Birmingham City’s Heavy Defeat: Team Meeting After 6-1 Loss
Birmingham City’s heaviest night of the season did not end with the final whistle. It carried on in a closed room at their training ground.
Chris Davies revealed his players and staff held a team meeting after the 6-1 Carabao Cup humiliation by Brentford at St Andrew’s, a result that ripped through the early-season optimism but, he insists, has not broken it.
You lick your wounds
Blues were dismantled by the Premier League side on Tuesday, dumped out of the competition in brutal fashion. For a club that has spent the past few years clawing its way back to respectability, it stung.
Davies, who took charge in 2024 and promptly delivered a record-breaking points tally and the League One title, did not pretend otherwise.
“You lick your wounds. We sat down and had a meeting about it,” he told BBC WM Sport. “A lot of that we have to keep private and confidential, but we have been through that process. We have to pick ourselves up now very quickly. Resilience is the number one thing in football, you need it.”
The inquest, then, has been held. The verdict: move on, but not forget.
“The good news is we have the chance to bounce back against Wrexham and we have put that game to bed now and move on,” Davies said. “It isn’t going to derail anything. We have built something strong here over the past few years and it will take more than one heavy defeat to really dent that.”
Pressure, ownership and a Friday night response
Behind the scenes, the manager has kept his lines of communication open with the hierarchy. Davies stressed that the board, including chairman Tom Wagner, remains engaged despite Wagner’s absence since suffering a stroke in February.
“I speak to the board regularly,” Davies explained. “I spoke to Tom Wagner on Wednesday. Jeremy Dale is the CEO and I speak to Jeremy. There is a shared disappointment, but equally we know we have a great opportunity on Friday night.”
That opportunity is Wrexham at home. Under the lights. On the back of a 6-1 thrashing. The kind of fixture that can either soothe the noise or crank it up.
Davies knows exactly how quickly the mood can turn.
“I've always felt pressure. We are a bad week away from being under huge pressure here because you just have to win in football – it is the nature of the beast,” he said. “It is not something I concern myself with. There is pressure in management.
“You are only as good as your last game – and our last game was a poor one, but if you turn that around with a couple of good wins and performances, it can feel very different.”
Friday night will show whether Birmingham can turn that feeling on its head, or whether Brentford’s six-goal statement leaves a deeper mark than Davies is willing to allow.
