![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0_JS365410105.jpg\")
Chris Davies has enjoyed a dream first season in management with Birmingham City<\/p>\nChris Davies opens up on his long road before leading Birmingham City out at WembleyChris Davies has enjoyed a dream first season in management with Birmingham City<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see myself as a talented person in any way, but I see myself as very hard-working. Any success I\u2019ve had has come through out-working people, not having more talent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Davies<\/a> is doing himself a disservice. Anyone who has watched Birmingham City<\/a> this season would agree that their tactical blueprint has been designed by someone with plenty of brains.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cFor 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,\u201d he told BirminghamLive.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cStraight away I thought we\u2019ve got to do that then. We\u2019ve got to win it and get promoted.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to go strong because I knew eventually it could lead to something like this and you can see the excitement now is amazing.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the owners\u2019 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\u2019re there, we want to win it.\u201d<\/p>\n Davies showed his players a picture of Barry Fry\u2019s Auto Windscreens Shield winners of 1994\/95 before their first group game against Walsall.<\/a> \u201cI tried to paint a picture of what we are playing in because some of them had never played in it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt went on and on and I tried to use those ideas to keep motivating them, but it wasn\u2019t until we got to the Bradford game that it all became very real and the scenes after made it the best day we\u2019ve had this season in terms of atmosphere, response from the fans, and excitement.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The Blues manager explained: \u201cWhen 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\u2019t know what that would look like. Then very quickly I wanted to become a coach.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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\u2019d played for before, and he had followed this path as well.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019d been inspired by Jose Mourinho, then it was Brendan coming through and I thought, \u2018I can do this. One day.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cThen I started to really tune in. \u2018I\u2019m 25, by 35 I can be a manager of a big club if I do everything right.\u2019 That was when I started to think about it and that was 14 years before I got this job.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a long road. I was frustrated at times. For some reason, I don\u2019t 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 \u2013 different manager, different club, insights, big responsibility \u2013 it helped me so much. I\u2019m so glad I became the manager here when I did, not at 35.\u201d<\/p>\n Chris Davies’s runaway League One leaders face Peterborough United on Sunday, April 13 in the final of the Vertu Trophy, looking to clinch the first past of a double after a season of incredible success.<\/p>\n Buy now<\/a> and have it delivered directly to your door. Alternatively you can purchase in most supermarkets, high street retailers and independent newsagents in Birmingham<\/a> from April 2, 2025.<\/p>\n By his own admission, Davies is a workaholic. Blues\u2019 manager watches every opponent at least 10 times before playing them \u2013 and then he devises a plan to negate their strengths and expose their weaknesses.<\/p>\n That means there is little time for anything other than football and family in Davies\u2019 life. There is a picture of Davies, with his wife and three children, on the desk in his office at Blues\u2019 training ground.<\/p>\n \u201cSadly my kids have had to see me jumping around the touchline at times and you don\u2019t really want them to see that,\u201d says Davies.<\/p>\n \u201cMy wife is good at explaining, \u2018This is how we earn our money for living our life, your dad needs to work\u2019. But they\u2019ve never seen it that close up before.<\/p>\n \u201cMy son is not interested in football but he loves shouting at the referees. I think that\u2019s what he\u2019s learnt from me! He\u2019s learnt a few colourful words now and he likes shouting at referees.<\/p>\n \u201cMy middle daughter is right into football and she now plays, I think it\u2019s really ignited her passion for it. She\u2019s seen how players interact on the pitch.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then my youngest daughter, I think she could take it or leave it \u2013 I don\u2019t think she\u2019s got any interest at all, which is nice.<\/p>\n \u201cMy wife has been very supportive. It\u2019s been nice to have them at all the games. It\u2019s a nice stadium, it\u2019s a nice place.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve never been able to spend so much time together in football. They\u2019re at every home game, my dad comes home and away, so it\u2019s been nice for us as a family. We said that when I become a manager we want to live it all together.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough we laugh and joke, with my wife, because I say that but sometimes I don\u2019t act like it, it is obviously the most important thing to me.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I don\u2019t see any other way that I would be successful or be here now, managing Birmingham City,<\/a> if I wasn\u2019t working as hard as anyone, if not harder.\u201d<\/p>\n How do you rate the job Davies has done? Have your say on him HERE<\/a>Get the latest Blues headlines sent straight to your phone<\/p>\n BirminghamLive has its very own Birmingham City<\/a> WhatsApp community to deliver the latest headlines straight to your phone. Just click this link<\/a> to receive daily Blues content and breaking news. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don\u2019t like our community, you can check out any time you like. 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Read our Privacy Notice.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Davies opens up on his long road before leading Birmingham City out at WembleyChris Davies has enjoyed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,1205,748,8372,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-15816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-birmingham-city-fc","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-chris-davies-football-coach","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114329298142297196","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Birmingham](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0_JS365359609.jpg\")
Birmingham City manager Chris Davies celebrates promotion<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/1744393467_457_0_BIRMINGHAM-CITY-FINAL-PREVIEW.jpg\")
Don’t miss your Birmingham Mail Blues at Wembley special souvenir edition<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/1743654856_660_0_BIRMINGHAM-CITY-FINAL-PREVIEW.jpg\")
40-page special<\/a><\/p>\n