Breaking News: Birmingham City’s Jay Stansfield breaks silence on bittersweet Exeter City return

It just had to be him, didn’t it?

An emotional Jay Stansfield returned to St James Park for the first time as an opposition player on Tuesday and duly stole all the headlines.

The Exeter City academy product, now at Birmingham City, fired the Blues’ second goal of the game to wrap up a 2-0 win and consign his boyhood club to consecutive losses in League One.

Blues dominated from start to finish and comfortably got their promotion push back on track following their shock loss to Shrewsbury Town on Saturday.

Stansfield was kept fairly quiet in open play but no-one was taking the ball off him when Ilmari Niskanen was adjudged to have handled inside the box in front of the away end with eight minutes to play.

Stansfield sent Exeter keeper Joe Whitworth the wrong way to make it 2-0 and pointed to the sky before being engulfed by his team-mates in front of Blues supporters.

As the celebrations died down he blew a kiss towards the Adam Stansfield stand after a moment to himself.

Before the game Exeter’s the giant ‘Stansfield 9’ shirt was carried over the heads of the Grecian faithful in the Adam Stansfield stand, a tribute to his late father who died of cancer while a City player in 2010.

The home fans sang their ‘Sing a song for our Stanno’ song with extra gusto and Jay’s family watched on from the stands.