Birmingham City fans are reacting to Craig Gardner’s exit on Monday.
The Blues confirmed the news, which coincided with a Birmingham Mail report that Gardner ‘looks set to move’ to Sheffield Wednesday.
The 33-year-old, whose brother Gary had a loan spell at Wednesday, would reunite with his former West Bromwich Albion manager Tony Pulis at Hillsborough.
Asked if Gardner could join him at Hillsborough, Pulis told The Star: “I always like to bring one young coach with me, one who has worked on the academy side with me.
“I want someone who knows the academy and knows how it’s set up. Neil Thompson has joined in today and been part of that.
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Craig is a great character, a young coach, enthusiastic. I like to have a mixture of people around me.”
He retired from playing earlier this year and took on a first-team coaching role at Birmingham – his final club and the one that he and his sibling, who remains on the Blues’ books, grew up supporting.
And while some City supporters are seemingly unconcerned by Gardner’s departure, others are sad to be losing one of their own.
This is what they are saying about him on Twitter:
Wednesday have yet to confirm the identities of Pulis’s backroom team, although Dave Kemp and Jonathan Gould have been strongly linked with roles alongside Gardner.
Another of the 62-year-old’s ex-West Brom colleagues, Ben Garner, was sacked as manager of Bristol Rovers on Saturday.
Pulis’s predecessor at Hillsborough, Garry Monk, was dismissed last week, alongside James Beattie, Darryl Flahavan and Ryan Needs – all of whom were on his staff at Birmingham – and his first-team coach Andrew Hughes.
