Tony Mowbray not holding back over Jordan James transfer decision

Tony Mowbray is hopeful Birmingham City will keep hold of wonderkid midfielder Jordan James despite ongoing transfer negotiations with Serie A outfit Atalanta.

Speculation around the Wales international's future has been rife over the past week or two after Blues rejected a £4 million bid. Italian publications have claimed James has even agreed personal terms over a move but that hasn't been confirmed on the Birmingham side as of yet.

Mowbray faces plenty of challenges upon his arrival at St Andrew's, with one of those being thrown straight into an ongoing transfer window. The new boss has had merely two or three days to work with his new squad thus far, making huge transfer decisions incredibly difficult.

Nonetheless, the new manager spoke extensively when asked about James’ future during his first press conference. Although there are no guarantees James will stick around, Mowbray has described his hopeful perspective of the situation and revealed the factors at play.

"The ideal scenario is to keep hold of your best players. Talking about ambition, it goes against it selling your best young players," Mowbray said on Thursday afternoon. "|I don’t know much about the young man other than I’ve seen him in training and he looks very powerful. I also watched the game against Hull City and he had one or two really positive drives on the ball.

"My hope would be that we'll be keeping our best young players because we’re trying to build a football club. As I've said, you have to fill the club with talent – if he’s already here, then let's keep him.

"What I must add to that, of course, is every player has a price. Every player has an opportunity to demand they want to leave. Sometimes in the history of my management career, I've sold players to improve the team. If you sell a player and get X amount of pounds, then get four players in with that, your team is getting better.

"I'm open to all scenarios. I don't sit here and think, 'We have to keep this kid', because if the kid knocks on my door and says he wants to go and it's right for the football club, why wouldn't you improve your football club? At this moment, though, my first message to anybody would be that we need to keep our best players," Mowbray concluded.

Birmingham World understands Mowbray has now had his first recruitment meeting at Birmingham City Elite Performance & Innovation Centre. Conversations with Gary Gardner directly followed the press conference – and they are bound to have included talks around James' future.