Boss Davies says A-list attention brought best out of Birmingham

Birmingham City boss Chris Davies says he was pleased how his side did not get distracted by the hype of the ‘Hollywood derby’ against Wrexham.

He said the profile brought out the best of the promotion favourites as they inflicted a first defeat of the season on Phil Parkinson’s men.

Monday’s clash at St Andrew’s was a test of the two early pace-setters in League One, but gained huge extra attention because of the A-list nature of the club’s respective ownerships.

It is something Wrexham have become used to since being taken over by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in 2021.

But Davies praised his players for following the Dragons’ example in getting on with the job as he praised Parkinson’s "honest, hard-working" team after Blues’ comfortable 3-1 win.

Asked about the extra focus with McElhenney, Birmingham minority owner Tom Brady and ex-England captain David Beckham all in attendance, Davies, a former Wales youth international and Swansea City coach, said: “I really don’t pay any attention to that stuff.

"I had no idea what was going on and who was going to be here because that’s not my domain. What's important is what we do on the pitch, in training and how we approach the games.

“I’m pleased for the club that we’ve had the right kind of attention that we deserve. But all that stuff for me is no interest.

“But it pleased me it didn’t distract the players. It was something I did address with them but that’s not our domain, our domain is the pitch and what we do. It’s about focussing on the performance and the external stuff is irrelevant to us.

"It’s true, they will follow things on social media and they’ll know the attention and hype around the game, but I didn’t see any change at all from a concentration point of view or any pressure or anything like.

“If anything it made us better because it was all-round our best performance of the season.”

Birmingham are now behind Wrexham on just goal difference following the win as they maintained their unbeaten start to the season.

But Davies – a former No 2 to Brendan Rodgers at Celtic and Leicester City – played down the early-season significance adding: “We will not get carried away because, as we’ve seen already, this is a really difficult league and anyone who thinks it’s easy, they don’t understand the challenge ahead of us.

“Wrexham have had a very good start to the campaign, they’ve obviously built momentum from promotion, they know how to win and you could see here they have very honest players who will work hard, and are a club that’s invested a lot of money and have big ambitions, but we will focus on ourselves.

“My job is to make sure the players enjoy this and feel the confidence they should from it, but understand they still have a challenge.”