Birmingham City's David Sullivan is thrilled by the arrival of Christian Benitez

Jun 19 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

He recently underwent a shoulder operation which kept him out of Ecuador’s World Cup qualifiers.

Sullivan added: “We’re sure he will become a favourite with our supporters but they have also got to give him a little time to adjust.

“We’ve learnt with foreign players that you shouldn’t judge them on the first couple of games.

“They’ve got to settle and you remember Carlos Tevez, it took him a long while before he made an impact at West Ham United.”

The money for Benitez, Sullivan confirmed, had not blown a massive hole in Alex McLeish’s transfer kitty.

Benitez was a so-called ‘exception’, a player who, it was agreed by all, should be funded through extra cash.

Sullivan said: “Our budgets are always flexible, although we have very little money at all.”

He said that the approach this summer was, in the main, to look for players with potential and an appreciative value, as well as quality.

“We’d rather have quality rather than quantity, that’s where we fell down last time,” he said.

“And we are trying to do it in a way that we won’t utterly wipe the club out, but in a controlled manner, combining risk with a bit of sanity.

“If the money runs out, then myself and David Gold will have to put an amount in ourselves.”

Sullivan said that Blues had be ‘out of the blocks’ early this summer for a reason.

“We hope to have signed most of the players we want by the middle of July to bed them in before the start of the season,’’ he said

“You don’t want to be signing players in the middle of August and panicking before transfer deadline.”