Birmingham City has enjoyed Auston Trusty’s continued production this season, but Blues manager John Eustace will be forced to replace Trusty for the upcoming period of matches.
Trusty missed the Blues’ 1-0 English Football League Championship loss to Luton Town on Saturday due to a calf injury, Eustace confirmed postmatch. The Arsenal loanee has been stellar for Birmingham City this season, logging 33 league appearances, four goals, and one assist.
However, the 24-year-old isn’t set to return for this weekend’s trip to Wigan Athletic and Eustace doesn’t expect an immediate return either.
“I think Auston will be a couple of weeks, unfortunately, for him, he has been outstanding,” Eustace said postmatch in a club interview. “He has played 70 games in the calendar year.
“We were pushing him, as we were pushing Krystian, Dion [Sanderson], Troy [Deeney] through the barriers and, ultimately, something is going to break. But, hopefully, it won’t be too long for Trusty or Krystian.”
Trusty’s absence will force others to step up in the Birmingham City backline with the Blues seeking to snap a four-match losing streak in the process. The Blues visit last place Wigan on Saturday before hosting 20th place Rotherham United on March 11.
Birmingham City will also face trips to Watford and QPR before the FIFA international break at the end of March. Trusty’s injury also comes at the worst time with the U.S. men’s national team set to face Grenada and El Salvador in late-March Concacaf Nations League matches.
Trusty has yet to make his USMNT debut despite previously featuring for several youth national teams in the past.
Probably also leaves him out for the March friendlies. Which is highly unfortunate; he’s one of those rarest of unicorns, a left-footed centerback who is both cool under fire and a decent distributor out of the back and we saw with Ream what a difference it makes to have somebody who can deal the ball around from the CB position, and how much at those top levels it really matters that your LCB be left-footed because his angles and positioning are so much better and the ball flows so much better across the back than it does when you’ve got two righties in there.
When I’ve seen him it looks like Trusty doesn’t have quite Ream’s ability to put the ball on a dime from 30+ yards, but he comes across as very nearly as calm and composed and he still looks pretty natural dealing the ball around, and he’s definitely way faster and more athletic than Ream ever was even in his early 20’s. And he’s a genuine menace in the box on headers; the dude can leap over the moon and his ability to gauge the timing of the ball in the air is really good. If there’s a better young LCB in the pool than Trusty I haven’t seen him yet.
It’s definitely time to start seeing if we can work the kid in. I’d be shocked if Ream was still playing at his current level in ’26.