Fireside Chats: Quotes Ahead of Birmingham City

The match days in the Championship sure do come quickly after the last. Bolton's 2-1 home win against Watford seems like it just happened yesterday (it was really three days ago). Today, Bolton Wanderers will look to improve their rather awful away record against Birmingham City. Ahead of the match, we want to know what's going through the players and manager's minds to see where they are mentally.

Owen Coyle is worried about the workload on Kevin Davies and the rest of his team. As a result, the team know that they must manage the status of the players well:

"It's important you make sure your best players are at their prime to show their quality. Since Saturday, we have been looking at managing Kevin well because he is a very important player for us. You have to look at the recovery.

"I thought he was outstanding again on Saturday. I have said before that Kevin Davies doesn't have to score goals to contribute to the team.

"We have to make sure he is nice and fresh and ready to go again tonight."

Coyle also knows that the performances on the road must improve:

"We've played two away games and lost both of them. But we could have left with points from each of those games.

"We had two horrendous refereeing decisions against us in those games as well. There was the offside goal, as we know, in the first game of the season at Burnley, and then at Hull when, from the [disputed] corner with the score one each at the time.

"If it's a fair playing field, as we always hope it is, then we have no doubts we can go on our travels and get results. We had a great away record last year in relative terms of the Premier League so we know we have the players capable of winning both home and away. That's what we have to do, starting at Birmingham.

"Our first-half display was outstanding at the weekend. We scored two goals and could have had four or five. We have to attain that level consistently for the duration of a match.

"If we do that then we are convinced we will pick up points game in, game out in the Championship. We are just three points off where we want to be in an automatic promotion spot and we could easily be on that tally in the games we have played. It's there for us to kick on."

Finally, Marcos Alonso believes he can shine in Bolton's defense, given that he gets the games:

"It was nice to be back in the team. After doing a really good pre-season, seeing that I wasn't in the side against Burnley (on the opening day of the campaign) was difficult. It was hard to keep going.

"I really need a lot of games to keep up my confidence and my fitness. I think if I can do that, you'll see a very different Marcos Alonso and I'm sure people will enjoy that."