Former England and Leicester City striker Emile Heskey believes Chris Davies has been given the tools to achieve promotion with Birmingham City – and has tipped Sunderland to avoid relegation to the Championship.
Birmingham are seventh in the EFL Championship table, having won five and drawn five of their opening 12 games in the division.
Heskey believes Davies needs to deliver a top-four finish with the resources at his disposal.
During an exclusive sitdown interview with BestBettingSites, Heskey said: “I think Birmingham’s aspirations are to get up into the Premier League now, and I think that’s the pressure on the manager.
“He needs to really be pushing the play-offs, top end of the play-offs, into the automatic promotion spots because they’ve spent heavily, they’ve got new training facilities, and great aspirations for the stadium.
Pressure on to produce
“The pressure is on him to produce that now, and to be fair to him, they’ve been doing just that recently.
“I don’t think the pressure is on the owners, because as owners you provide what the manager needs.
“The pressure will be on the manager really. Hopefully Birmingham can keep the momentum going.
“The Championship is such a tough league to compete in, but they’ve been doing well recently.”
Sunderland too good to go down
Heskey, meanwhile, believes Sunderland’s squad is too good to be in relegation trouble when it matters – and thinks Coventry City could be set for a return to England’s second tier.
He picked out Brian Brobbey as the kind of player who can fire them to safety in the coming months, despite their position at the bottom of the Premier League table.
Heskey said: “I know Sunderland are down near the bottom, but I don’t see them going down.
“I just think they’ve got more than enough quality, with players like Brian Brobbey and others. They showed last season what they’re capable of, so they can handle it.
“I can’t see Nottingham Forest going down either, to be honest. I see Coventry going down.
“As for who else gets drawn into it, Ipswich are up there now, but if you lose two or three games on the spin while teams win around you, it gets quite twitchy very quickly.
“Coventry and Crystal Palace are the ones you look at.”
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