![\"Birmingham](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0_JS389979631.jpg\")
Birmingham City manager Chris Davies<\/p>\nBirmingham City were defeated 3-1 by Southampton on Saturday afternoonBirmingham City manager Chris Davies<\/p>\n
Chris Davies has lamented Birmingham City\u2019s sluggish start in their 3-1 defeat to Southampton<\/a> and admitted \u2018we weren\u2019t strong enough\u2019.<\/p>\n Southampton raced into a two-goal lead at St Mary\u2019s thanks to goals from Finn Azaz and Adam Armstrong to give Blues<\/a> another mountain to climb away from home.<\/p>\n Blues have conceded the first goal in nine of their 10 Championship away games and eight of those openers have arrived in the first half.<\/p>\n Davies said: \u201cIt was always going to be a challenge but in the first 20 minutes we weren’t strong enough physically or quick enough onto the ball and we paid the price.<\/p>\n \u201cWe gave ourselves a mountain to climb at 2-0 down against a team with a lot of good players.<\/p>\n \u201cThat first 20 minutes was not what we\u2019ve been talking about or what we wanted to deliver in terms of solidity and strength in that period away from home.<\/p>\n \u201cThey had a few moments that we had to defend better. We had a lot of blue shirts back on both the goals so it wasn\u2019t that we got opened up. We were there in numbers, we just didn\u2019t do enough to keep the ball out of our goal.<\/p>\n \u201cThen after that, I think there was a game with a lot of positives. I think we really took the game to them, we were good, there were a lot of things I liked about our performance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were moving the ball well, getting territory and good situations. In the second half, with more intensity and aggression we came out on the front foot, scored a good goal, then you think \u2018here we go\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThe absolute decisive goal is the 3-1, that then takes the stuffing out of us. It was spirited, there was no lack of effort. We went right to the very end.\u201d<\/p>\n Four frenetic minutes separated Demarai Gray\u2019s goal and Armstrong\u2019s clincher for Southampton.<\/p>\n Blues failed to get their foot on the ball and got sucked into an end-to-end contest that Southampton won.<\/p>\n If Davies had his time again, he would order his players to calm things down.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cIn hindsight, you would say that if we keep it at 2-1 for another 10 minutes it could grow, the home crowd would get nervy and we could put the pressure on.<\/p>\n \u201cOur objective at that point was trying to push for the second. Again, for the third goal there was a lot of blue shirts back there again. It wasn\u2019t as if we were carved open. They are poor goals from our point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n 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. 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Read our Privacy Notice.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Birmingham City were defeated 3-1 by Southampton on Saturday afternoonBirmingham City manager Chris Davies Chris Davies has lamented…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616625,"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-616624","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\/115674528037453645","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616624","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=616624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}