Birmingham City will always have Aston Villa, Man Utd envy | OneFootball

When Birmingham signed former Aston Villa legend Dwight Yorke in 2004, they must have known they were taking a chance. It ended up a costly mistake.

When Birmingham City paid Blackburn Rovers £250,000 for former Aston Villa legend Dwight Yorke in 2004, they knew they were taking a gamble. He ended up a mistake.

There's a lengthy history of players who've played on both sides of a local rivalry, but making such a move adds a layer of jeopardy on the part of the buying club, as Birmingham City found out when they paid Blackburn Rovers £250,000 for Dwight Yorke in 2004.

Picking up a three-times Premier League and Champions League-winning player for a quarter of a million pounds looked like a bargain in one sense, but Yorke came with claret and blue baggage. He'd started his career at Villa Park in 1990 after having been spotted by then-manager Graham Taylor while Villa were on a pre-season tour of the West Indies a year earlier.

Yorke became a hero at Villa Park, making almost 300 appearances for them over seven years and scoring almost 100 goals over eight years. He was a regular in their team that finished as runners-up to Manchester United in the first season of the Premier League, and scored the final goal in their 3-0 win against Leeds United in the 1996 League Cup final.

He left Villa Park for Manchester United for £12.6 million in 1998, and found his greatest success at Old Trafford, winning the Premier League three times in a row between 1999 and 2001, and the Champions League in 1999. In 2002, he moved on to Blackburn Rovers, where he helped them secure UEFA Cup qualification in 2003.

Yorke's move to Birmingham was always going to be contentious

The bombshell landed on transfer deadline day in September 2004. Dwight Yorke would be signing for Birmingham City. It was inherently a risky signing for the Blues. Fans wouldn't be likely to cut him much shrift if things started to go wrong at St Andrew's. Furthermore, it wasn't as though this wasn't his only option. Yorke had turned down a move to Celtic in order to stay in the Premier League.

All concerned were, of course, aware of the potential complications. Talking to the BBC shortly after his £250,000 move, Yorke said: "I know Birmingham well, and I am sure that there will be a lot of people out there who will not be particularly happy that I am here," and that, "I was in the Celtic boardroom literally ready to complete the deal and then Steve Bruce rang."

After a good start, Yorke's season at St Andrew's tailed off drastically

Yorke started well, scoring on his home League debut for Birmingham on the 14th September, a late goal to rescue a 1-1 draw against Charlton Athletic. His second goal for the club came in a 2-2 home draw against Newcastle United at the start of the following month.

But this was followed by six games without a goal, which led to him being dropped from the team altogether. He missed every game they played in December, and when he returned to the first team in the new year, he played a further four League games without scoring before being dropped again.

And this time, there was no return. Dwight Yorke's last game for Birmingham was a 2-1 home defeat to Fulham on the 22nd January 2005. Having fallen from favour with Steve Bruce, the man who'd persuaded him to eschew Celtic and stay in the Premier League in the first place, he wasn't included in the Birmingham first-team squad again that season.

By April, it was clear that this move hadn't worked out as intended, and when an offer came in from the Australian club Sydney FC to take him on, his contract was cancelled, and he was allowed to leave by mutual consent before the 2004-05 season had even reached its end.

In total, Dwight Yorke made just 16 appearances for Birmingham City throughout the 2004-05 season, scoring just two goals. He was in the match-day squad for neither of Birmingham's Premier League matches against Aston Villa. He returned to England in 2006 with Sunderland, before retiring from playing three years later.

Birmingham survived the 2004-05 season, finishing in 12th place in the Premier League table, but they were relegated the following year. As they stepped down into the Football League after four years of top-flight football, they could easily have been forgiven wondering whether this particular signing was worth the effort and the expense in the first place.