Intensity. That’s what Chris Davies is keen to see from Blues as they return to St. Andrew’s on Saturday.
After contrasting away performances – a resilient, doughty victory at Preston North End, followed by possession but no punch or points against Bristol City – Blues get the chance to ramp things up for the visit of Portsmouth.
In the last three home games, Blues have displayed that vibrancy and forcefulness required, but to mixed outcomes as errors – individual and collective – as well as questionable decisions, have impacted the final results.
Davies is expecting Blues to be on the front foot on home soil, and doing things at speed – which he feels was an issue at Ashton Gate.
“I’m fairly confident we’ll have that, typically we do at home,” he said, in his pre-match press conference from the club’s Henley-in-Arden first team training base.
“I think we do move the ball quickly. I think when they’re sat in that back 5-4-1, there’s a lot of bodies back, – Bristol, this is – it can sometimes feel quite busy and congested and you can’t quite find that.
“And you end up circulating the ball, but you’re doing so slowly and pedestrianly.
“So I think we’ve got to make sure that in this game that there is an intensity about us which, again, there has been usually at home, we we’re good with that. And we’re going to need to be because, you know, Portsmouth are going to make it really difficult.”
Bright Osayi-Samuel is available again after suspension for Blues and Marvin Ducksch, now on the mend after pulling his hamstring in the warm-up at Coventry City, could see more minutes of action.
Portsmouth, according to Forever Blues expert James McClair, don’t tend to have much of the ball and they are very regimented and tough to break down. Sound familiar?
Blues, one of the highest ranked Championship sides for possession, have come up against this kind of low block approach a fair bit this season, with opponents showing them levels of respect that has surprised Davies.
This was put to Davies, who said: “Teams will look at it and we’d be seen as a good footballing team, so are you going to press high and try and disrupt the early build-up, or are you going to let them have it more? Or a mixture of the two?
“But we’ve had a few teams that I have been surprised, actually, how much respect they’ve given us in the sense of how much they’ve let us have the ball in their stadiums, us away from home.
“And I think the solution we’ve got to do when we have that much control, possession, territory is by making more forward runs, playing forward a little bit more and a little bit quicker, being a bit more incisive.
“We don’t have to score the perfect goal, but we would create counter-pressing situations, a little bit more chaos, and we can get our shots off and create danger from there, but I think at times when you’re just trying to score the perfect goal against that low block, it becomes really difficult, and you do need to set-piece to unlock it for you at times.
“We got six corners against Bristol. They didn’t have one, which I don’t think has happened to us in any away games since I’ve been here. So out of those six corners, if one of them goes in, then you’ve unlocked it with a set-piece. So I think there’s ways that we need to be really good in games like that, to be better.”
Blues have won just one of their last six matches; Portsmouth have one win in eight and lost four of those games.
Blues sit 15th in the table, three places and two points above Pompey, and four points from the play-off zone.
Davies reckons Blues are not a cause for concern.
“I certainly don’t look at us and think we’re miles away from other teams or in our performance level and, you know, you can be on an unfavourable run and look at it and think ‘how on earth are we going to win games?’.
“And I think most people who have been in professional football for a while will have been with teams like that, and it becomes very difficult. That’s not how I feel about this team in the slightest.
“I think we’ve been close in a lot of games, we haven’t quite got over the line in some, but the fundamentals are there, how we play.
“We do need to be more consistent, create and score more goals. It’s the same for a lot of teams. But I’m confident we will do that.”
Blues follow up the Portsmouth clash by taking on Millwall at St. Andrew’s on Tuesday night; the Lions have shot up to third in the table.
“We’ve got a couple of home games, a good opportunity for us now,” said Davies. “I don’t feel that we’re miles away and I think we probably should really have a few more points than we currently have, but we have to earn those points and we can start with that on Saturday.”
Portsmouth could give a start to the dangerous Josh Murphy after he made his comeback from an ankle injury as a substitute in their last match, against Stoke City.
The wideman was ranked second for assists in the Championship last season and was heavily linked with a move to West Bromwich Albion in the summer.
Pompey have a clutch of other players missing, including centre-half Conor Shaughnessy, top-scoring attacker Adrian Segecic and goalkeeper Nicolas Schmid.
Portsmou
