Birmingham City players will report back to their training base in Henley-in-Arden next week
Birmingham City manager Chris Davies during a training session in Austria on the club’s last pre-season tour
Chris Davies has promised not to disappoint his Birmingham City players with a gruelling pre-season planned for their return to the Elite Performance and Innovation Centre.
The League One champions will filter back to EPIC from the middle of next week for pre-season testing before Davies leads a six-week training camp.
Blues have now confirmed they will take on Sevilla during their week-long trip to Portugal before returning home for domestic friendlies against Solihull Moors, Burton Albion, Port Vale and Northampton. Another friendly, which will be held at St Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park on Saturday, August 2, is still to be confirmed.
After some time celebrating and relaxing following an arduous 60-game season, Blues’ players are putting in the work to ensure they are in shape for the start of pre-season. Ethan Laird has spent time training in Mykonos, while Taylor Gardner-Hickman is doing his individual work in Marbella.
It will only get harder when they report back to Davies who is determined to hit the ground running in the Championship.
He said: “Pre-season is a very important time for me. When I came last year pre-season was part of the season for me, I wanted to make a really strong start with the style of play, the training, everything.
“We’ve got a six-and-a-half, seven week pre-season which is plenty of time to get fit. There’s been plenty of rest but we’ll work hard for those six or seven weeks.
“We’re off to Portugal and we’ve got a fantastic training camp. We did the planning a few months ago for that. We’ve got a game out there and lots of good sessions that will give us time to bond and start planning our vision for the season.
“I want us to be the fittest team in the league, I always do, and I don’t see any reason why we can’t chase that.
“It will be really hard training, I’ll push the boys. It’s never pleasant in pre-season, these days as a player you need a pre pre-season to get your body ready for it. A lot of them come back in reasonable shape anyway.
“They know it’s going to be hard training – I won’t disappoint them with that!”
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