{"id":565435,"date":"2020-09-11T04:50:01","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T08:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=565435"},"modified":"2020-12-28T11:24:29","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T16:24:29","slug":"neil-etheridge-birmingham-city-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2020\/09\/11\/neil-etheridge-birmingham-city-move\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Etheridge Completes Birmingham City Move"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/clubs\/cardiff-city\/\" target=\"_self\">Cardiff City<\/a> shot-stopper <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transfermarkt.com\/neil-etheridge\/profil\/spieler\/61694\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Neil Etheridge<\/a> has completed a move to <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?s=Birmingham\" target=\"_self\">Birmingham City<\/a>, with the fee <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skysports.com\/transfer-centre\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">believed to be<\/a> around \u00a31.5 million. The Philippines international was previously targeted by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hitc.com\/en-gb\/2019\/12\/30\/report-west-ham-want-neil-etheridge-if-they-cant-re-sign-randolp\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Premier League club West Ham United<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The 30-year-old joined Cardiff from Wallsall in 2017. He quickly established himself as the first-choice goalkeeper at Cardiff, helping the club achieve <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walesonline.co.uk\/sport\/football\/football-news\/cardiff-city-promoted-premier-league-14621998\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">promotion to the Premier League<\/a>. After promotion, Etheridge became the first Philippine player to play in the Premier League.<\/p>\n<h2>Birmingham City Sign Neil Etheridge<\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">\u270d\ufe0f We are delighted to announce the signing of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Neil38Etheridge?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@Neil38Etheridge<\/a> on a four-year deal.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Birmingham City FC (@BCFC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BCFC\/status\/1304337467525550080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">September 11, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Karanka&#8217;s Ambitions<\/h3>\n<p>New Birmingham boss Aitor Karanka sees goalkeeper as an area to strengthen after already <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/53945196\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">bringing in Andres Prieto<\/a> from Espanyol. He said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.birminghammail.co.uk\/sport\/football\/transfer-news\/birmingham-city-transfer-news-etheridge-18911818.amp?__twitter_impression=true\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">press conference<\/a>, speaking about Etheridge: &#8220;If he arrives then it will be perfect, if he doesn&#8217;t then another will arrive and be the right one.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He also spoke about the experience that the goalkeeper would bring to the squad: &#8220;He has the experience, promotion experience, which is important as well with players like Adam [Clayton] and George [Friend], they know how nice it is to get promoted. Let&#8217;s see what happens.&#8221; Karanka has strong intentions and ambitions with Birmingham hoping to achieve what he did with Middlesbrough in 2015\/16.<\/p>\n<p>Birmingham <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skysports.com\/birmingham-city-fixtures\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">start the season<\/a> tomorrow with a tough home game against Brentford. Etheridge will be excited to get going in the Midlands and will be keen to impress everyone at St Andrews with his ability.<\/p>\n<p>Etheridge only had ten months remaining on his contract and was fighting for the number one shirt with Alex Smithies and Joe Day, who both seemed to be favoured in front of the him by Neil Harris, despite previous boss Neil Warnock showing faith in him.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"vrUtZLkjTWtnx0FNzXGRPw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/1140215238\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'vrUtZLkjTWtnx0FNzXGRPw',sig:'A4aUhMX-k2N8d22Z_E6pBBjdF3WbwttQPd-t_6hH7lM=',w:'594px',h:'402px',items:'1140215238',caption: true ,tld:'co.uk',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cardiff City shot-stopper Neil Etheridge has completed a move to Birmingham City, with the fee believed to be around \u00a31.5 million. The Philippines international was previously targeted by Premier League club West Ham United. The 30-year-old joined Cardiff from Wallsall in 2017. He quickly established himself as the first-choice goalkeeper at Cardiff, helping the club [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3641,"featured_media":565488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2509,33,30,28],"tags":[6606,1318,38,168,239,3808,2886,136],"class_list":["post-565435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-league-football","category-cardiff-city","category-championship","category-news","category-transfers","tag-alex-smithies","tag-birmingham-city","tag-cardiff-city","tag-efl","tag-efl-championship","tag-neil-etheridge","tag-neil-harris","tag-world-football"],"modified_by":"Nat Goodlad, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}