Kyogo’s Birmingham Gamble: A Season of Struggles

When Birmingham City prised Kyogo Furuhashi away from Celtic in the summer of 2025, it felt like a statement of intent. Eighty-five goals in 165 games for the Scottish champions, Champions League pedigree, relentless movement in and around the box – this was the kind of signing that was supposed to jolt a newly promoted Championship side into life.

On paper, it was a coup. On the pitch, it never caught fire.

From Glasgow hero to St Andrew’s struggle

The plan looked simple enough. Drop a proven finisher into a division notorious for chaos, pair him with Jay Stansfield, and let the goals carry Birmingham through the rough patches. Instead, Kyogo never got out of first gear.

He stumbled at the start. The early weeks, when a striker builds rhythm and trust, passed by without that one big moment to ignite his season. One league goal. A campaign that never really took shape. Confidence drained away, then the body followed. A long-standing shoulder problem finally forced him under the knife and cut short a year that had already felt like a grind.

For a player who once made Scottish defences look static, the contrast has been stark.

Former Birmingham midfielder Clinton Morrison, watching it unravel, has been left baffled. Speaking to GOAL in association with Freebets.com, he admitted he simply did not recognise the player he had admired at Celtic.

“I can't believe why it's not working because at Celtic his movement and the chances and the goals he was scoring were fantastic,” Morrison said. The chances, he pointed out, did not disappear when Kyogo crossed the border. The finishing 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 work rate never dipped. That, everyone agrees on. Kyogo still pressed, still ran channels, still offered himself. But for a No.9, industry is only part of the job description.

“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.”

The pressure finally told. Misses piled up, belief ebbed away, and the aura that clung to him in Glasgow evaporated in the churn of the Championship.

A sliding door at the start

The frustration inside the club and among those who know the division well is rooted in a simple idea: if he had just started hot, this might have been a completely different story.

“I think 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,” Morrison reflected. “But he hasn't been anywhere near it.”

That “what if” hangs over the signing. The margins for a forward in a new league are brutally thin. One early brace and the narrative becomes about a Celtic star proving a point in England. Instead, a barren run turned into a burden he never shrugged off.

EFL pundit Don Goodman saw it up close and watched the spiral in real time. Speaking to GOAL about a move that promised so much and delivered so little, he recalled those first weeks as the tipping point.

“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,” Goodman said. The traits that made Kyogo so attractive – sharp movement, energy, pace – were still there. The end product deserted him.

“I like his movement. He's energetic, he's quick. But he didn't look like he could hit a barn door, if I'm honest with you, after a difficult start.”

For Birmingham, the numbers around the transfer now sit awkwardly against the return. “In terms of value for money, it's gone horribly wrong with regard to that particular transfer,” Goodman admitted.

Keep faith or cash in?

So what happens next?

At 31, recovering from surgery, and on a sizeable wage, Kyogo has become a live topic in the boardroom. Morrison did not hide from that reality.

“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,” he said. The logic is clear: if the club believes this season was not an anomaly but a warning, they may decide to cut their losses while they still can.

Yet the door is not closed. Not quite.

“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’,” Morrison suggested. It is not blind faith. It is rooted in what Kyogo has already done elsewhere. “He scored goals in the Scottish Premiership, so it's a difficult one. 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.”

That is the crux. Birmingham have the resources to reset the attack if they choose. They can move aggressively in the market, reshape the forward line, and quietly file Kyogo’s year as an expensive misstep.

Or they can gamble that a fully fit, mentally reset Kyogo looks a lot more like the ruthless finisher who terrorised Scottish defences than the anxious figure who snatched at chances in the Championship.

For now, his time at St Andrew’s sits on a knife-edge. A dream move turned nightmare, but not yet beyond repair. The next decision Birmingham make on Kyogo will say plenty about how they see their own ambitions – and whether they still believe this striker has one more big season left in him.