Interview: Alex McLeish, Birmingham City FC manager

Published on Friday 15 April 2011 18:02

Despite tough times at Birmingham, McLeish relishes the pressures he must overcome

There's a tenseness about Birmingham City today. It starts on my journey to meet Alex McLeish at their training ground, a place my taxi driver says he knows well, being a fan, only he gets us lost. "Sorry, I got distracted," he says, "just like them Blues."

I can sense it in the car park at West Heath on the city's southern outskirts where the security man - an interloper from Sheffield, home of what he says with some pride is "the fourth-most violent derby in Britain" - is bracing himself for the school-hols upsurge in autograph-hunting round and about his gates.

And I can certainly feel it in the manager's office where a tracksuited McLeish fidgets in the leather chair jammed in behind his desk. The room is too small, or maybe it's the furniture that's too big, and maybe in this ergonomical conflict we can see Birmingham themselves, who they are and who they want to be, also who Big Eck wants to be. Anyway, he starts off quite defensive, and gets slightly self-conscious when my tea arrives in a chipped mug.

Maybe it's my fault, mentioning their perilous position in the Barclays Premiership before congratulating him on the Carling Cup. His club hover just above the drop-zone and have another big game today at home to Sunderland, also part of the squeaky-bum fraternity. "Yeah, it's a sticky time for us," he says, "but for eight or nine other teams as well. We're not isolated."

The kids with their autograph books can't see past the Wembley win; the cabbie has shifted his gaze and is now concerned only with whether Birmingham can, as he puts it, "stop up". It's the kind of dilemma that can confront a middling Midlands club when they overachieve, as happened with that 2-1 triumph over Arsenal.

"Some fans will be disappointed we're in this position after finishing ninth last season but we overachieved then as well," adds McLeish of the club's highest top-flight finish for 51 years. "We'd just been promoted and so had that wee surprise element about us. We managed to win quite a few games without scoring many goals. I was able to put out the same side 13 games in a row. This season we're still low-scoring - it's an ongoing problem - and we've suffered more injuries while other teams have set up differently against us, maybe to combat (Barry] Ferguson."

Has the cup, like the cabbie says, been a distraction? "Well, I've been trying to get it into the players' heads that the Carling is finished and we've got to major on the Premiership. At Rangers when you won a trophy like the League Cup you knew it was right back to business. Here, I'm not saying my guys have put the tools away, but straight afterwards there was this feeling among them: ‘Shouldn't we be going our holidays now?'

Straight afterwards, Birmingham lost at home to West Brom. "I'd far rather have been playing Chelsea away, so expectations would have been lower, but everyone wanted to see us win that one. I had five players missing and I was thinking: ‘Should I keep it tight?' In the end I didn't and we paid the price."

As an Aberdeen player who got very used to winning, McLeish, 51, knew how hard it could be to keep winning. "Straight after our first championship in 1979-80 I went away with Scotland to the old Eastern Bloc and I remember Danny McGrain saying to me: ‘You'll find it harder next season.' And he was right, we didn't retain the title. Maybe we expected to. We missed that league flag the very minute it was lost."

Never mind straightforward winning, McLeish knew how difficult it was to win with style. Famously, the single-goal defeat of Rangers in the 1983 Scottish Cup final wasn't enough for Alex Ferguson, who slagged off his players on TV as they frolicked with the trophy. McLeish laughs. "Willie Miller and I were exempt from his criticism. I think Sir Alex wanted us to wipe the floor with Rangers. It was ten days after we'd won the Cup-Winners' Cup and he wanted dazzling football, four or five-nil. I'm sure he learned about footballers' mental tiredness that day."

So did McLeish learn the same lesson after losing to West Brom? "Aye probably." Was he annoyed with himself for bending to the will of a delirious St Andrew's and trying to put on a show? "For sure. I went home and analysed that match to the nth degree, like I do after every defeat. My family know what I'm like, how I cannae sleep. They know, I think, that any manager who can sleep after a bad result should probably be thinking of getting oot. The trick, of course, is to come back in here and show the players that you're ready for the next challenge. You've got to give them leadership."

A win over Bolton and a draw at Blackburn have kept McLeish - relegated once before with Birmingham and also with Hibs - out of the bottom three. So, if he can, how does he get away from the pressures? More laughter, then a description of a domestic scenario that will be familiar to many couples when one of them is a football obsessive. "I like to relax in front of the telly and often, of course, that can be football. Crawley Town vs AFC Wimbledon would be a ‘kitchen game', one I'd watch on our other set, but programme-planners and series-links are great inventions which mean I can store up MOTD2s and German and Spanish round-ups and watch them later. Only sometimes I fall behind with my viewing, as does Gill, my wife. She could have three home shows in the storage-box; I could have four doses of the Bundesliga. It's another relegation battle and usually it's those Escape to the Countrys which end up being deleted. ‘Sorry dear, I don't know how that happened.' She's not a happy bunny."

McLeish may but a football obsessive but he isn't a monomaniac. At Hibs, before the move to Rangers made the job more pressurised, he was known for being the SPL's biggest film buff, and you imagine that in the friendship he struck up with Hibs-supporting Dougray Scott they both learned much to their advantage. Now, as his football horizons have broadened some more, he's switched to small-screen dramas to become a boxset aficionado of quality American series such as The West Wing, 24 and Dexter. "My sons think we should watch The Wire next but I'm still on a high after Boardwalk Empire. Martin Scorsese had a hand in that one, you know, and I thought it was really captivating."

He's right, it was. And I can see why, as boss of Birmingham City, he liked the story of a Prohibition gangster in New Jersey taking on the Chicago and New York big boys. I just hope that, in his moments of self-examination, he doesn't feel affinity with the other main character, a puritanical FBI agent who whipped himself with his belt buckle.

But football managers don't often use words like "captivating". Not many, either, would have described Arsenal's Jack Wilshire as a "cyber-bully" for tweeting disapproval of the Birmingham player - thought to be Ferguson - who slapped Laurent Koscielny in celebration of the goal he helped cause to hand the Blues the cup. An articulate manager, they always say about Big Eck. They also say he's a lucky one.

The earlier tetchiness has long since disappeared. "Lucky?" he says with mock indignation. "Right now I think of myself as pretty unlucky, what with the injuries to the likes of [James] McFadden." There may have been an element of fortune about that winning goal, but not about Birmingham's performance. They played with great verve, to a McLeish plan.

"Aye, but the players had to take it onto the pitch. To a man they were fantastic, and winning the cup was a phenomenal achievement for this club. All the talk beforehand was of Arsenal having gone six years without a trophy. We spoke about the apprehensions and psychological hurdles that could affect their players the longer the game went, and how we could exploit them. Never mind that Birmingham City hadn't won a dime for 48 years."

A dime? The man's been watching too many American dramas, particularly 1920s-set ones. McLeish - winner of 19 trophies in Scotland - long wanted to manage in England, so has the Premiership lived up to expectations? "It's on a different planet. I've got some regret about saying that because I'm a proud Scot and back up the road we just can't compete. I loved my time in Scotland but I was 30 years there and I wanted to test myself in a new arena."

Like the way, as a centre-half, he used launch himself at corners and crosses to the astonishment of an about-to-be-usurped Old Firm, McLeish meets his new challenges head-on. Criticisms from the previous regime at St Andrew's, notably by Karren Brady, were swiftly silenced and apologies offered. You sense that if relegation is avoided he'll relish the chat about a bigger budget with the new lot in charge.

In the far less testing SPL, his boyhood heroes Rangers have found competing, at least financially, a problem this season and their old manager wishes the new one well with hoped-for fresh investment. "I'm delighted [Ally] McCoist is having a crack. I was privileged to manage Rangers and I know he will be, too. A lot of people think of him as a bit of a joker but he's a really intelligent guy. I remember a trip with Scotland when [Richard] Gough was considered the intellectual in the squad. He had that air because he was quiet and owned a travel chess-set. One afternoon Goughy challenged Coisty to a game. Ally annihilated him."

Any tips for him? "Nobody can prepare you for that job. Walter [Smith] will try, but the pressure, expectancy, politics and psychology involved in it will only really hit him when he's in the hot seat. A huge thing in his favour, though, is that the generation I grew up with, guys like [Roy] Aitken, all had magnificent self-pride and will-to-win and Ally's got plenty."

Another thing often said about McLeish is he exits at the right time, Motherwell, Hibs and Scotland all slumping in the immediate aftermath. What of the national team - would he go back one day? A wry smile. "All the Midlands managers met up yesterday and Roy Hodgson was saying how most international coaches now were older guys winding down on the total commitment. That definitely got me thinking: ‘I wonder if I might get another shot at the Scotland job?' ... "

It's almost time for McLeish to get back onto the training field. Looking over my questions I think I may have irked him with too early a mention of Fergie. In post-match football-speak, I should take a long hard look at myself. McLeish is happy to talk about his mentor, but more and more he's his own man. Besides, if you over-Fergie a profile you risk underplaying the significance of McLeish's father in his story.

His Govan shipyard-worker dad, Alex Snr, had a heart attack, didn't like being idle and on his first day back, suffered a second one which proved fatal. McLeish was 21 and had to become a father to his little brother. Still, the old man's influence has been profound and long-lasting.

"I got great values from him about respect and community. He saw all my youth games and whereas parents now are told to keep their traps shut, he was aye snarling from the side of the pitch. I'd go home for lunch in the huff and my mum Jean used to tell him off. But once I'd cooled down I realised he was right - always. ‘Head the ball like you cannae stand it! ... Dinnae let the bloody thing bounce!' One of my players did that last Saturday. I was like: ‘Weren't you told not to, aged five, like me?'" His father missed Gothenburg, World Cups, everything significant. "It's a shame he's not been able to come on this big journey with me. He'd be absolutely thrilled although I'm sure he'd still be telling me what to do."

Or where to go next. There was speculation last week that the journey might next take him to West Ham, followed a few days later by a report that Birmingham might be denied a Europa Cup place because of "financial concerns". With a map already hanging above his desk, he'd be desperately disappointed if they missed out. "Sir Alex used to tell us at Aberdeen it was imperative we qualified for Europe every season. ‘You don't want to be stuck at home watching Coronation Street,' he'd say. I'm afraid that in the last few years I've become over-familiar with the plot of that show so I hope we get there."

That's for the future. The domestic season still rages, and if Man U win the Premiership and Fergie and Bolton's Owen Coyle sort out the FA Cup between them, Scotland will have a clean sweep of English honours - and if it happens, Big Eck will buy the drinks. Fergie fondness for a good claret is well-known, and Coyle?

"Oweny drinks Irn-Bru. But that would be some achievement, eh? Some might say it's because of our chippiness that we make good managers. I prefer to think it's because when we come to England we just don't want to let Scotland down."