James McFadden backs new board at Birmingham City

Dec 14 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

JAMES McFadden has added his view to the battle of the boards at Blues.

The Scotland star said that good management, good players and a fine team spirit was behind Blues’ rise to eighth in the Premier League.

And while not criticising or dismissing what the David Sullivan-led regime did at St Andrew’s, McFadden insisted Blues were all for new owner Carson Yeung and his group.

Sullivan irked Yeung and Peter Pannu by heaping praise on the present achievements of the team and manager, saying it showed the fine job the previous directors had done, and the good legacy they had left.

Karren Brady got in on the act in her national newspaper diary on Saturday, ahead of the West Ham United game, writing “it was nice to think we left behind a good team”.

McFadden, who was one of the senior players furious with her columns last season that, among other things, questioned the ability of the side and cranked up the pressure on Alex McLeish for entering ‘Scolari territory’, was having none of it.

“It is a team effort and the reason we are where we are is because everyone is fighting for each other,” he said. “If we didn’t have that, if we didn’t work hard, we wouldn’t be doing this well.

“It is down to the manager getting a good group of players together, good honest players who are technically good as well.

“Everyone is fighting for each other, wanting to win every game and at the moment believing they can win every game.

“We just need to keep going. There is tremendous team spirit and belief.

“There was a quote last year from the managing director saying the manager was signing too many players.

“Sammy Yu is in the dressing room every game. You see him at the training ground every day.

“They, the new owners, are more hands-on. We never saw the old regime much. We saw David Gold every game. But we never saw them that much.

“They put their money in and I suppose they can say they’ve got a legacy, but we are not doing it for them. We are doing it for the manager, the new owners, ourselves and the fans.”

The 1-0 defeat of West Ham was Blues’ fourth straight victory and the first time they had beaten the Hammers at St Andrew’s since 1985.

It extended their unbeaten sequence to seven matches, one short of equalling their best unblemished Premier League streak, posted between January-March 2004.

Could Blues maintain their lofty position?

McFadden said: “We are on a good run now but there is a time when we will have a run when things aren’t going to go for us but we are just enjoying it and we will see where it takes us.”

Blues were among the favourites to be relegated at the season’s start.

“That’s opinions,” said McFadden. “Football is played on the pitch and not in TV rooms or in the press. We’ve shown a lot of people we are not certainties to go down.”

The bitter dispute between Sullivan and Yeung was exacerbated today when Sullivan commented on West Midlands Police’s decision not to mount any criminal investigation into pre-takeover accounting.

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