Alex McLeish rules out big money moves at Birmingham City

May 20 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

“But what you have to understand and respect is that if you look at Sunderland who, okay, it seems as if they might survive, but they are in the mix to go down and they have spent £90m over two years.

“Now that’s scary for a lot of owners of clubs.

“I had a conversation with David Sullivan and said ‘why don’t you give me 30 or 40 million’? and when he explained all these things and you listen to the board telling you these things, it’s difficult to have an argument against them.

“So I said I will do my very best to keep us in the Premier League with the resources we have got.”

“It’s up to us to find the right players and to coach and educate the right team to be able to stay in the Premier League and make us hard to beat, like Stoke,” McLeish added.

“And I think if you look at them, they’ve spent a right few quid [£27m], and they are a very difficult team to play against.

“I’d love to give you an entertaining Arsenal, Man United team, one like that. I will definitely strive to get the quality in.

“But I have got to make us hard to beat. We can’t go to Villa Park and be as open as we were in my debut season, for example.

“And £9m for Wheater, it would be difficult for us to pay that.”

McLeish said that although Blues would be ‘punching above their weight’ against richer rivals, he was not throwing in the towel.

“It comes down to, I suppose, the shrewdness, the acquisitions,’’ he continued.

‘‘We’re going to change the squad around a bit as it needs to be changed. Because, as they say, if nothing changes, then nothing changes. We know we need more quality.

“Can we compete with the rest of the division? It’s going to be tough, a huge challenge.

“But if we get the right players in, we gel properly, it can be done. It has been proved before. Wigan came up with Paul Jewell and had a fantastic season. Reading did it the first year they were up.

“The key to Premier League longevity is surviving that first season and then being able to build on top of that.

“I don’t have a magic wand, I have to admit that. It would be easy to say ‘don’t worry, we’ll go to the Premier League and I’ll make sure we’ll stay there’.

‘‘But I will do everything possible so we give our best and get the players who we think will help us stay in the division and then go on from there.”