Birmingham City star James McFadden thanks boss Alex McLeish

May 6 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

“That’s been the make-up of the team this season. Everybody has been pulling together. We have had our setbacks but responded to every one.”

Many people felt Blues had fluffed their promotion opportunity after losing to Preston North End.

Villa fan and former player Stan Collymore predicted on radio that Blues would ‘choke’ and be beaten by Reading.

Collymore, of course, has a history with Blues. Some years back he described their fans as ‘scum’ on television.

“I think it has been like that for us every game, people writing us off,” said McFadden.

“I think Stan Collymore was hoping we would blow up, but you don’t always get what you want.

“We got what we wanted, we approached the game I’d say probably with more detail than we did Preston – not that we didn’t prepare properly – but the goals were sucker-punches against Preston and we tried to make sure that that didn’t happen again.

“We set up to play our way and we did that. Towards the end, we needed to hang on for dear life and that wasn’t surprising because a place in the Premier League was at stake.

“We had our game plan and we stuck to it and I also think that we wanted it that bit more.”