Birmingham City: McLeish slams Blues for 'amateur' defending
Feb 23 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail
ALEX McLeish blasted Blues’ defence for leaving them with an uphill task at Coventry.
Martin Taylor and Liam Ridgewell were singled out after the Sky Blues were presented with a goalscoring chance after 23 seconds and scored from the resulting corner.
“When you make a start like that, there’s nothing any manager or coach can do when defenders were as tentative as we were,” said McLeish. “It was basics. A long ball came 50, 60 yards. We didn’t deal with it, nor the subsequent bouncing ball. They forced a corner, we didn’t learn and they scored.
“We didn’t win the individual battles and I think the centre-backs have got to set the example and they didn’t do that at the start of the game.
“It gave us an uphill fight and we didn’t have the quality on the day. There were too many players not bringing their level best.’’
The manager added: “In the first minute, you want an inspirational tackle or header to get everybody going but that never happened.
“It was soft from our point of view, amateur and then it made us nervous.”
Coventry manager Chris Coleman saluted the industry and aggression of striker Leon Best as typical of his team’s endeavour.
“Ask the centre-halves at Birmingham, they wouldn’t have enjoyed that 90 minutes,” said Coleman.
“Leon was a bully, he wouldn’t stop running, he was sticking, he was battling for everything and when that happens, with our strikers, we can build off that.”
