Birmingham City's new owners hail their 'star' Alex McLeish
Dec 3 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail
Birmingham City Manager Alex McLeish ( left) welcomes new Birmingham City owner Carson Yeung (right) to the Wast Hills training
SAMMY Yu today revealed Carson Yeung’s and Blues’ satisfaction with Alex McLeish, saying he was their “star’’.
And Yu outlined his duties as Blues’ vice-chairman football, stressing that his work at Wast Hills was going smoothly.
After the £81.5 million takeover by Yeung was completed, rumours, somewhat inevitably, have surfaced that he wants to bring his own manager in.
But in more than a month of dealing with McLeish, and the team’s performances in that time, Big Eck’s position has been consolidated.
Yu said: “I think Alex is, in my mind, our long-term star for developing the team to go forward.
“I have been impressed with Alex. His character, he is very open-minded. He is a person who you can talk to, a person who can share.
“I have no conflict of interest with him, and we communicate quite well. And with very limited resources so far, he can do the job. He has done well, he has done it perfectly well.
“For the last five matches the team have performed and got good results. So what do you expect?
“If we continue like this, with this spirit we have, do we have to think about somebody else? No. We don’t.”
Yu said he was not like a traditional director of football figure, hovering ominously above the manager and ready to step into his shoes. His was not an Avram Grant scenario, he said.
“We had this new idea to put a vice-chairman and work with everyone at the training ground,” said Yu, who is based at Wast Hills. “It is quite an unusual thing.
“However, it has gone very well so far. All the staff are very keen.
“What they need is support, something to help them go forward and my job, coming in, is to do that on behalf of the board.
“As I said, I have no conflict of interest because I am a vice-chairman.
“So I can help them, to provide with whatever they want, and also use my experience and by my work transfer the message to Mr Yeung, to make sure everyone in the club are totally understanding each other.
“Also I can share some coaching experience, some international development experience and things like that. So, overall, we are just working like a team.”
Yu, who also has responsibility to expand and improve the Academy structure, including satellite centres overseas in time, has spent much of his first month or so in the job dealing with agents and liaising with McLeish about new players.
