Predicting Birmingham City's 2 next big money departures ft Romelle Donovan | OneFootball

Birmingham have the resources to be able to offload some pretty valuable talent and not feel too bad of an effect from it.

Among all the big spending that Birmingham City did this summer, it's easy to overlook that they made a couple of big sales.

Headlines focused on the unprecedented spending made by the League One side. They broke the division's transfer record on multiple occasions throughout the window, most notably when they brought back Jay Stansfield on a permanent deal from Fulham, which was reported to be worth up to £20 million.

In and amongst that, however, they did make millions from letting Jordan James, Koji Miyoshi and others leave. From those two sales alone, Blues could end up making over £8 million.

City are no longer thought of as a potential selling club. They are the ones hoovering up the talent from levels above and below them.

But any properly run club has to be open to letting players go for the right price. There are some, like Stansfield, who are likely to be at the club for a long, long time, purely because of the money it would cost to tempt Birmingham to sell and the seven-year contract he is on. Others in the squad are more expendable, though.

These two could not only have shorter careers at St Andrew's, but they could also return some good money for Blues.

Marc Leonard

Marc Leonard was only bought by City this summer, so it may seem odd that he's on a list of players that could be sold. However, since joining the club, he hasn't had as much time on the pitch as some may have expected, including himself.

The ridiculous talent in the squad is keeping one of the best young players in the division out of the starting XI half of the time.

Given his proven ability at this level and the likelihood that Birmingham aren't going to be in League One for much longer than one season, there's a good chance that another club comes in for him.

They only paid Brighton & Hove Albion £500,000 plus add-ons for him, according to Fabrizio Romano - a minnow of a fee in comparison to some of their other deals.

There's room to make money there off a player who is immensely talented, is on a four-year deal and, at 22, should be playing first-team football every week.

Romelle Donovan

Birmingham's squad is now largely comprised of starting-calibre players. Even those who are sat in the stands on the weekends could argue that they are good enough to start games in League One.

This leaves little room for players like Romelle Donovan but there is potential there.

The England under-18 international has already made Championship appearances for Blues. He is currently on loan at fellow third tier side Burton Albion, where he is yet to make his full league debut.

Donovan - a 17-year-old winger who contributed a goal and an assist in his debut for his country's U18s in a 4-2 win over Northern Ireland - is certainly a promising talent who could have made his way into the Birmingham first-team were it not for all the investment that has been put in.

His chances of now breaking into that main group are slim, and the academy product could end up being sold by City once they start to progress up the leagues.

Should that happen, Blues will want to be well compensated.