Coventry City inflicted a 3-0 defeat on Birmingham City in their latest Championship game
Birmingham City manager Chris Davies on the touchline at Coventry City
Chris Davies took aim at referee Thomas Kirk in his press conference after Birmingham City’s defeat to Coventry.
Blues suffered their heaviest defeat under Davies thanks to goals from Brandon Thomas-Asante, Bright Osayi-Samuel (OG) and Victor Torp and their third in a row away from St Andrew’s without scoring.
The game was made easier for Coventry by Kirk’s decision to dismiss Blues defender Jack Robinson on the stroke of half-time for a second yellow card.
Davies says both of Robinson’s bookings – the first for a foul on Josh Eccles and the second for clipping Haji Wright on halfway – were ‘harsh’ but he was more frustrated that Coventry’s players weren’t punished for kicking the ball away.
“I thought the first one was really harsh,” Davies began. “We’ve had a game today where the decisive moment has come from us losing a player and the frustration for me is we’ve had multiple examples of their players kicking the ball away in the first half and not receiving cautions.
“I understand it’s a difficult job for the officials, always, but the impact that has is huge.
“We lose this game and we have to take that, and there are things we could have done better, but a huge impact was two yellow cards that have led to us losing a player.
“When you get one yellow card you’re always running the risk. If you kick a ball away blatantly in front of a referee and you don’t get booked for it, you can carry on doing it. If you get booked you’re on the back-foot, you’ve got to be careful of tackling, careful of slipping over, careful of doing anything that gets you a second yellow and then a red.
“I’ve said it in every single game we’ve had. I’m OK if my players get booked for kicking balls away because they shouldn’t do it.
“We sat in pre-season meetings about it, it’s time-wasting, we are a team that wants to get the ball down a play and we’ve had blatant examples of it today going unpunished.
“It’s important for people to understand the impact that that has. When a player is on a yellow card he can’t tackle with the same conviction because he’s always aware that things could change.
“That for me is a real frustration within this. When the game is tight, every little thing could make the difference.”
Jack Robinson is shown a red card
Blues failed to have a shot on target against Coventry and have now lost four of their last five games in all competitions.
Davies added: “I think if we’re 11v11 for the whole game then we have a shot on target, I have no doubt about that. The way the game was, the feeling for me was that we would absolutely be able to have shots on target.
“They weren’t having many shots at our goal when it was 11v11. It was a tight game. When you go a man down to one of the better teams at this level, it’s going to be hard for anyone, not just us.
“You try your best to keep it tight and see if you can break away or get up the pitch to have a couple of moments with your one-man-less, but you can get camped in and what’s obviously what happened.
“It’s impossible to analyse this game (11v10). You can try to but it would be false to do so.”
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