Davies: I've Never Been So Frustrated in My Time in Football
Monday, 6th Apr 2026 19:10
Furious Birmingham City manager Chris Davies said he had never been as frustrated in his time in football as he was after what would have been an equaliser for his side was ruled out during the second half of their 2-1 defeat to Town at Portman Road.
The Midlanders thought they’d levelled when Ibrahim Osman crossed from the left and Blues skipper Dara O’Shea inadvertently diverted it into his own goal.
However, the assistant referee ruled that the ball had gone out of play before the Ghanaian international crossed, a decision video evidence subsequently indicated was incorrect.
“We were well in the game and I said to the players that I was proud to be their manager today,” Davies said. “The least we deserved from that game was a point.
“I’ve never been as frustrated in my time in football from a decision from a linesman 60 yards away that has guessed on a ball going out.
“Every player around the ball and their reactions suggested that that ball was in play, yet we had an official that decided to guess wrongly that the ball was out of play.
“I asked him after the game, ‘Why did you make that decision?’ And he said, ‘I can assure you the ball was out of play, I wouldn’t have made it if not’. He was wrong and when he sees the video he’ll realise that it was wrong.
“It’s cost us and these are decisive moments, not just for us but for this league. There’s a big prize at the top of this league and today it cost us what we thoroughly deserved.”
The defeat was Birmingham’s sixth in eight games and they sit in 15th in the Championship, well below their pre-season expectations with Davies coming under increasing pressure.
“In terms of our performance, we looked like a different animal today. We looked like a team that was very committed, very strong. We put them under a lot of pressure,” he added.
“Our own lack of decisiveness in two critical defensive moments has also contributed to our downfall because we’re 1-0 up going into half-time and all of a sudden we’re 2-1 down.
“That’s something I’m really not happy with but if you talk about the feeling, today we looked like a team that was committed. You could see from the reaction of our fans, their pride. We fought hard.
“We’ve done a lot of soul searching and as a group we’ve had meetings where we’ve discussed who we are, what we’re here for, what we’re trying to do and what it means for us.
“I think we’re growing and connecting, trying to gel and find that chemistry, but performances like today show we that we are starting to find that.
“We’ve had games where we’ve looked like 11 individuals but today we looked like a proper team against, in my eyes, one of the three best teams in the league.”
Photo: TWTD
