What Bristol Rovers can expect from early promotion favourites Birmingham City this season

For the first time in 30 seasons, Bristol Rovers and Birmingham City will be in the same league this campaign after the Blues' relegation to League One was confirmed on the final day of last term.

Birmingham finished just one point behind 21st place Plymouth Argyle, although the Pilgrims had a superior goal difference, and will be competing outside of the top two tiers of English football for the first time since 1995.

Naturally, with individuals as high profile as NFL legend Tom Brady on the board at St.Andrews and the hierarchy sharing plans to one day build a 60,000 capacity new stadium, the expectation is that there will be money to be spent for new manager Chris Davies which has made Blues the bookies' early favourites for promotion.

Having been assistant to Ange Postecoglu at Tottenham Hotspur as well as working alongside Brendan Rodgers at Leicester City, Celtic and Liverpool, this is Davies' first job in the hot seat, making it an interesting appointment when more experienced names such as Liam Rosenior and Alex Neil were linked with the role previously.

You would expect transfer activity to start picking up once players have reported back for pre-season training with the purchase of goalkeeper Ryan Allsop from Hull City Birmingham's only confirmed arrival at the time of writing. However, you would expect that whoever comes in will help mould the best squad on paper in the division by the time the transfer window closes.

Admittedly, there have been plenty of examples in the past of big clubs dropping down to League One and not immediately getting out with Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday two of the most recent clubs to do so. However, that doesn't change the fact that everyone will expect Blues to be up there or there abouts come the end of the upcoming campaign.

With all that considered, we spoke to Birmingham Live's Birmingham City reporter Alex Dicken to get the lowdown on all things Blues ahead of the new season...

Birmingham City have had near misses from relegation before so what was different this time around?

I think the main issue was that Birmingham City never expected to be in a relegation battle. They signed players they hoped would have them challenging the right end of the table. Obviously, in those first 10 or 11 games they were. They were fifth, sixth before John Eustace was sacked in October.

The Wayne Rooney experiment didn’t really work and it was a sort of rescue mission from there on. Tony Mowbray was getting things right but got ill and had to step down. His assistant wasn’t a manager and just couldn’t do the job in the way that Mowbray did and then Gary Rowett was given a rescue mission at the end of the season and did okay but I think by that point he was already fighting a losing battle.

They just didn’t have players that were conditioned for relegation battles. In previous years when they have been down there they’ve had battlers and players who know how to scrap in those situations. You think back to the likes of Harlee Dean who was let go last summer. Troy Deeney as well. Players that were able to fight their way out of trouble really and Blues didn’t have that.

They almost took their quality for granted at points last season and allowed themselves to sleepwalk into a relegation scrap and they had two big away games at the end of the season against Rotherham and Huddersfield and failed to win one so it was then taken out of their hands.

Chris Davies certainly seems to be another example of clubs going trendy and appointing a young English coach. What have you made of the appointment because there were certainly some big names linked to the job?

There were a lot of applicants and people interested, managers far more experienced than Chris Davies but probably not with the same coaching credentials as him. He’s been a coach for 20 years now when he finished his playing career at 19. He worked alongside Brendan Rodgers and had a season alongside Ange Postecoglu last year.

A very highly rated coach and throughout the game. He’s obviously worked at the highest level at Spurs, Leicester, Liverpool and Celtic and the message that I had at the start of the recruitment process was that Blues weren’t adverse to going the route of appointing a, quote, “Kieran McKenna type.”

These trendy appointments, younger coaches in their first jobs, have done well in League One in recent years so with the backing that Blues’ owners are going to be able to give Chris Davies this summer then they think that they should work as well.

What sort of summer do you envisage regarding transfers?

When a club gets relegated then you always expect, or fans demand, that the squad gets ripped up. Inevitably you do get players that you wouldn’t expect to stay that do stick around and feel a sense of responsibility. Someone like Krystian Bielik for example, one that has had a lot of Championship interest and interest from Europe. He didn’t want to drop down to League One with Derby County years ago, that’s how he ended up at Blues but you do feel like the club want to keep him and you feel like there’s half a chance that they will.

There are other players with international careers to protect, someone like Seung-Ho Paik for whom it’s going to be very difficult to play for South Korea if he’s in League One next season. So inevitably there are going to be players that leave.

Jordan James, most of us expect him to leave this summer but it’s probably not as small a squad as people think. They’ve still got 17 senior players contracted and I think he’s [Davies] going to give them that clean slate at the start of pre-season to suss them out before he actually makes any decisions on players and decides whether he doesn’t want someone around so on, so forth.

I think it will be a big summer eventually. I think you’re probably talking about 10 players. They’ve had one but it’s probably going to have to be 10. I think a lot of the business will come once the pre-season gets rolling at the beginning of July.

If you could keep one player from last season in this team for League One, who would you pick and why?

I’ve already mentioned him, Krystian Bielik. There’s probably three. I think Paik’s slightly unrealistic because he’s in the South Korea team and he’s got to protect it. Bielik’s lost his place in the Poland side over the past 12 months and I think it would end up looking a little bit bad on him if he jumped ship straight after another relegation. He’s well thought of at Blues, really well liked, really good character.

He’s a really good player in the Championship on his day when he’s used correctly so he would be an absolutely outstanding player in League One whether it’s at centre-back or central midfield. If they can keep him, that would be a major thing. I don’t see many better players in League One than Krystian Bielik if he stays.

Blues are the early favourites for promotion, are the signs there that they’ll live up to the pre-season hype?

I think they have to. I mean, the message that I’m getting is that they’re not going to recruit for League One but recruit to win it and getting into the Championship and being competitive in there. I think the signing of Ryan Allsop, although I wouldn’t say his stats stand out and make him seem like an incredible shot stopper, he’s fantastic with the ball at his feet. Blues are a team that want to have the ball and play out from the back so he’s going to be really important.

They are going to recruit players that maybe other League One teams can’t get a look at so I expect them to be right at the top of the league with a bigger budget than everybody else.