{"id":247637,"date":"2025-07-08T09:29:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T09:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/247637\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T09:29:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T09:29:12","slug":"russell-martin-explains-ben-davies-decision-as-rangers-dangle-birmingham-city-carrot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/247637\/","title":{"rendered":"Russell Martin explains Ben Davies decision as Rangers dangle Birmingham City carrot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Davies enjoyed a successful loan spell at Birmingham City from Rangers last season\"BenBen Davies (L) and Kieran Dowell (R) arrive for Rangers’ pre-season training<\/p>\n

Ben Davies was left out of Rangers\u2019 first pre-season friendly against Brugge due to injury \u2013 not because he is nearing a move away from Ibrox.<\/p>\n

Birmingham City<\/a> have shown interest in re-signing the defender, who excelled on loan at St Andrew\u2019s @ Knighthead Park last season.<\/p>\n

Davies<\/a> made 44 appearances for Blues and formed a solid defensive partnership with Christoph Klarer to help the club win the League One title in record-breaking fashion.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old has since returned to parent club Rangers, along with fellow loanee Kieran Dowell,<\/a> but hasn\u2019t been able to train much under new manager Russell Martin due to an injury.<\/p>\n

While Dowell has been a prominent part of Rangers\u2019 pre-season under Martin and featured in their 2-2 draw with Brugge, Davies was forced to miss the Ibrox clash.<\/p>\n

Speaking after the match, Martin revealed: \u201cBen’s injured. He trained for a week and then picked up a small injury. He’s not fit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Blues are interested in bringing Davies and Dowell back to the Midlands, but they aren\u2019t waiting around for Martin to make up his mind on the duo.<\/p>\n

Chris Davies<\/a> has already added seven new signings to his squad ahead of Blues\u2019 Championship return, and pre-season steps up a notch this week with a friendly against Sevilla out in Portugal.<\/p>\n

Having said that, the door is still ajar for Davies and Dowell because Blues are likely to strengthen in their respective positions.<\/p>\n

With Rangers now signing players to strengthen their own squad, Martin says departures are certain.<\/p>\n

He explained: \u201cWe definitely want to do more for sure and also, some players probably need to move on at some point because the squad can start looking very big and heavy. It will definitely look different in a week’s time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Should Blues re-sign Davies and Dowell? Have your say HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Davies enjoyed a successful loan spell at Birmingham City from Rangers last seasonBen Davies (L) and Kieran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[42706,855,1205,42707,748,393,4884,43664,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-247637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-ben-davies","9":"tag-birmingham","10":"tag-birmingham-city-fc","11":"tag-birmingham-city-fc-transfer-news","12":"tag-britain","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-kieran-dowell","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114816913566863225","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247637","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=247637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}