"I've got nothing against Alex McLeish, I like him as a person," says Curtis Davies, clearing his throat. "My gripe isn't against him as a person. As a manager he didn't pick me and I thought I should have been picked more than I was."

Davies was recalling the chaotic climax to the 2010/11 season which saw Birmingham City relegated from the Premier League a few months after overpowering Arsenal at Wembley to win the Carling Cup. It still rankles with Davies, now 38 and playing for League One Cheltenham Town, to this very day.

"We had geared everything towards that game," he said on our Keep Right On podcast. "The bigger problem for me was that when we did go through sticky moments, I think the manager tried to get back to that team as much as possible.

"That's all well and good, but there are horses for courses. It was more blind faith sometimes with players rather than who had been in good form."

Davies didn't play at Wembley. He was cup-tied having only joined Blues from arch-rivals Aston Villa a month prior. By joining Blues Davies completed the hat-trick of representing every professional club with a Birmingham postcode having also played for West Bromwich Albion at the beginning of his career.

"At the time I had effectively been frozen out (at Aston Villa)," he explained. "I had a shoulder injury at the back end of 2009 which kept me out for three months and the club signed (Richard) Dunne and (James) Collins in that time. When I came back in January I tried to go on loan, but I wasn't allowed to and was told I would be part of the plans, then I was basically sitting at home doing nothing most weeks because I wasn't in the squads.

"The new season started and a new manager came in, Gerard Houllier, but it was still the same. There was a little bit of politics with payments that would have been made to West Brom if I had played more games, and also to myself, but nobody said that to me because then I would have just got on my way.

"After that frustration I managed to get on loan to Leicester under Sven-Goran Eriksson. I had three months there which revitalised me and saved my career because I was losing my head with everything and in my personal life things weren't great at the time. I had signed to go back in January and then my agent called me and said Villa had pulled the plug on Leicester and I was going a bit mad, before he said it was because Birmingham had put a permanent offer in.

"For me it was a no brainer. It wasn't like I had played all the games for Villa that season and then crossed over to the other side. I wasn't seen as a Villa player anymore. I was more disappointed to let Leicester down than I was to leave Villa. The chance to go to Birmingham on a permanent deal was too good to turn down."

Listen to the full Keep Right On podcast But, initially, things didn't go to plan for Davies at St Andrew's. He knew that he would be little more than a cheerleader for the Carling Cup final, but there was still half a Premier League season to play.

Davies only started two Premier League games - and the second of those came on the final day when Blues were relegated at Tottenham Hotspur. He made an additional four appearances as a substitute under McLeish.

Even with Scott Dann out injured, McLeish found ways to keep Davies on the bench. The most frustrating for Davies came when Blues travelled to Liverpool in April. By this point Blues were sinking towards trouble and desperately needed to arrest the slide that had set in after their Wembley win.

Davies said: "Martin Jiranek was injured for six weeks before the Liverpool game. He had a dodgy toe. All week Stephen Carr had been saying to me, 'You're playing, make sure you're ready'.

"I'm getting my head down and making sure I'm ready to play, we even did shape and I was in the shape. On the Friday Martin trained and he travelled with us on the bus. I didn't think anything of it. The next day when we did the meeting at the hotel, Alex McLeish turns over the sheet and Martin Jiranek is playing centre-half instead of me.

"My head was gone. My head was already fried because I was told I was coming in to play with Scott Dann getting injured - and I'm not. Then I'd been told all week I was playing, then a guy who had been out for six weeks is playing ahead of me, it just made me lose my head. It almost made me want to give up. By no means am I saying I would have stopped us losing that game, but we lost that game 5-0. I'm not saying Martin was individually at fault, but when you bring in a player who hasn't played for six weeks the defence can be at sixes and sevens.

"If we had only lost that game 3-0, come the last game of the season when we're one-all with Tottenham and me and Roger Johnson are going up front trying to get a goal, it's a different situation and we might not have dropped down. I know it's a big what if, but ultimately it's always been a gripe for me that that happened. It was a big thing for the club at the end of the season."

Curtis Davies claimed the 2012/13 Birmingham City Player of the Season award Shortly after Blues' relegation was confirmed, another move across the divide stunned the second city. McLeish left Blues to become Villa's new manager. It still baffles Davies, but it proved to be the platform which kickstarted his Blues career.

Chris Hughton arrived at St Andrew's and, with Dann and Johnson no longer in the picture, he immediately installed Davies as one of his starting centre-backs. Blues combined Europa League football with the Championship grind and did it rather well.

They narrowly missed out on qualification from a tough Europa League group having racked up 10 points from six games - including memorable wins over Maribor and Club Brugge. A fourth-placed finish in the Championship set up a play-off semi-final against Blackpool.

"I always come back to the Blackpool game, more so the second game," Davies reflected. "The first game was a deflected goal off myself. The manner we conceded the two goals in the second game had nothing to do with fatigue, it's just bad defending. If we don't concede those goals we go through to the final and are one game away from the Premier League."

It wasn't long before Blues, still under Carson Yeung's ownership at the time, started to come unstuck financially. The failure to seal an immediate return to the Premier League started a downward spiral which Blues, now controlled by American investment firm Knighthead, are only just beginning to bounce back from.

Hughton did end up in the Premier League with Norwich City and Lee Clark replaced him with the remit of reducing the club's spending. Players had to be sold in the summer of 2012 and Davies was one of Blues' most saleable assets.

"If I'm being totally honest, Chris Hughton was trying to take me to Norwich," Davies admitted. "As soon as he went, I got a call from Chris saying 'Thanks for everything you've done for me, you were unbelievable last season, I'll be in touch' - a wink and a nod. In the summer they didn't want to sell me and then in January they sold Jack Butland to claw back some money.

"Because Jack was loaned back it was easier. In January Chris came back for me, but the club said they didn't need to sell. For me it was a case of getting my head down. It didn't feel like we were going to have that same promotion push. It was frustrating because if we had just been able to add a little bit to what we had the season before, I think we would have been able to go up."

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