just wasn't putting them in, and that can happen. That's just a player short on confidence and it hasn't really worked out.”

The effort was there. Nobody questions that. Kyogo ran, pressed, harried. But work rate alone doesn’t carry the No.9 shirt.

“His work rate's fantastic but you've got to have a bit more than work rate when you're a number nine,” Morrison added. “You need to score goals and he was getting opportunities and he was just rushing at them.”

That word is telling: rushing. A striker in form takes a touch, sets himself, picks his corner. A striker out of form snatches. Tries to force it. The more he misses, the more the goal seems to shrink.

Morrison is convinced the story could have been very different had those first few weeks gone another way. “If he had started there in his first few games and started scoring a lot of goals as a centre-forward, his confidence would have just gone back through the roof and he would have scored a lot of goals, but he hasn't been anywhere near it.”

Instead of being the face of Birmingham’s return to the Championship, Kyogo has become a financial and footballing dilemma.

He is on big wages. He cost serious money. And now, with exit talk swirling, Birmingham must decide whether this was just a brutal one-off season or the sign of a decline that cannot be reversed in England’s unforgiving second tier.

“That's a player they could move on because he's on big money and they try to see if they can get some money for him,” Morrison admitted. The alternative is to gamble again, this time with patience instead of transfer fees. “Or do they stick with him and say, ‘this season could be your season and we don't have to spend money because he should be scoring goals in the Championship’.”

He has done it before, and at a big club. “He scored goals in the Scottish Premiership, so it's a difficult one,” Morrison said. “I hope he stays and I hope next season is his season, but you never know at Birmingham City because they have money - they can bring in players and move players on.”

The numbers, though, are hard to ignore. One goal in the league. A shoulder operation. A year that has left more questions than answers.

EFL pundit Don Goodman, who has seen plenty of Kyogo across both leagues, watched the confidence seep away in real time.

“He started missing real gilt-edge chances in those first six, eight games and you could slowly but surely just see the confidence drain away from him,” he told GOAL. The verdict on the transfer as a piece of business is damning. “In terms of value for money, it's gone horribly wrong with regard to that particular transfer.”

Goodman still sees the player that once terrorised defences. The raw tools haven’t vanished. “I like his movement. He's energetic, he's quick.” But the end product deserted him. “He didn't look like he could hit a barn door, if I'm honest with you, after a difficult start.”

So Birmingham stand at a crossroads.

Do they cut their losses on a 31-year-old whose first crack at the Championship ended in a blur of missed chances and medical reports? Or do they bet that the same instincts that brought 85 goals to Celtic Park can be revived with a full pre-season, a repaired shoulder, and a reset mind?

For a club with ambition and money, sentiment won’t decide it. Cold judgement will.