One of this season’s great revival stories is unfolding at Birmingham City, and it is a fine time to be a “Bluenose”.
Birmingham City secured an instant return to the Championship with a win at Peterborough on Tuesday night, with a rampant team threatening to smash more records in what has proved a brief tour of League One.
And on Saturday they were confirmed as the third tier’s champions after Wrexham were held to a 0-0 draw at Wigan.
This weekend, nearly 50,000 fans will descend on Wembley for the Vertu Trophy final against Peterborough on Sunday. Thousands have been left disappointed in the scramble for tickets.
At the forefront of the grand rebuild is manager Chris Davies, with the backing of ambitious American owners Knighthead, who include NFL legend Tom Brady.
Davies, 40, is excelling in his first job as a No 1 and knows Birmingham have not always had it so good. Shortly after his appointment he was informed that no club from the 92 had lost more games over the past five years. Now the feelgood factor is everywhere, and you can sense it on this glorious spring afternoon at the training ground.
Sitting in one of the offices at the Elite Performance and Innovation Centre, Davies knows this could be a momentous week in Birmingham history.
“There’s no doubt this club is a sleeping giant and we’ve got to try to be the ones that wake it up,” he says. “Birmingham City is going to get to the Premier League at some point, and I want to be the one that does it.
“When it happens I don’t know, but with the commitment to the project and the vision, this is a club that is clearly going somewhere.
“I got that sense pretty early that relegation could be the reset the club needed and it’s grown from there. It’s a great place to be at the moment.”
Birmingham’s win at Peterborough on Tuesday represents mission accomplished, with the objective always instant promotion. The title seems inevitable and supporters have been swept away by the turnaround. Now they are counting down the days until their first return to Wembley since the historic Carling Cup victory over Arsenal in 2011.
Tickets were snapped up in record time, with the initial 43,356 allocation purchased almost instantly. After an additional 6,000 tickets were put on sale, more than 21,000 fans were sitting at their laptops in an online queue.
Davies has been taken aback by Birmingham’s size and potential. Last month he bumped into a number of fans at Faro airport as he returned from a short break. “Big clubs are big, powerful machines, and we’re starting to get a bit of momentum now,” he says.
“If you’re a Birmingham City fan, it’s a great time. All the clubs in the country are desperate for good owners that have got commitment, a plan and ambition and are willing to back it.
“So many Blues fans come up to me and speak to me if I’m ever out and about, and it means a lot to them. You want the fans to be proud of their club.”
Davies’s first experience of the hot seat has proved an exhilarating ride.
After an arthritic foot condition ended his playing career at the age of 19, he has devoted his life to coaching. First emerging in the public eye as assistant to Brendan Rodgers at Swansea 15 years ago, he followed him to Liverpool, Celtic and Leicester City.
Last season he was working with Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham. Yet the ambition to become a manager has burned for years.
After an exhaustive process in which Knighthead interviewed more than 40 candidates, Davies emerged as the clear choice. This season he has emphatically delivered.
“It took me 20 years to get the Birmingham job from when I started my coaching career,” he says. “I was always confident and believed that I could do it, but I feel more comfortable as a manager than I did as an assistant.
“I find the responsibility and decision-making easier. I was more stressed being an assistant.
“The only way I can describe it is like when you’re playing doubles at tennis and you don’t want to mess up for your partner. As a No 1, like singles tennis, you just go for it.”
To fully appreciate Davies’s impact, Birmingham’s season has to be put into some context: before his arrival the club were fighting relegation almost annually and mired in crisis under unpopular owners Birmingham Sports Holdings Limited. The takeover by Knighthead in July 2023 sparked the turnaround and relegation last season has proved a temporary blip.
Earlier this month, Davies’s team registered 37 wins in a season for the first time in their history. Recent statistics revealed that Birmingham have had more possession than any team in England’s top four leagues. They have also come out on top for pressing the ball quicker.
A process-driven coach, Davies has a clear philosophy that has proved popular with the players. “It’s what I know best, it’s how I’ve coached and what I believe in,” he says. “I certainly don’t do it for anything other than results, because I’ve got no interest in styles.
“I want the team to be dominant and ultimately that comes down to having more possession, more territory and more chances than the opposition.”
‘We have a target on our back’
Perhaps unfairly, there is a sense amongst many of Birmingham’s rivals that promotion should be the bare minimum. It is argued that with Knighthead’s backing on transfers and wages, and one of the best squads ever to play in the division, anything less than a top-two finish would be a failure.
Those theories only diminish Davies’s achievements up to now. “When you’re the team everyone wants to beat, it’s not easy,” he says. “We go to stadiums they can’t fill, we turn up and it’s full. Teams do tend to raise their games against us. We have got a target on our back but I’m comfortable with that.
“Pressure is a privilege because in football if you’ve got pressure, especially at this end of the table, then it means you’re at a good club that’s trying to do something. We have to embrace that.”
While Knighthead’s financial backing cannot be overestimated, recruitment still has to be shrewd. Birmingham have had a number of success stories this season.
Jay Stansfield is the obvious standout, signing from Fulham for a league-record fee of more than £10 million. The England Under-21 international has 23 goals in all competitions so far this season.
Other astute buys have been Austrian centre-back Christoph Klarer (£2.5 million from Darmstadt 98) and Japanese midfielder Tomoki Iwata (£2 million from Celtic). The trio are, quite simply, too good for League One but the remit was always to sign players who would be equally comfortable in the Championship.
That ambition is driven by Knighthead, with chairman Tom Wagner and, of course, Brady driving standards daily. Since relegation, Knighthead have invested £15 million on infrastructure improvements alone.
Brady, a record seven-time Super Bowl winner, is in regular contact with Davies from his base in the United States.
“It’s like having a world-class consultant, one of the greats, that I can speak to at any time,” says Davies. “I’ve worked with some top players at Liverpool and Spurs and Tom befits their very similar mentality. There is an unrelenting drive and passion for excellence.”
Brady will be present at Wembley this weekend, before the focus returns to Birmingham clinching the title.
A number of records remain in sight: Wolves’ 103 points in 2013-14 is the best in the third tier, while Reading’s total of 106 from 2005-06 has never been beaten in the Football League.
“To take a job like this, get a team promoted and get to Wembley in my first season means the world to me,” says Davies. “It makes me appreciate the journey I’ve been on and it’s a dream come true.”
