McLeish: Birmingham City were ridiculously poor at Coventry

Feb 23 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

MANAGER Alex McLeish said it was ‘ridiculous’ that his Blues side were so poor at Coventry City.

He insisted that preparations in the week, following on from the defeat of Nottingham Forest, put him in confident mood.

But Blues started sluggishly yet again, and were left trying to recover Scott Dann’s 59-second goal.

“Ridiculous,” McLeish said. “We had a good week. The training pitches are much more like themselves again.

‘‘We had a great technical week and later towards the end we did a lot of functional work.

“Players were in good form. They were terrific on the training ground but they’ve got to take it on to the big pitch.

‘‘They’ve got to show the temperament in arenas like Coventry’s and not just do it at the training ground or St Andrew’s.

“That was a big disappointment for me because I was so confident and full of belief – not cocky – but I had a lot of belief in the players, but we had too many off the boil.

“There was plenty of fight in the second half, no doubt about it, but there was a lack of quality.”

Lee Carsley was withdrawn after 33 minutes due to injury.