KFC at Tibshelf, ‘The Cube’ and roulette…

It’s a long, long road, right?  Yeah, yeah – we all know that.  And there’ll be joys and sorrows too, won’t there?  Again, we realise that.  As has been said a million times, those words so accurately reflect Birmingham City’s history.

It equally applies to this season too, which has really been microcosm of Blues’ history – 95% utter garbage, with a few memorable moments thrown in along the way.  Predominently utter garbage though.

Of course, saying that about a season in which Blues have won their only real proper trophy ever and qualified for Europe sounds a little bit mental, but that’s the 5% which has been memorable – that night against the Villa, that night against West Ham and that Sunday afternoon against Arsenal.  If you took that away though, what an utterly abysmal season this would have been.

If this season was a long, long road, then for the vast majority of the season our driving has been shambolic – we’ve hogged the middle lane, we’ve had people swearing at us and we’ve had to call the RAC out at least three times.  It’s been traumatic.  It’s been an ordeal.  We did, however, stop at the services and had a ball. We won £20 on the fruit machine and then ordered a Snackbox at the KFC only to be handed a Variety Bucket with extra Popcorn Chicken.

That’s what the Carling Cup was – it was the service stop in an otherwise dreadful journey.  Don’t get me wrong, it was the service stop to beat all other service stops and we’ll treasure the taste of the chicken skin forever and ever, but it masked what was an otherwise horrible journey.

The journey’s nearly over now, and whilst we’re still remembering how wonderful the Hot Wings tasted, we’re also trying to avoid the mother of all car crashes.  If Blues somehow survive at White Hart Lane, we’ll all thank God that we somehow got through the journey unscathed and wonder quite how we did it.  If not, the consequences of the crash could be pretty horrific. 

Alex McLeish has been driving us on this journey, and should he be forgiven for how bad it has been because he let us have KFC at Tibshelf?  It’s a fair question.

To me, winning a cup (particularly the League Cup) doesn’t mean that someone is a top class manager.  It’s a fantastic achievement, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the most difficult thing in the world for a manager.  Steve McClaren has won the League Cup as a manager.  Graeme Souness has won the League Cup as a manger.  They’ve both been sacked plenty of times and are currently working in television.

In winning the Carling Cup, Blues (in my mind) won one game that they wouldn’t have been expected to win.  One game.  They got past Rochdale and MK Dons (though not necessarily comfortably) before needing an injury-time equaliser to take a home game against Brentford to penalties, which they subsequently won.  Blues then faced Villa at home and, at the time, were above them in the league and favourites with the bookies to win – they did.  Next was bottom of the table West Ham over two legs.  Blues were beaten by ten men away from home before coming back to win in extra-time at home.  Again, Blues were favourites to progress through the tie and were a good few places above West Ham (who have now finished bottom of the league) at the time of playing them.

Now, let’s not say that it’s easy to win all of those games – Blues have lost many games that they’ve been expected to win in the past.  However, they were all games you would expect to win.  Blues then had one more, no one expected them to beat Arsenal, and they did.  It was magical.  It was wonderful.  It will stay with us all forever.  However, it was one game against better opposition that was won.  That doesn’t make a great manager.  Lawrie Sanchez’s Wycombe beat Premier Leauge Leicester City once.

If you look at McLeish’s time at Blues in terms of league football (which is, after all, the bread and butter), then I think it’s right that it is scrutinised and probably criticised. 

McLeish arrived with more than enough opportunity to keep Blues in the Premier League.  He failed to do so.  He was, to some degree, cut some slack as “it was Steve Bruce’s team”, and perhaps that was fair.  McLeish still ultimately failed though.

In his second season, McLeish got Blues promoted straight back to the Premier League.  Fair achievement?  Well, possibly, but Blues were helped by having by far and away the strongest squad in the division after the board held on to the likes of James McFadden and Seb Larsson and even added to that people like Lee Carsley.  For that level, the Blues squad was immense and probably one of the strongest seen there since some of the Middlesbrough squads in the mid-90s.  The wages, for that level, were astronomical.  Promotion was to be expected really, in the circumstances, and Blues stumbled over the line.

Then there was last season which included a run of fifteen games that have perhaps kept McLeish in his job until now.  There was the “unbeatables” run.  McLeish found a team that suddenly clicked, would simply not concede goals, and went fifteen games unbeaten.  It was great.  It was lucky too, but it was great.  Blues finished 9th and the season was heralded as a success, and rightly so.

What it did overshadow though is that for about two thirds of last season, Blues were pretty much as poor as they have been this season.  In particular, the run from February onwards (when McLeish inexplicably refused to play Christian Benitez whilst insisting on playing other players who were clearly dead on their feet each week – Lee Bowyer for one), Blues were appalling.  They won two of their last eleven games – one away at Portsmouth (who finished bottom of the league, yet had still beaten Blues three days earlier in an FA Cup Quarter Final) when Benitez was brought back, and one at home to a desperate Burnley side – a team that most people have already forgotten were ever in the Premier League.

The writing was arguably on the wall back then.

So, what is McLeish’s problem?  He’s an intelligent bloke, comes across well in the media and is well respected by his peers.  Why, in league terms, is he continuing to fail?

I’m hardly advocating anything new or revolutionary here, but it is quite simply his caution.  Regardless of what Colin Tattum may have said when defending McLeish in his blog last week, McLeish IS too cautious. 

If McLeish went on ‘The Cube’, he’d tell Phillip Schofield that he was happy with his nine lives and that he was quite prepared to leave with nothing as at least he wouldn’t have lost anything.

If McLeish went sky diving he’d want to do it from a park bench, and he’d ask Lee Bowyer to hold his left hand.

A lot is said of formations and his over-eagerness to use 4-5-1 or 4-4-1-1 ahead of 4-4-2, but that’s a little simplistic.  There’s an element of truth to it, of course, but then again at Bolton at the start of the season Blues started 4-4-1-1 and went 2-0 up and ten-man Bolton only equalised once Matt Derbyshire had come on with Blues going 4-4-2 to try and take control of the game – a move that failed.  It’s not all about formations.

What it is about is the players that you buy, the players that you then pick and the intent that your team shows.  The teams that McLeish picks are simply devoid of attacking intent or creativity.  The teams and the systems are too cautious.

Before this weekend’s games Blues were the only Premier League team to have had less than 300 shots at goal (on or off target) and if you take Craig Gardner out of the equation, it’d probably have been less than 35.  That figure may be around 302 now if you include Martin Jiranek chesting on to the post and David Bentley threatening those sat in Row T.

That’s about 8 attempts a game. 

Before the weekend’s games, Blues had hit the target 118 times.  That’s little over 3 per game.  I’m sorry, but if you’re only hitting the target three times a game, then you’re not likely to score too many goals, are you?  It’s fairly simple.

Look at yesterday’s Fulham game.  Apart from Jiranek chesting against the post (and we’re clutching at straws by hearlding that as our best chance), Blues created no “proper” chances.  By proper chances, I mean a player slipped through on goal or a free header or something like that – something like the two headers Bobby Zamora missed, the one-on-one he missed, the header Andy Johnson missed and Steve Sidwell’s shot that hit the post.  That’s five clear cut chances there, and I haven’t even included the two that were scored or Zamora’s header that was cleared off the line in the build up to their second. 

And this is Fulham who, until recently, had won about three away league games in three seasons.  We’re not talking about Manchester United or Liverpool or Chelsea.  This is Fulham.  How are they able to do it when we’re not?

How are Blackpool able to have scored 21 goals more than Blues this season when they’re picking their forwards from a pool that contains the likes of Gary Taylor-Fletcher, Luke Varney and Jason Puncheon?

How are Wolves able to go to Sunderland and score three goals when Blues have barely managed three attempts on target in their past four away games?

The answer has to be the way that they approach games, the intent that they show and the licence that players are given within that system.  It has to be. 

McLeish will never do it though as he is terrified of losing.  He’s scared to death to lose games.  He’ll always pick those he can rely on to not lose a game rather than to go out and win a game.  Given the choice between a player who will put in a shift, track back and work hard for 90 minutes (Keith Fahey, Lee Bowyer, Jean Beausejour) he will 95% of the time pick them over someone who may look lazy and may give the ball away but is capable of producing something out of nothing (Christian Benitez, Mauro Zarate, Alex Hleb, David Bentley).  The facts (his team selections) speak for themselves. 

Blues have drawn fifteen games out of thirty-seven so far.  Take just four of those, and if two had been wins and two had been defeats, Blues would be safe now.  That’s the fine line, but that’s also why it’s always worth taking the risk to try and win games.  Sure, you may lose a few, but you’ll win a few too.

If McLeish played roulette, he’d cover red and black and would be so scared of getting Zero that he’d ask Keith Fahey to cover that for him too.

In various things that I have written in the past I’ve expressed sceptisim about Carson Yeung and the Chinese dream.  Are the board to blame for any of this?  In a word, “no”.  I genuinely don’t think that they are, and if I am saying that – as not so much a critic, but a sceptic – then chances are that they aren’t.

This season McLeish has had the likes of Hleb, Bentley (who, by the way, I think has been a massive let down), Martins, Derbyshire and Zigic at his disposal, and the amount of times he has used more than one (if any at all) you could probably count on one finger.  They’re not all the greatest players in the world, but they’re decent attacking options at this level.  Martins is injured, sure, but he barely played when he was available.  And who can blame Hleb for moaning every three weeks about how crap this move has been for him? 

McLeish has been backed with decent money (£3.5m for Beausejour, £6m for Zigic, £6m for Foster, £5.5m for McFadden, £3m for Johnson, £3.5m for Dann, £1.5m for Murphy, £1.5m for Ferguson, £3.5m for Davies off the top of my head) and in the loan market (Zarate, Benitez, Hleb, Derbyshire, Bentley, Martins) and still hasn’t been able to shake off the belief that a central midfielder “doing a job” on the left is the best thing for the team and that Cameron Jerome as a lone striker works.  It’s mental.  Even in The Championship he was allowed to bring in proper quick wingers in Scott Sinclair and Hameur Bouazza and he soon eased them out of the team too.

If Blues are ultimately relegated, the board do then face a test as, regardless of what you thought of them, it cannot be argued that David Sullivan and the Golds were very shrewd with transfers and money when it came to getting straight back up, as I’ve alluded to above.  It’ll be new for Yeung & Co, and they’ll be tested.

For me though, I’m happy to say that I think that McLeish has taken the club as far as he can (which, in a week’s time, may be backwards).  He’s delivered us a cup and at least one trip to Europe (probably Wales) and I’m thankful to him for that, but he came in with the club fighting relegation (a fight he ultimately lost) and he is now, three and a half years on, still managing a side fighting relegation (a fight that he looks likely to lose).

The Carling Cup win was fantastic and will stay with us all forever.  I’ve said many times that I would always take that day over relegation if I could only choose one, and I still would.  The world doesn’t work like that though.  It’s not a choice in reality and it doesn’t mean that I won’t be mightily pissed off if Blues go down.  I will be, and I’ll blame McLeish as I really, honestly, genuinely don’t think it should have come to this – not by a long stretch.