Birmingham head coach Chris Davies praised his players for dealing with the pressure placed on them this season after they secured promotion from Sky Bet League One with a 2-1 victory at Peterborough.
The Blues’ budget – the biggest in the division – meant they were favourites from the start of the campaign, but they have lived up to their billing by sealing a return to the Championship with six games to spare.
After defeating opponents they will face in the Vertu Trophy final on Sunday, Birmingham’s players were able to celebrate going up with their supporters, who just under a year ago had to deal with the trauma of relegation.
Davies said: “They’ve been amazing. We’ve put a team together from scratch, really – there were six or seven who stayed, but there were 17 new players.
“I coach them but I don’t overbear them, I let them gel and they’ve come together so well.
“They get on well, they’ve got a great spirit, but we signed good characters.
“For too long this club had players that weren’t the right character – they would let the club down, basically.
“But whether we win, lose or draw, you’ll always see a team that’s fighting and that’s what the fans ultimately want from their club and we’ve got that from this group of players.
“They’ve been exceptional because, don’t forget, every single game this season, home or away, they’ve been expected to win.
“There’s no team in the land that has had to deal with that every single week, we have and they’ve dealt with that brilliantly.”
Alfie May’s header opened the scoring for Birmingham, but Peterborough quickly levelled through Kwame Poku’s superb strike.
What turned out to be the Blues’ winner came when Taylor Gardner-Hickman squeezed a shot under Posh goalkeeper Nicholas Bilokapic in the 37th minute.
Peterborough boss Darren Ferguson said: “We knew we had to get a reaction from Saturday’s woeful performance (against Northampton) and we got that.
“We were at it, we gave them a game, as I felt we would. If we get our performances up to a certain level, we’re going to give anyone a game in this league and we did tonight.
“I thought in moments in the game we were good – we can pick the bones out of it tomorrow in terms of what we did well and what we need to work on.
“The goals were soft: you’ve got to stop the cross and if you don’t stop the cross then you’ve got to mark – and the second goal shouldn’t go in the net.
“We reacted really well to going 1-0 down, Kwame smacked it, didn’t even think about it, it was a great finish and he was outstanding on the night, a really good performance.”
