Alex McLeish: Birmingham City deserved bigger win over West Ham

Dec 14 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

ALEX McLeish said Blues should have “put West Ham away”.

Blues posted a fourth successive Premier League win, 1-0, but the margin could have been greater.

And McLeish said the way the visitors seemed prepared to sit and soak up what in-form Blues threw at them at first was to his side’s credit.

“I felt we dominated proceedings,” he said. “We were much better in the second half. We should have put West Ham away, there is no doubt about it, but they are fighting for points and so they threw caution to the wind at the end and we had to work hard.

“You look at foreign managers and in Italy and Spain, teams are kind of set up that way.

“But I do believe it’s a measure of how far our team have come when I saw the way West Ham lined up. That’s a great credit to us.

“However, they remained dangerous because of the cleverness of the midfield and on the flanks. Franco was a little bit of a handful for us, but our players overcame that and played it tactically well, scored a goal and we should have put it out of sight. I knew that a set-piece could undo us and we had a real scare when Franco went through, between the side of Liam Ridgewell and Scott Dann, but it was a brilliant save from Joe Hart.

“They say that goalkeepers, great goakeepers, can save you ten points, maybe more, a season. Joe’s on the way to that.”