Birmingham City boss reveals position giving him most concern ahead of new season

Jul 30 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

ALEX McLeish today admitted that the left-back berth was causing him increasing concern.

It is well known that the Blues boss would like to take Arsenal’s Armand Traore on loan.

But Gunners manager Arsene Wenger likes to assess all his squad in detail during the majority of pre-season before deciding on who can go out.

And that usually means patience has to be a virtue from any manager with any interest in his charges.

McLeish and Blues have been constantly on at Wenger about Traore, and may have to assess other options.

McLeish has been mainly starting right-back Stuart Parnaby on the left in pre-season, as he did in last night’s 1-0 win at Dagenham & Redbridge.

Parnaby came off with a slight groin strain and his replacement Jared Wilson suffered a shoulder injury to compound matters.

Franck Queudrue is not ready and David Murphy on the mend from a fractured kneecap.

“It is a problem position for us as the moment because Franck suffered a calf strain in Austria a few days ago and he’s not ready to come back in,” said McLeish.

“We have to work to getting him to a level of fitness because he had a hernia operation in the summer and missed the first few days of pre-season.

“Franck feels he needs games but we want to get him to that level of fitness which we did for him last year, and he ended up getting the player-of-the-season for the support we gave, and that’s why he’s out of things at the moment.

“Left-back is a position where we’re trying to fill.

“We have been linked with players from other clubs and I won’t mention any names but it is something we are looking at, it is a position that needs to be strengthened because we can’t go into the Premier League against Manchester United in our opening game with right-backs playing at left-back.”

The prognosis on Wilson was good.

“Jared came down on his shoulder and hurt it. Tim Williamson, our head physio, doesn’t think it’s dislocated,’’ said McLeish.

‘‘But I’m sure it will be sore and enough to keep him out for a few days.’’

McLeish also wants a midfielder to add to the ranks and possibly a wide player and asked, after the first pre-season victory, if Blues were where he wanted them to be at the moment he replied: “No absolutely not.

“Manchester United have already played games, maybe about five or six, they’ve been very early into the match play.

“We’re only two-and-a-half weeks off the start of the Premier League at Old Trafford, and now it has to be geared to working on the sharpness of the players, and getting them to a real confident level in that aspect of the game.”

Breaking their duck last night – for victories and goals – heartened McLeish. But he remained ambivalent about friendly outcomes.

“You don’t want to be losing every game, but does it mean you can’t have a successful season? The answer to that is categorically not the case,’’ he said.

“I have been through it many times before in my long career in football.

“I’ve had reverse results in New York for Rangers. We lost to Santos and River Plate – a couple of not bad sides there – and people back home, it was doom and gloom.

“But we went and won three trophies that season, the treble.

‘‘Football is like that and in pre-season people jump to conclusions too quickly and see things in black and white rather than looking at the bigger picture.”