The latest Birmingham City team news from BirminghamLive as Blues lose 1-0 at Burton Albion
17:59, 19 Jul 2025Updated 18:02, 19 Jul 2025
Jay Stansfield of Birmingham City
Chris Davies revealed Jay Stansfield’s omission from both of Birmingham City’s friendlies today was down to a ‘niggle’.
The Birmingham City striker played 45 minutes of the pre-season curtain-raiser against Sevilla, but was not involved at Burton or Crewe.
Instead he and the likes of Ethan Laird and Lyndon Dykes remained behind to build their fitness, although new signing Kanya Fujimoto has made progress.
“They’re just back at the training ground, they’ve been trained and some have had injuries at different times but they’re all they’re OK,” Davies said.
“Jay’s on a different schedule. He’s had a lot of football with England and came back and he’s got a little bit of a little bit of a niggle, so we’ll see how he is.
“Kanya is picking up his training actually, I’m hoping he rejoins team training in the next week or so.
“From then he needs a good couple of weeks to really get up to speed in terms of any game time. He’s getting there, it’s been quite a good week of progress for Kanya.”
Overall Davies wasn’t too unhappy with the 1-0 loss at the Pirelli Stadium, which came about after a poor goal scored by Fabio Tavares in the fifth minute.
“The No. 1 thing you’re looking for is, can you build your fitness from these type of games as the first 60 minutes we’ve been exposed to this season?
“I think the boys looked leggy, they’ve had a strong week in training. So, I think that’ll do them the world of good having that 60 minutes under their belt for most of them.
“I thought first half we were very fluid, we conceded a ridiculous goal which we won’t concede any worse than that, so that’s something to learn from.
“But then it was obviously all us and we were pretty fluid, we just lacked a bit of killer instinct in the in the final bit. That will come.
“Quite encouraging, obviously disappointing to lose the game but there were things there that we can definitely work with.
“The young lads came on and I wanted to see them look like a Birmingham City player, run and fight like one and they did that. So all in all, I think we can take a lot from the day.
“I never like losing even a friendly, but it’s a pre-season game that we need to get for fitness and then move on from there.”
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