England’s second tier is not where Kyogo thought he would be upon leaving Celtic.

Yesterday, one of our former players completed his second move in the space of six months. I’m talking, of course, about Kyogo, who signed for Birmingham. He’s probably done all right out of this move in a financial sense. His agents certainly have. But when he changed agents this time last year—or thereabouts—it certainly wasn’t with a move to England’s second tier in mind.

The agent business is one of the least understood in football. A lot of what these guys do seems murky. If they didn’t look after their players, they wouldn’t have clients—but what does “look after” mean in the context of a football agency?

It means getting them the best deals. It means getting them the best possible conditions. But let’s not forget one thing above all else: the way an agency makes money is if the players are constantly on the move.

And there are certain players who have spent the better part of their careers moving from one club to another… because that’s lucrative.

We had one of those players at the club: Giorgos Giakoumakis. Look at his career history—he’s moved around a lot, and he’s moved twice since leaving Celtic. He’s not finished yet. The reason some of these guys do this isn’t homesickness or wanderlust. It’s because there’s money in it.

You leave one club for another—there’s a hefty signing-on fee, a salary bump, sometimes even a cut of the transfer fee if you’re in the right kind of deal. And the agents? They profit. Big time.

When Kyogo changed agents, a lot of people told me he was getting ready to go. I dismissed it as people jumping at their own shadows. Changing agents doesn’t necessarily mean a player is preparing to leave a club. Relationships end. Some people don’t feel well served and want to go elsewhere—it happens all the time. It doesn’t always mean someone’s got one foot out the door.

Still, it turned out to be an ominous sign. Maybe it was an indication of where his head was at. Or maybe that’s the misjudgement—maybe his head was in a perfectly decent place when he changed agents. Maybe it was the agents themselves who messed with his internal radar. Regardless, it seems obvious now that he was given some truly lamentable advice.

I never understood the move to Rennes. A relegation-battling side in turmoil? If you want your player to have the best chance of success, you don’t send him there. Good attacking players don’t thrive in teams like that. Clubs fighting for survival adopt defensive tactics. They don’t create many chances. They don’t score many goals. And going into a setup like that—knowing full well the manager could be sacked at any time—that was lunacy.

Whoever advised him that this was a good idea did him wrong.

Kyogo will do well at Birmingham. He’ll be playing under Chris Davies, who we all know on this site is a top-class guy, a top-class manager. He was Brendan’s number two for a long time. Now he’s gone out on his own and he’s shown that he’s got all the tools to make it as a boss. I’ve no doubt he’ll get a tune out of Kyogo.

No doubt at all that he’ll make him a star again.

A lot of people expect Birmingham to go straight up to the Premier League. I don’t. That underestimates how brutal that league can be. It’s incredibly hard to come up from League One and survive in the Championship, never mind get promoted. You’re dealing with established sides desperate for a shot at the top flight—and willing to do whatever it takes—and with relegated Premier League teams still flush with parachute payments and loaded with cash.

But yes, Birmingham will play attacking football.

Yes, Kyogo will suit the system. But it’s hard not to conclude that a player moving into his 30s is now facing at least a year—maybe two, maybe more—of English second-tier football when the goal should have been the Champions League, not the Championship. It is a spectacular come-down from where he expected to be. If the Rennes move was a disaster, then ending up at a newly promoted Championship club must feel like a slap in the face.

I’ve already said I thought Jota’s agent served him poorly—first flogging him to Saudi Arabia and then again on to France to play for the same team Kyogo went to. That’s an agent putting money—possibly his own—before the wellbeing of the player.

I think Nicolas Kühn is making a similarly bad move, going to Como. I can’t understand that one at all—except that they’re owned by oligarchs and the money will be decent. But again, is that the driving force? Is that really all that matters?

Does the player not want to win things? Having now tasted success, does he not want to play European football again? Does he not want the Champions League as a route to an even bigger club, maybe even international recognition?

I’ve written at length already about how the grass rarely turns out to be greener for those who leave Celtic. Even Matt O’Riley, who I thought went to the right kind of club, hasn’t loved life at Brighton.

There was talk of a move to Italy, but that’s gone quiet of late. Still, I think a move to somewhere like Napoli would be ideal. He’d shine there. That’s where we’d see him at his best. But for now, it’s fair to say it hasn’t quite worked out.

I do wonder how many of them truly regret leaving. Jota certainly does—he’s back at the club. As if we needed proof that he found the grass wasn’t greener. He had other offers but wanted to come home.

And Kyogo? He must surely know that he made an almighty mistake. At least in part. Because we were told it was all about career development.

But this is not the level he expected to be at when the new season kicked off. You can’t even frame it as one step forward and two steps back. It’s just two steps back. His agent, though? He’s done all right. He always will. Whatever happens to the player, the agent always wins.