BIRMINGHAM, England -- There's a tough crowd at Birmingham City and Wayne Rooney has already experienced the wrath of the club's long-suffering supporters, who booed him at the end of his first home game (a 2-0 loss to Hull City) as manager last month.
Birmingham are a blue-collar team and proudly so, rooted in the Small Heath area of England's second-biggest city that was the setting for "Peaky Blinders," the popular gangland drama series, that brought a new sense of cool to an industrial town that had fallen on hard times. Supporters have embraced the show and its formidable characters who are hard and uncompromising, just like they are.