Birmingham City were beaten by Middlesbrough 3-1 at St Andrew’s on Monday night
Chris Davies, manager of Birmingham City
Chris Davies has offered support to goalkeeper James Beadle and says Birmingham City’s players didn’t want the ball enough in their defeat to Middlesbrough.
Boro blitzed Blues at St Andrew’s to record a 3-1 victory with goals from Matt Targett (2) and David Strelec.
Not only did Blues concede two poor goals in the first half, Brighton loanee Beadle was caught playing out numerous times to increase anxiety and anger inside St Andrew’s.
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Quizzed on Blues’ struggles playing out from the back in his post-match press conference, Davies refused to lay blame at Beadle’s door – instead insisting that the goalkeeper didn’t have the options he should have had.
“We were struggling in our build-up,” said Davies. “In that period of the game, when it was at its most obvious, we weren’t wanting the ball enough.
“It was going back to him as if we were going to play out from the back, but there wasn’t really a conviction to go and do it. Then you’re in trouble because you’re half and half.
“We need to have more conviction and decisiveness in our position and what we need to do. We weren’t good enough in that period leading up to half-time.
“I’m quite happy for him to go long as long we’re all doing it together, but I thought there were a lot of opportunities to play forward and beat the press.
“Playing out from the back and losing the ball a lot has not been a problem in my time here, usually we’re good at it, but tonight we didn’t have enough. You might say their press was quite effective in that sense.
“If you just boot the ball long and it goes out for a throw-in then that’s not great either. You’ve got to try to be good in your build-up, whether that’s short or long, and tonight we weren’t.
“The crowd are obviously upset because we’re two-nil down and that’s understandable. We have to take that.
“We need to keep doing what we’ve done for lots of games really well.
“I wouldn’t encourage the players to invite pressure when it’s not necessary but I would encourage them to get into position and look to take the ball as much as possible.”
Davies has been supportive of Beadle, 21, throughout his loan and kept faith with him when there were calls to play Ryan Allsop after his impressive performance against Leeds United in the FA Cup two weeks ago.
He added: “As a manager, you can go two ways, you can support your players or make life a lot harder for them and my instinct is to support my players when they’re going through difficult periods on the pitch and that’s what I did at half-time with him.
“The reason we lost this game tonight wasn’t because of James Beadle. It was because as a team we weren’t good enough.
“My work as a coach is to get the team to play, and when it comes to James getting on the ball there’s certain patterns and options that I want him to have, so when he passes the ball and it doesn’t work it might not always be him that’s doing something wrong. It might be that other players aren’t in positions as well.
“I will always support them. When it’s good you can’t be patting everyone on the back and when it’s bad you throw people under the bus. That’s not what I believe so we’ll support James and learn from this game.”