Tom Wagner makes bold Birmingham City prediction involving Leicester City and Southampton | OneFootball

The American owner of Blues has his sights set on the nation's top flight of football.

Birmingham City chairman Tom Wagner has predicted that his side will have as good a chance at winning promotion to the Premier League next season as newly relegated Leicester City or Southampton will.

There are two things that Wagner really isn't short of: ambition and money. The American businessman has used these two things in League One to completely smash the competition, reset the trajectory of the club and they're on track to become the highest points-scoring side in English footballing history.

They have put together a squad for Chris Davies that is miles better than any other third-tier side, and this has been largely down to the revenue that the club have been able to generate.

Wagner loves to talk money and revenue and stress its importance to him. A big income perfectly correlates with success in football in his mind - a theory that is pretty hard to argue with - and his projections for the season to come suggest that more history is in the making for Blues.

Tom Wagner's Birmingham City, Premier League promotion prediction

The club already has huge fund-generating deals with brands like Nike, Delta Air Lines and Undefeated. The behind-the-scenes Amazon Prime documentary on the club's 2024/25 campaign has also been a big financial help for Birmingham this season.

With the way that their income is going, the American believes that, next season, City will bring in as much money as the Premier League's relegated clubs, Leicester and Southampton, who are set to receive large, eight-figure payments from their soon-to-be former division on the way down. According to Wagner, this will give Birmingham a level playing field to compete with them for promotion.

"Parachute payment clubs have a roughly one-in-four chance of getting promoted," Wagner explained to The Times. "Non-parachute clubs have a one in 16 chance. So, OK, if we can achieve parachute-level revenues, we’re four times more likely to get promoted.

"If our revenue progresses as we expect into next season, which is basically a certainty, we will be the highest revenue-generating club in the Championship ever not receiving parachute payments — and we will be on a par with those receiving parachute payments.

"If we then progress one year further, and we’re fortunate enough to end up in the Premier League, we’ll be a mid-table club or better in total revenue, first year in.

"When you get inside the top eight, those clubs are real financial powerhouses. But between nine and 12, there’s space to move into that sphere and compete with the clubs that are six, seven, eight in total revenue. I think we can get there very quickly.

A double promotion would be a shocking accomplishment, even for Birmingham's high standards

Ipswich's remarkable campaign last time out in which they won automatic promotion to the Premier League, the season after doing so from League One, was widely and rightfully heralded as one of the great footballing achievements in recent times.

The Tractor Boys have been well-backed by their own American owners, no doubt about it. Birmingham, though, are an acceptably bigger fish when it comes to splashing, and earning, cash.

There's a reason why this feat of climbing from the third rung of the ladder all the way up to the top in the quickest fashion possible has been done so few times in the game's history, and while Davies' team knows a thing or two already about resetting records, their potentially league-best budget in the Championship doesn't give them any divine right to be up near the top this time next year.

If they do manage to replicate the success that Kieran McKenna had last season, it shouldn't be solely put down to Knighthead's hefty pockets. Birmingham's players and staff should, and would, receive all the praise in the world.