New doctor is perfect tonic for Birmingham City

Dec 31 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

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IT’S JUST what Alex McLeish ordered – a new doctor at Birmingham City.

McLeish has appointed the club’s first full-time doctor, Ian McGuinness, who worked with him at Rangers.

Unlike virtually every other Premier League outfit, Blues had employed local doctors on an ad-hoc basis. But now Carson Yeung has agreed to bring Blues in line with the rest.

And that has delighted McLeish, who said it was vital to keep on improving Blues’ back-room resources and infrastructure.

“I see Ian as an important appointment,” said the boss. “I think we will see a big difference. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while but haven’t had the resources.

“We had Neil McDiarmid for ten, 12 years and he was an excellent physio, super effective and a really good guy in there, so a full-time doctor wasn’t so necessary.

“But when Neil left and we brought Tim Williamson in as head physio and some young, enthusiastic staff, we needed someone like Ian as well to support them.

“Tim spent seven years at Celtic, he’s got great experience, dealing with top players like Henrik Larsson.

“But the doc will be a great benefit to Tim and the rest of the medical staff. He is well versed in sports science, as well as medicine, and is the kind of lively guy who can relate to players as well.”

McGuinness fell foul of McLeish’s successor at Ibrox, Paul le Guen, and recently worked at Newcastle United. McLeish also drafted in Malcolm Thomson recently as reserve team coach, filling a role that Terry Westley combined with his Academy manager duties.

Andy Kalinins stepped up for the Academy to replace Ben Rosenblatt as fitness coach and McLeish said he was happy with his impact.

“It’s vital to have the right expertise in your back-room staff,” said McLeish. “We have to keep on improving the infrastructure at Wast Hills if we want to continue to progress as a club.”