Birmingham City Boss Chris Davies Has “Revealed” His Mind Ahead Of FA Cup Clash, He States What He…

Birmingham City Boss Chris Davies Has “Revealed” His Mind Ahead Of FA Cup Clash, He States What He…

May up front, Bielik role and FA Cup rotation – Chris Davies answers key Birmingham City questions

Chris Davies now has five days to prepare his team for the FA Cup trip to Blackpool on Sunday and discussed both the St James Park win and the task at Bloomfield Road with the media. Here’s every word he said.

Business-like performance?

CD: I was really, really happy with the performance. I thought it was one of the best performances of the season, obviously we knew we had to react and challenge the players to make sure that there was a reaction from a really disappointing day on the weekend and to a man, every single one of them reacted.

I thought we looked like a real proper team out there and gave very little away. I think they had two touches inside our box, the whole entire game. We created numerous chances for the possession we did have and we scored two good goals.

Tomoki Iwata goal

CD: I always say I didn’t know we were signing a goal scoring midfielder when we signed him, but he scored plenty of goals, especially from that range he is lethal.

But the main thing from our point of view was the pressure that we were creating and the positions we were getting into and we looked really dangerous with that possession and the crosses into the box and the movement.

Eventually it drops and you get your reward, but there were multiple times in the first half where we had them really pinned back, but the balls were bouncing around, the keeper made a couple of saves and we could have had two or three goals.

I’d ideally have liked to be two or three up at half time on the basis of play.

Second half it was a similar in terms of style, but we got more transition chances breaking away from pressing in the mid-pitch and we could have had more. But glad to get the penalty goal.

Alfie May as No. 9

CD: It’s been a while since he’s been in that position so I was really pleased with his contribution.

Willum again, in that space is really hard to stop. The back players against two really big strikers, it was quite obvious their style and the idea was to sort of attract us forward and then play long balls. I thought they were quite direct in their style, long balls to the big guys. But our back three dealt with that really well

Was that part of reason for selecting Krystian Bielik in that position?

CD: No, because Exeter normally try to play a little bit more football than that, but against us they tried to sort of lump balls forward to the big men.

It was just an idea looking at the team and the personnel, what could work well for us and I thought they marshalled it well, all three of them.

That gave your more solidity….

CD: Yeah, exactly. I think we’re always going to create chances in games. What’s important is that we keep the back door shut, as I always say, and give very little away.

You’re going to have to defend at times but again, tonight, the dominance that we had kept the ball away from our box the whole game.

It was a good template for us and I said to the players this is a good away performance, a night game it’s pouring down with rain and you’ve got to come and look like a proper team and have a proper attitude and we had that.