Chris Davies opens up on his long road before leading Birmingham City out at Wembley
Chris Davies has enjoyed a dream first season in management with Birmingham City
“I don’t see myself as a talented person in any way, but I see myself as very hard-working. Any success I’ve had has come through out-working people, not having more talent.”
Chris Davies is doing himself a disservice. Anyone who has watched Birmingham City this season would agree that their tactical blueprint has been designed by someone with plenty of brains.
And it has brought success for Davies in his first season as a manager. Blues have achieved promotion back to the Championship and will grace Wembley on Sunday.
Davies has the highest win percentage of any Blues manager in history and must be among the most ambitious. Some managers would have overlooked the Vertu Trophy, not Davies.
“For me it was clear the league is our priority and everyone knew that, but I knew the club were in it 30 years ago and when they were here, they won it and got promoted,” he told BirminghamLive.
“Straight away I thought we’ve got to do that then. We’ve got to win it and get promoted.
“I wanted to go strong because I knew eventually it could lead to something like this and you can see the excitement now is amazing.
“From the owners’ perspective, they made it clear as we were going through that they thought it was a great opportunity for us to get to Wembley and they were keen on making that happen. Now that we’re there, we want to win it.”
Davies showed his players a picture of Barry Fry’s Auto Windscreens Shield winners of 1994/95 before their first group game against Walsall. “I tried to paint a picture of what we are playing in because some of them had never played in it.
“It went on and on and I tried to use those ideas to keep motivating them, but it wasn’t until we got to the Bradford game that it all became very real and the scenes after made it the best day we’ve had this season in terms of atmosphere, response from the fans, and excitement.”
Birmingham City manager Chris Davies celebrates promotion
The road has been long for Blues in more ways than one. Their fans have journeyed on through a decade of turmoil for days like this, their players are in the midst of a 60-game season, and their manager has done it the hard way too.
Without a playing career to propel him into coaching, Davies completed a degree in sports coaching, taught children and travelled to New Zealand and America to expand his knowledge in his early twenties. Brendan Rodgers, who had coached Davies in his teens at Reading, gave him a chance at Swansea City 15 years ago. Davies grasped it.
The Blues manager explained: “When I finished playing, my first objective was to earn a living out of football because I knew I could be out of the game very quickly. I didn’t know what that would look like. Then very quickly I wanted to become a coach.
“I had it in my head that I could be a manager years in the future. But then when I came back and started working at Swansea, we got to the Premier League, I was working with a coach that I’d played for before, and he had followed this path as well.
“He’d been inspired by Jose Mourinho, then it was Brendan coming through and I thought, ‘I can do this. One day.’
“Then I started to really tune in. ‘I’m 25, by 35 I can be a manager of a big club if I do everything right.’ That was when I started to think about it and that was 14 years before I got this job.
“It was a long road. I was frustrated at times. For some reason, I don’t know why, but you put numbers in your head and 35 was my number. I wanted to be a manager at 35 and at 35, I was at Leicester as the assistant manager, and I did get frustrated at times, but the truth was those extra four years were vital for me and the year at Spurs was huge – different manager, different club, insights, big responsibility – it helped me so much. I’m so glad I became the manager here when I did, not at 35.”
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By his own admission, Davies is a workaholic. Blues’ manager watches every opponent at least 10 times before playing them – and then he devises a plan to negate their strengths and expose their weaknesses.
That means there is little time for anything other than football and family in Davies’ life. There is a picture of Davies, with his wife and three children, on the desk in his office at Blues’ training ground.
“Sadly my kids have had to see me jumping around the touchline at times and you don’t really want them to see that,” says Davies.
“My wife is good at explaining, ‘This is how we earn our money for living our life, your dad needs to work’. But they’ve never seen it that close up before.
“My son is not interested in football but he loves shouting at the referees. I think that’s what he’s learnt from me! He’s learnt a few colourful words now and he likes shouting at referees.
“My middle daughter is right into football and she now plays, I think it’s really ignited her passion for it. She’s seen how players interact on the pitch.
“And then my youngest daughter, I think she could take it or leave it – I don’t think she’s got any interest at all, which is nice.
“My wife has been very supportive. It’s been nice to have them at all the games. It’s a nice stadium, it’s a nice place.
“We’ve never been able to spend so much time together in football. They’re at every home game, my dad comes home and away, so it’s been nice for us as a family. We said that when I become a manager we want to live it all together.
“For me, it’s football and family time. The most important thing to me is family, definitely, being a dad and being a husband is by far more important.
“Although we laugh and joke, with my wife, because I say that but sometimes I don’t act like it, it is obviously the most important thing to me.
“But I don’t see any other way that I would be successful or be here now, managing Birmingham City, if I wasn’t working as hard as anyone, if not harder.”
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