Alex McLeish keen for Birmingham City to produce the best of both worlds

Nov 9 2010 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

ALEX McLeish has ordered Birmingham City to start ‘mixing it up’ at Stoke City tonight to get back on the winning trail.

McLeish said his players had to cut out the ‘tippy-tappy’ passing that tends to have them going round in circles and add an end product to their football.

And if that meant using a more direct approach, as and when, and being less of an Arsenal-type, then so be it.

“In the first half against West Ham, for some reason, we were a little bit too Fancy Dan, tippy-tappy, until we got ourselves back into the game second half with some more direct football,’’ said McLeish.

“We are definitely not Arsenal yet. There is that kind of feeling we can slice through teams whenever we want but we are not at that level yet and we do have to mix our game up.

“There is nothing wrong with keeping the ball but at times, especially on your own patch. If you don’t get enough penetration, it can be quite a limp performance.

“Maybe it was too pedestrian in our approach to getting the ball forward at the weekend.”

McLeish is considering handing Jean Beausejour his first start in the league and Craig Gardner is sure to return to the line-up. Blues are unbeaten in four league and cup matches, but only have three top-flight wins in their last 21 outings stretching back to March.

They are drawing too many games and need to find that cutting edge.

“Saturday, we never got balls in the box, we have got two big centre-forwards and Hleb supporting them and we never gave them the service,’’ said McLeish.

“They never held the ball up as well as we would liked in the first half, so these were aspects as well.”