What Bristol Rovers can expect from early promotion favorites Birmingham City this season

For the first time in 30 seasons, Bristol Rovers and Birmingham City will be in the same league this campaign after the Blues’ relegation to League One was confirmed on the final day of last term.

Birmingham finished just one point behind 21st-placed Plymouth Argyle, although the Pilgrims had a superior goal difference and will compete outside the top two tiers of English football for the first time since 1995.

Of course, with figures as high-profile as NFL legend Tom Brady on the board at St.Andrews and the hierarchy sharing plans to one day build a new 60,000-capacity stadium, it is expected that they will be spend money on new manager Chris Davies. which made the Blues early favorites for promotion with the bookies.

Having been assistant to Ange Postecoglu at Tottenham Hotspur and worked alongside Brendan Rodgers at Leicester City, Celtic and Liverpool, this is Davies’ first job in the hot seat, making him an interesting appointment when the name more experienced actors such as Liam Rosenior and Alex Neil were previously linked to the role.

You’d expect transfer activity to begin once the players report for pre-season training with the signing of goalkeeper Ryan Allsop from Hull City Birmingham the only confirmed arrival at the time of writing. However, you would expect whoever comes in to help shape the best team on paper in the division by the time the transfer window closes.

Of course, there have been plenty of examples in the past of big clubs going down to League One and not getting out straight away with Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday two of the most recent clubs to do so. However, that doesn’t change the fact that everyone will be expecting the Blues to be up there or the end of the upcoming campaign.

With all of this in mind, we spoke to Birmingham Live reporter Alex Dicken to find out about all things Blues ahead of the new season…

Birmingham City have had near misses since relegation before, so what was different this time?

I think the main problem was that Birmingham City never expected to be in a relegation battle. They signed players they hoped would make them challenge the right end of the table. Obviously in those first 10 or 11 games they were. They were fifth, sixth before John Eustace was sacked in October.

The Wayne Rooney experiment didn’t quite work and it was sort of a rescue mission from there on. Tony Mowbray was setting things right but fell ill and had to resign. His assistant wasn’t a manager and he just couldn’t do the job the way Mowbray did and then Gary Rowett got a bailout job at the end of the season and he did well but I think at that point he was already struggling with one losing the battle.

They simply didn’t have the players fit for relegation battles. In previous years when they’ve been there, they’ve had fighters and players who know how to quit in those situations. You think about people like Harlee Dean, who was released last summer. Troy Deeney as well. The players who managed to get out of trouble really and the Blues didn’t have that.

They almost took their good quality on points from last season and allowed themselves to sleepwalk into a relegation and had two big away games at the end of the season against Rotherham and Huddersfield and failed to win one so that he was afterwards removed from them. hands.

Chris Davies certainly seems to be another example of clubs getting hip and appointing a young English manager. What did you make of the appointment because there were certainly some big names attached to the job?

There were plenty of candidates and people interested, managers far more experienced than Chris Davies but probably not with the same coaching credentials as him. He has been a coach for 20 years, when he ended his playing career at 19. He worked alongside Brendan Rodgers and had a season with Ange Postecoglu last year.

A highly regarded coach throughout the game as well. He has obviously worked at the highest level at Spurs, Leicester, Liverpool and Celtic and the message I had at the start of the recruitment process was that the Blues were not opposed to going down the path of appointing a, quote, “ guy Kieran McKenna. “

These trendy appointments, younger managers in their first jobs, have done well in League One in recent years, so with the support the Blues owners will be able to give Chris Davies this summer, then I think they should work too.

What kind of summer do you have in mind in terms of transfers?

When a club is relegated you always expect, or the fans demand, that the team is dismantled. Inevitably, you get players you wouldn’t expect to stick around and feel a sense of responsibility. Someone like Krystian Bielik, for example, one who had a lot of interest and interest in the European Championship. He didn’t want to go down to League One with Derby County years ago, that’s how he got to the Blues, but you feel the club want to keep him and you feel there’s half a chance they will.

There are other players with international careers to protect, someone like Seung-Ho Paik who will find it very difficult to play for South Korea if they are in League 1 next season. So, inevitably, there will be players who will leave.

Jordan James, most of us expect him to leave this summer, but it’s probably not as small a team as people think. They still have 17 senior players signed and I think he (Davies) will give them that clean camp at the start of pre-season to knock them out before he actually makes any decisions on players and decides if he doesn’t want to. someone around so on so on.

I think it will be a big summer in the end. I think you are probably talking about 10 players. They had one, but it will probably have to be 10. I think a lot of the business will come once the preseason starts in early July.

If you could keep one player from last season in this League One squad, who would you pick and why?

I already mentioned him, Krystian Bielik. There are probably three. I think Paik is a bit unrealistic because he is in the South Korea team and he has to protect her. Bielik has lost his place in the Poland squad over the past 12 months and I think it would look a bit bad for him to jump straight after another relegation. He is well thought out about the Blues, very pleasant, a very good character.

He is a very good player in the Championship on his day when used correctly, so he would be an absolutely outstanding player in League One, whether at centre-back or in central midfield. If I can keep it, that would be a major thing. I don’t see many better players in Ligue 1 than Krystian Bielik if he stays.

The Blues are early favorites for promotion, are the signs there that they will live up to the pre-season hype?

I think I have to. I mean, the message they’re getting is that they’re not going to recruit for League One, they’re going to recruit to win it and get into the Championship and be competitive there. I think the signing of Ryan Allsop, although I wouldn’t say his stats stand out and make him look like an incredible shot stopper, he’s fantastic with the ball at his feet. The Blues are a team that likes to have the ball and play from the back, so he will be really important.

They will be recruiting players that maybe other Ligue 1 teams can’t see, so I expect them to be right at the top of the league with a bigger budget than everyone else.