![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0_JS398517775.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBirmingham City were beaten by Middlesbrough 3-1 at St Andrew’s on Monday night<\/p>\n
23:23, 02 Mar 2026Updated 23:27, 02 Mar 2026<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Chris Davies, manager of Birmingham City<\/p>\n
Chris Davies has offered support to goalkeeper James Beadle and says Birmingham City\u2019s<\/a> players didn\u2019t want the ball enough in their defeat to Middlesbrough.<\/p>\n Boro blitzed Blues at St Andrew\u2019s to record a 3-1 victory<\/a> with goals from Matt Targett (2) and David Strelec.<\/p>\n Not only did Blues concede two poor goals in the first half, Brighton loanee Beadle<\/a> was caught playing out numerous times to increase anxiety and anger inside St Andrew\u2019s.<\/p>\n Ensure our latest headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search<\/a><\/p>\n Quizzed on Blues\u2019 struggles playing out from the back in his post-match press conference, Davies<\/a> refused to lay blame at Beadle\u2019s door \u2013 instead insisting that the goalkeeper didn\u2019t have the options he should have had.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were struggling in our build-up,\u201d said Davies. \u201cIn that period of the game, when it was at its most obvious, we weren\u2019t wanting the ball enough.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was going back to him as if we were going to play out from the back, but there wasn\u2019t really a conviction to go and do it. Then you\u2019re in trouble because you\u2019re half and half.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to have more conviction and decisiveness in our position and what we need to do. We weren\u2019t good enough in that period leading up to half-time.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m quite happy for him to go long as long we\u2019re all doing it together, but I thought there were a lot of opportunities to play forward and beat the press.<\/p>\n \u201cPlaying out from the back and losing the ball a lot has not been a problem in my time here, usually we\u2019re good at it, but tonight we didn\u2019t have enough. You might say their press was quite effective in that sense.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you just boot the ball long and it goes out for a throw-in then that\u2019s not great either. You\u2019ve got to try to be good in your build-up, whether that\u2019s short or long, and tonight we weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cThe crowd are obviously upset because we\u2019re two-nil down and that\u2019s understandable. We have to take that.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to keep doing what we\u2019ve done for lots of games really well.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t encourage the players to invite pressure when it\u2019s not necessary but I would encourage them to get into position and look to take the ball as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Davies has been supportive of Beadle, 21, throughout his loan and kept faith with him when there were calls to play Ryan Allsop after his impressive performance against Leeds United in the FA Cup<\/a> two weeks ago.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cAs a manager, you can go two ways, you can support your players or make life a lot harder for them and my instinct is to support my players when they\u2019re going through difficult periods on the pitch and that\u2019s what I did at half-time with him.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason we lost this game tonight wasn\u2019t because of James Beadle. It was because as a team we weren\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n \u201cMy work as a coach is to get the team to play, and when it comes to James getting on the ball there\u2019s certain patterns and options that I want him to have, so when he passes the ball and it doesn\u2019t work it might not always be him that\u2019s doing something wrong. It might be that other players aren\u2019t in positions as well.<\/p>\n \u201cI will always support them. When it\u2019s good you can\u2019t be patting everyone on the back and when it\u2019s bad you throw people under the bus. That\u2019s not what I believe so we\u2019ll support James and learn from this game.\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. Just click this link<\/a> to receive daily Blues content and breaking news. 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Read our Privacy Notice.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Birmingham City were beaten by Middlesbrough 3-1 at St Andrew’s on Monday night 23:23, 02 Mar 2026Updated 23:27,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[11538,37088,218,164208,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-454879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-birmingham-city-fc","tag-chris-davies-football-coach","tag-football","tag-james-beadle","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}