What Birmingham City players can expect from Chris Davies training sessions in Austria

Birmingham City will soon jet out to Austria for a pre-season training camp under Chris Davies

Chris Davies is getting to grips with Birmingham City’s players – and he will soon have a week’s training camp in Austria to enforce his ideas.

Blues handed Davies his first job in management at the beginning of June and the 39-year-old met all of his players for the first time on Monday. Until now, Davies has enjoyed a stellar coaching career under Brendan Rodgers and Ange Postecoglou.

He has appointed two new coaches to his staff in the form of assistant Ben Petty and Nathan Gardiner, who left Spurs for Blues on Thursday, but it would be foolish to think Davies will not be the driving force on the training ground.

Even under Rodgers and Postecoglou, Davies was the coach who led on the training ground at Celtic, Leicester City and Spurs. But what can Blues’ players expect from Davies when pre-season really kicks in next week?

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“We never had the same session close together,” former Leicester winger Marc Albrighton explained. “For a footballer that’s great because you don’t know what you’re doing. It could be something new every day and it keeps it fresh.

“He worked a lot on possession and patterns of play, in the first few years, everything was clear in the way he wanted to play. He demanded a lot of the players, which they all did in that regime.”

Before Spurs and Leicester, Davies was a key influence at Celtic during their historic invincible season of 2016/17. In fact, Davies referenced Celtic’s preparation and planning for all matches, not just the big Champions League nights, during conversations with the Blues hierarchy before he got the job.

Ex-Blues loanee Scott Allan was one of the players Davies coached at Celtic and he was able to shed more light on his coaching technique. “There were clear instructions,” said Allan. “There was good clarity in how the team had to play on and off the ball.

“We were prepared for any situation that would arise in a game, whether that was going down to 10 men… We were very well prepared and very professional.

“Training was very enjoyable actually. It’s probably the most enjoyable training that I’ve had throughout my career, in terms of coming in every day. You never once heard a grumble, which you sometimes do.”