Blues season concluded with a 1-1 draw away to Portsmouth and a top half Championship finish for the first time since 2015/16 Season, a full decade ago! And it’s a mixed feeling if I’m honest so I thought I’d review the season and throw my thoughts on it.
Spirits were high off the back of our record breaking campaign and there was some serious investment in the summer, ambitions were set high and I think Promotion was on the mind of a few of us (Certainly myself) while others were looking for a bit of consolidation in the Championship. We looked to start well with a point against freshly relegated Ipswich and then a win on the road against Blackburn, it wasn’t until Leicester away near the end of August that Blues suffered their first league defeat and our form on the road then became a nightmare!
I think this was our largest issue this season personally, although there were a few others which I will touch on later. It was really strong again at home but on the road there was a horrendous spell when we just won or lost them, dropping points against teams we should have been beating and I think this cost us massively. If we were to split out the home and away table Blues would sit 4th based on home form but 4th from bottom in the away table managing just 5 wins on the road all season.
If Blues can convert a couple of the losses to wins it puts us in a much better position as our Home form would really have pulled us up so the question does need to be asked as to what is so different on the road? One concern for me, and I’ve not seen it mentioned anywhere else so it could just be me, but is there some dark arts at home that Davies is employing? If so how can Blues be elevated when they’re not in control of their environments? Or is it just that we as the fans at home give the players the boost they need and if so, again how do the lads dig up the reserves they have without the large support? Is it all mental or is it environmental I suppose is the question that needs to be asked and from there what are the solutions?
Of course, as I said at the start, there are other issues to throw in the mix. For me our injuries last season definitely became an issue which given Tom Brady’s consultation on recovery was meant to have a huge impact on keeping players fit is a bit of a concern. I would also lean on a bit of poor recruitment as well as at the start of the season I thought we had the depth to deal with things like this however it seems like all key players have had a significant period out injured this season which puts us on the back foot right away. If Blues can keep players fitter next season it will be a huge plus but without reviewing the cause it is likely to reoccur surely? So what is the cause, is it just unfortunate or is training going too hard? On the pitch last season there wasn’t so much running that it would cause all these issues, in fact another frustration of mine was the sheer lack of movement at times, the sideways and backwards and getting the ball to then stop and look around first. It wasn’t intuitive enough nor fast paced enough but if that would have caused further injuries maybe that was a good thing!
So we move to the elephant in the room, the future of Chris Davies. Many fans, overly ambitious or level headedly conservative have all agreed that Davies’ limitations have been exposed this season. I say this season, I know there’s a few of us that got frustrated with them last season but the quality of opponent was far lower.
I think it’s a bit of a tough one, many people are expecting him to go this summer with some outright calling for him to go but it’s up to the owners. I personally don’t think he’s a bad manager, his football isn’t the most entertaining (I hate possession based football personally but I accept it has its place as a tactical option) but we can’t take away the fact that his first two seasons as a manager he has a 57% win rate which isn’t too shabby. He runs a tight ship and he does clearly want to succeed (I mean it would be mad to just be there for the craic) but he hasn’t yet got the experience at this level. He has been a coach for years and worked at some great clubs in the UK under Brendan Rogers, notably Celtic and Liverpool, but as the top boss he’s still finding his feet. At times I feel that has been evident.
Davies likes to have the team keep possession, now whether the players fail to make all the right decisions on the pitch and fall back to the main prerogative of keeping possession or whether he is telling them to keep possession even at the expense of going forward I can’t say for sure but what I can say is that the ball goes back to the keeper far too often. Beadle doesn’t have the distribution to launch it high and doesn’t seem comfortable under pressure so it’s not been a great move for this to happen. If it’s the players panicking and going a bit against Davies instruction it seems therefore that Davies message isn’t getting across, I do suspect it’s more that this is what Davies wants to see.
Then we look at when things go wrong, Davies sticks to Plan A and there hasn’t been enough of a Plan B this season. Davies substitutions have usually been like-for-like and have far too often had little impact on the game, his in game management seems to be non existent but this will come with time and experience. We do have to remember that this is still his first managerial (Or Head Coach) appointment. I personally have nothing against Davies and feel that if it wasn’t for the elevated expectations a Top Ten finish for the first time in ten years should be a huge positive and this is why I think there is a high possibility we will see him at the helm next season, especially given the finish to the season once a few key players returned.
Ultimately if we look at it subjectively, take away the hype, look at it all on paper we had several players brought in that haven’t played in the division before, a manager that hasn’t managed in the division before, a club that hasn’t finished in the top half of the table for ten years… this year is a success. It’s going to be an important summer, there will be players that depart and there are definitely areas we need to strengthen but for now it’s a shame we didn’t go up, it’s a huge improvement on what we’ve sat through for years and now it’s time for a break before we go again!
BRUM IS BLUE! 
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