BRUM IS BLUE!

In points gained terms, Blues are top six at home but bottom five on the road. Blues have struggled quite a bit to secure a win away from St Andrews despite a depth of talent and having shown they can do it at home so why is it that Blues struggle so much and what can Davies do to improve this?

Based on the current results it does look as though we’re well on for mid-table consolidation this season but if we want to push on for more, either this season or next, we need to pick up more points from our travels. It’s almost perplexing that we do suffer so much away from home but when you consider the level of detail that Davies looks for, the quality of the pitch each half, the ball boys rapidly returning balls for the home team, the mascots only being able to be in the opponents half of the pitch during warm ups limiting what our opponents can do, these things do make a difference but ultimately we can’t rely solely on that to be the difference between a loss or picking up points.

I suppose the first task Davies will have is trying to understand why Blues struggle from home, is it the lack of above going in their favour (Do we really rely so heavily on these little home comforts), is it the change of environment, is it a lack of confidence in front of rival support? Personally I don’t believe any of these as reasons are acceptable and no doubt Davies feels the same.

So what therefor can Davies do? I think part of it is going to be getting the players out of their comfort zone. Maybe get them training off location, not Wast Hills, not wandering around St Andrews or anything like that but something completely unfamiliar to them, increase the stress rate and demand the same performance then repeat until he gets it. Sounds so simple in my head, I’m sure its not a revolutionary idea but it’s all I can think of that could help.

Ultimately though if we look at the improvement of home performances and the results that followed, we can also trace this away from home and see the improvement is there, so with a stable starting line up now you can only imagine the results will come. We went into the last international break with the general form of Blues being a dissappointment and needing some improvement, that was achieved at home so now with the break perhaps we will see the same improvement of results overall. If we can achieve that then we will fly up the table, you do feel we’ve potentially found our feet now as well so it will be exciting to see how it develops!