On Thursday afternoon Birmingham City announced that they had appointed Chris Davies as First Team Manager on a four-year contract. The announcement ended what felt like an extraordinarily long recruitment process to replace Tony Mowbray, who was forced to step down due to his continuing ill health.
As one can expect, blogs, podcasts, and the media itself will all produce an enormous amount of content around the new appointment.
Instead of attempting to explain what Davies adds to the team or share my thoughts on his appointment, I wanted to examine the process in its whole, what it reveals about the club’s culture under Knighthead, and what this might signify moving forward.
The Method
The announcement confirming Davies’ selection as Blues manager caught my attention because of how many coaches it seemed like they had spoken to and looked at.
His hiring puts an end to the Club’s extensive search, during which around 1,000 coaches were assessed and over 40 were contacted either directly or through their representatives.
There has been much discussion on the Blues’ approach to hiring a new manager; Mike Rigg, the Academy Technical Director, was reportedly part of a team at the club that used data-driven techniques to identify the precise coach they were looking for.
Given the direction football has taken recently, some data analysis would be expected, but it is rather astounding to look through nearly 1,000 coach profiles.
I’m curious to know how this was accomplished.
I’m aware that teams will use scouting firms like Wyscout in addition to having their own databases of players, but I’m not sure if the same kind of information is available for coaches.
A part of me wishes the Blues had taken the same approach as Brighton & Hove Albion and worked on compiling a database of managers and coaches in order to aid with style continuity and succession planning.
In addition, I hope that this demonstrates that Knighthead and Tom Wagner have taken the necessary steps to ensure that the managerial appointments they made last season won’t be made again and have actually learned from their mistakes.
In the release, Wagner also singled out Tom Brady for his “support and involvement” in the hiring process.
Brady’s engagement seems to have been more holistic in nature, as I doubt he has extensive understanding of football coaching.
I am aware that last season’s absence of a “winning mentality” was a source of criticism, and I have a feeling that Wagner and company have been searching for a coach who can instill a better playing mentality than what was occasionally provided last season.
It’s encouraging to see that Knighthead recognises that, in football, data isn’t always sufficient and that, occasionally, something needs to pass the sniff test.
Having spoken with over forty potential candidates or their representatives, it appears to me that the board aimed to obtain as much information as possible on potential candidates.
The most astounding thing of all is that, up until the final day when the sale was practically finalised, the entire process was kept largely under wraps. This was quite an accomplishment for the group, with so many potential members participating.
The Stillness
The announcement was long overdue, there is no doubting that. Even though I often strive to be patient in situations like these, the length of the process had gotten to me at the beginning of this week.
Many of the folks I observed on social media and in forums seemed to be growing increasingly upset over time.
The lack of information emerging about the process was one of the contributing factors to the agitation. The amount of cryptic gifs and ITK tweets was quite low because Blues completely shut down any leaks regarding what was going on.
Some people were negatively impacted by the lack of rumour since they mistook the club’s silence for inaction.
Additionally, it exposed some football gossip websites and journalists for what they truly are.
Only one person, my friend Matthew Elliott from the We Are Birmingham podcast, accurately identified Chris Davies as a coach we could be interested in hiring.
It also makes me question if determining which agents and intermediates were more leaky than others was a component of the new manager’s hiring process.
According to my observations, a lot of the online rumours concerning football teams are based on information that agents have shared.
It’s hardly impossible that the club inserted a few tales into the football ecosystem to track their destination; that’s the kind of thing I would do if I was attempting to find out where information disappeared.
In terms of the future, I believe we will need to adjust to this new, more restrained Blues.
By the end of the last campaign, it was evident that the team was making every effort—and to some extent, succeeding—to control the flow of information.
Since I don’t belong to any of the official supporting organisations or the mainstream media, having that information there will undoubtedly make it harder for me to write this blog in the future.
While I concur with the club that it’s not a bad idea for everyone to keep gossip to a minimum, I also believe that there needs to be an internal realisation of how vital it is for independent voices to be able to critically but constructively critique what the club is doing.
The Prospects
With Davies in place, one would imagine the team would move on to things like revealing the home uniform for the upcoming season and season ticket prices.
Bringing in players and having a full preseason to start teaching them his philosophy and techniques should make Davies’ first month or two as manager a pleasant honeymoon time.
However, it is undeniable that there will be extremely high expectations for the upcoming season.
Promotion will be viewed by many fans as the absolute minimum. The board should feel the same way, in my opinion, especially if they genuinely think that the team needs to develop a winning attitude.
Undoubtedly, this selection is audacious and demonstrates the board’s unwillingness to go the easy way of selecting a well-known “name”.
Even though everything is great right now, I believe it’s crucial that as fans, we don’t freak out the moment something seems off.
A number of factors contributed to the previous season’s horror show, but the parade of individuals occupying the manager’s chair was a major one.
I won’t disagree that Wayne Rooney’s appointment was poorly thought out and scheduled, but I’m still unhappy in the amount of supporters who attacked him before a ball was ever kicked and who were eager to fire him very quickly.
Although I concur that the board was correct to remove Rooney as soon as they did, I believe it also strengthened the belief among certain supporters that adjustments ought to be made if things weren’t going exactly as planned.
It takes time for Davies to break in new players and develop the style he wants them to play.
We may need to exercise patience at first, but it’s crucial that he be given the opportunity to succeed even if there are setbacks.
Naturally, the expectation is that the board has found a manager at Ipswich, such as Kieran McKenna, who can develop with the team and lead us not just back to the Championship but also to the Premier League.
To make that happen, the board and the supporters must both have patience and time on their hands.
Despite my lack of knowledge about Chris Davies prior to his arrival at the club, I am convinced that he is the ideal candidate for the position based on the steps the club has done.
Now that everything is over, maybe we can anticipate the team acquiring talented players to collaborate with him and a football squad we can be proud of for the upcoming season.
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