Boss Paul Lambert admitted relegation to League One is “gut-wrenching” and “horrible” but insisting there is much to look forward to at Town, who drop into the third tier for the first time in 62 years.
"It was a game of two halves,” Lambert said when asked about the 1-1 draw with the Midlanders which confirmed Town’s demotion after 17 years in the Championship.
"Birmingham were better than us in the first half and I thought we were better than them in the second half.
"But you’re going to get that with young players at times. You’ve got to remember their kids who have come through academy football and into the first team.
"Number one, they’re going to learn on the job, and that’s the only way they’re going to learn.
"Number two, it’s not as if they’ve been bought from other teams and have experience of the Championship, they haven’t some of them.
"Fleetingly they’ve had one or two games but the majority have been thrown in and that’s why I think there are a lot of good things to look forward to.
"You analyse it, as I’ve said before, your season starts in June or July when you start pre-season, that’s to be ready for a whole season.
"It doesn’t start in August, it doesn’t start in November, December. I’m absolutely gutted for everybody at the stadium.
"The supporters have been unreal, that’s just unreal what’s going on, they put a lot of supporters to shame the way they are. It’s phenomenal, overwhelming. Again, you saw it at the end of the game, it’s incredible the support.
"We’ll analyse what went wrong but I can’t comment on what happened previous to my time, I can only say what happened in November since we’ve been here. We’re gutted for everybody, supporters, players, staff at the training ground, everybody.
"On the flipside of it, there’s so much to look forward to here, there really is. It’s exciting. I think what I can see, it might take a bit of time, but sometimes you’re going to get performances like that with young players. But all credit to them in the second half, we were excellent.”
Asked how he feels now relegation has finally been confirmed mathematically, he said: "It’s gut-wrenching, it’s horrible. You can’t put into words what it sounds like. It’s like a blow. But again the support’s incredible, absolutely incredible.”
He says it was a very quiet dressing room after the match. "Of course, what do you expect? They feel it, it’s difficult to explain. There are a lot of young kids who have never experienced it before, some of the older lads maybe haven’t either.
"But they’re older and they know, but the young ones don’t really know. It might not feel like it at this moment in time but it’ll be an incredible learning curve and they’ll come back stronger for it. They really will, they’ll come back stronger.
"As I said before, my own view at the minute of this club is that it could be brilliant again because of what can happen. It might take a little bit of time but there could be so much good here.”
Looking forward, Lambert was asked whether he now can’t wait for pre-season ahead of 2019/20 to start.
"Whether transfers come in or not, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he reflected. "I think the club needs a couple of bodies in to try and help and try and freshen things up.
"Some lads will move, the loan lads will probably go back, that’s normal, so the turnover is quite big, but again, as I said before, there’s a lot of good things here to look forward to.
"And the supporters with the players, there’s a major connection there, it’s an incredible connection now. The secret is to keep it and I think that’s important.
Does he see the club’s transfer business as evolution rather than revolution? "It can’t be [the latter] because you can’t expect to go down into League One and spend £5 million on a player, can you? That’s impossible.
"There’s got to be a plan here and a strategy which I’m pretty sure will happen and probably it’ll be quite clear in the next few weeks what’s going to happen.
"If you’re looking for an overhaul and buying players at £5 million, £6 million, £10 million, it’s not going to happen, it’s impossible.
"We’ll see how the young ones progress with the experienced lads that are here and build the club in the right manner.
"If you keep getting in loans you’re going to be in the same position. It’s not my way the loans, as I’ve always said.
"Other managers make a go of it. In my view I just want to build the football club the right way.”
Reflecting further on where Town’s season went so awry, he added: "What I said was your season starts in July. I don’t know what happened in July, I don’t know what happened in August, I don’t know what happened in September and October.
"I really don’t know and I’m not going to be unfair to anybody because I can’t comment on those months as I wasn’t here.
"But if you’re a footballer, and I was one a long time myself, I know when I hit July, I knew what I’d expect of myself as an individual and of my team-mates and my clubs.
"I knew what was at stake so I never came into any season with my eyes closed, I knew what I had to do as an individual and if I wasn’t prepared for the season, then the only fault was my own fault. It wasn’t the manager’s, it was my own fault.”
Did he expect to keep Town up when he was appointed on October 27th, two days after Paul Hurst’s sacking?
"Of course you do,” he said. Everybody would tell you the same. I’ve spoken to loads of managers before, a lot of managers don’t take jobs during the season because there are so many things you have to sift through and turn it over.
"I can understand that, that can happen. Everybody always thinks they can do something. But what I can’t fault is the level of support, the players’ effort and commitment and everything else.
"There are a lot of young guys who have come out of academy football and been thrown right in. This team’s going to be really good. You give them a little bit of time and develop and the supporters with the way they are, it could be really good.
"And if we start winning games in League One, you won’t get a ticket, you’ll fill it, that’s how passionate the support is.
"It’s a massive club and it’s got a fanbase behind it and if you start to win games on a regular basis then you’ll do well to get in.”
Birmingham manager Garry Monk felt his team ought to have been out of sight having dominated the opening period.
"That's overriding factor for us, especially in the first half. We created enough chances to be in a really comfortable position.
"At any level, especially in this league, if you don’t take your chances you leave yourself open to that fight back.
"I said in the build-up to this game one thing Ipswich are doing is fighting and we left ourselves open to that fight in the second half with the scoreline still only being 1-0 by not being clinical enough.
"That’s the difference today, we weren’t clinical enough and even with that fight back from Ipswich in that second half, we still created three really, really good chances that we should have taken
"But we didn’t and that was the big difference for ourselves from taking three points and ending up with one.”