Birmingham City lacked penetration in their 1-0 loss to Bristol City at the weekend and are now looking to Saturday’s clash with Portsmouth
Chris Davies(Image: Getty Images)
Chris Davies admits his ‘jaded’ Birmingham City players need time to recover from two demanding away games in succession.
Blues went to Preston last Tuesday and battled to an important 1-0 victory over North End inflicting a first home loss on Paul Heckingbottom’s team.
However, they lacked tempo against Bristol City in Saturday’s 1-0 reverse, a game settled by a Sinclair Armstrong winner that from their point of view was a poor goal to concede.
Davies admits a week free of a midweek fixture gives Blues the time they need to prepare for the visit of Portsmouth this weekend and Millwall on November 4.
“Away from home we’ve had some tough matches, definitely,” said Davies.
“I don’t know where we rank league-wide but it is difficult away from home at this level, playing against some good teams.
“It’s never going to be easy but we do have to try to improve. Having said that, we’ve just gone up to Preston and won 1-0, kept a clean sheet, and they are obviously a team that’s riding pretty high at the moment.
“So we are capable of it, we just have to try and be a bit more consistent.
“From my point of view, I really wanted us to make that home game against Hull count. We couldn’t do that.
“If we’d have done that, you go onto these two (away games) and say can we at least win one of them.
“The setback we had against Hull changed that picture a little bit.
“On the back of losing to Hull, we were facing the prospect of two very difficult away matches where you’re not guaranteed to get even a single point so we have got a win, a clean sheet and another positive evening out of it, but we’ve come here and it’s another bit of a setback.
“We could do with that week between games now. Some players have played a lot of football and look pretty jaded.
“They could do with that time to recover and a good training week before two home matches.”
Blues take on Pompey in 15th spot, three places and two points above John Mousinho’s outfit.
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