Interview: Alex McLeish

ALEX McLEISH picks up a newspaper from the old country, sees Sir David Murray in the picture and Rangers in the headline and starts to read. Doom and gloom at Ibrox. Walter Smith having a go at the money men, the club being chased by the tax man.

Uncertainty and confusion. Who's staying and who's going? Who's buying, if anybody? Big Boydy on his bike? Bougherra down the road? McGregor, too, maybe. And young Danny Wilson. Shortest championship winning party in living memory, you tell him. "Aye," says Eck, quietly. "Aye."

He's away from it now, of course. Away from it, but not away from it. He knows so many people involved at the club that he'll never be totally removed from Ibrox no matter how long he stays in England. And though his priorities have shifted, he's watching what is happening just as we are. Says he doesn't know any more than the man in the street, though. Not his place to pry, that's what he thinks.

"I don't ask Walter about his private business, but reading between the lines, all of this is really hurting him. I know the guy Donald Muir as well. I grew up with Donald. Went to primary school with him. And I feel for him also because he's getting that Enemy Within stuff from some of the fans. I know he's a financial doctor sent in to monitor the spending, but he's certainly not an enemy of Rangers, I can tell you that for a fact. He's a big-time Rangers fan, even more fervent than I was when we were young. He's a great guy, a great Rangers supporter. I kept in touch with him when our lives went in different directions and he moved to Toronto in Canada. I went over there with Hibs one year and the first guy I phoned when we got there was Donald. And where does he take us? In with the Bears at the Bramalea Rangers Supporters' Club.

"I spoke to him a while back. I said: 'If only they really knew you. Is there no way you can say something?' But because of the oaths of secrecy, or whatever, he's prevented from saying anything. It's a tough situation, that."

Seems like a long time since McLeish was part of that world. His Rangers years? Not just a great privilege, but an invaluable experience. He tells you about the end of last season at Birmingham and the pressure he was under and relates it all back to football in Glasgow. The finances of his new club depended on promotion to the Premiership. So much was riding on success that the heat could have fried the brain of a lesser manager. This was in the pre-Carson Yeung era when Birmingham was still in the hands of the occasionally ball-breaking trio of David Sullivan, David Gold and Karren Brady, a combo that recently put all bar one of their newly acquired West Ham squad up for sale without telling the manager, Gianfranco Zola.

There was a month to go in the Championship season. Birmingham had drawn four games on the run-in and, suddenly, the predicted cakewalk was turning into a fretful grind. Sullivan, seeing mountains of dosh fading over the horizon, said some things in the press that he shouldn't have said and Brady wrote a column in the Sun that she shouldn't have written.

"The consequences of not getting promotion were pretty grim, so that's when the hard experiences of the past kicked in, I think. I got that from Rangers, but long before Rangers I got it from my mum and dad, Jean and Alex. They brought me up to have respect and humility, to be conscientious, but also to have that bit of strength, to know that it's not about how many times you get knocked down, it's about how you deal with the blows when they come.

"So I had to do something about David and Karren, had to log an e-mail to them. I said: 'It would be great if you said nothing from now on, we've got some telling weeks coming up and if you leave the football spokesman bit to me then it would be nice.' They were good as gold after that. I had to get Karren where you're sitting right now and, to be fair to her, she ate humble pie and apologised and that was fine. Done and dusted. I got the vow of silence from them and we got promotion and here we are. It was an intense situation, but doing the job I did in Glasgow, I was ready for it."

Some memories of his Ibrox years bring a smile. Mad place, he says. Brilliant, but bonkers. "You can feel the anger at times in Glasgow. You can feel it as soon as you get off the plane. And I know what Tony Mowbray was going through at Celtic. Tony probably felt there was an agenda against him in the media, but it's nothing personal, it's just the way it is in Scotland if you're second.

"I got it as well. Everybody gets it. That's what Dick Advocaat said to me when I took over. Wee Dick, dead forthright. 'Just remember one thing', he says, after I won my first trophy. 'Some day they will come for you'. And he was right." McLeish got the donkey's ears in the Sun after CSKA Moscow beat Rangers to a Champions League spot in 2004. Moscow Mules was the headline, as he recalls. "When I look back on it I see how absurd it actually was. It wasn't a team from Azerbaijan, it was CSKA Moscow, who'd spent about 40 million in the transfer market. They won the UEFA Cup, the Russian League and the Russian Cup the same season. Vagner Love (the prolific Brazilian] and Ivica Olic (scorer of a hat-trick for Bayern Munich in the Champions League semi-final last Tuesday night] was their forward line. We lost 2-1 in Moscow, drew 1-1 at Ibrox. If I wasn't so bloody angry at the time I might have found it laughable. It was somebody really taking the piss.

"So when Tony went into the job I said: 'So long as you're first you'll be all right. If not, they will come for you', just like wee Dick said. I didn't say it to Tony, but I was thinking it. It's just the way of things.

"Wee Gordon (Strachan] said it, didn't he? He could do the PM's job, he said after he left Celtic. And, aye, I know what he's talking about."

Two and a half seasons he's been at Birmingham now and the time has flown. Relegation from the Premiership in his first half-season, then promotion from the Championship at the first attempt and now they're sitting ninth in the big league when their major goal was merely to survive. It's a stunning result.

McLeish does not have a big squad and has spent relatively little in the transfer market in the last year, round about 16m. Sunderland, on the other hand, plunged for 30m and are one place below them in the league. Stoke spent more than 20m and are further back again.

He's reluctant to reveal how much money he will have to spend on new players in the summer – roughly 10m in fees, but perhaps closer to 40m if you include wages. Kris Boyd and Aiden McGeady were of interest to him in the recent past but he's not getting drawn on whether that remains the case now. All he'll say is that he is looking to strengthen in the forward areas. He needs more quality up front, more creativity and more goals. He won't be taken for a mug, though. Rumour had it that he was quoted in excess of 10m for McGeady when he asked about the midfielder in the last transfer window. No business will be done for that kind of money.

He has relied heavily on a core group of half a dozen players, among them Barry Ferguson, Lee Bowyer and Stephen Carr, three 30-somethings he picked up for small beer. "Three wee shrewd freebies – or near-freebies," as he calls them. "The new owners have been outstanding. Carson's a great guy; great for the football club and great for the city. He's got big plans and it's very exciting being here. We'll be prudent again in the market, but we'll be making some signings. Hopefully we'll find a few good Bosmans as well, but it's difficult to keep pulling out the quality freebies. They're hard to find. We tried it one year at Rangers and it was a disaster. When Ferguson and Amoruso left with Neil McCann, Artur Numan and some other big names, we saved some money by bringing in six Bosmans and we had a shocking season. Dismal. At Birmingham, we got Barry, Lee and Stevie for half-nothing and if we could get three more like them I wouldn't have any sleepless nights, I can tell you."

Ferguson, considered shot to pieces by many of us at the tail-end of last season, has started all bar one Premier League game and has been a sensation. "When he gets backed into a corner, Barry wants to fight the world and his uncle," says McLeish. "I mean, he needed to leave Rangers. Familiarity breeds contempt. I just felt that it would only go one way, the relationship between him and the Rangers fans – and that was down the way. I spoke to him in the summer and I wondered whether he had the legs for it anymore.

"His body had taken a fair old battering over the years. Some day the legs were going to go and I wondered if he was already in decline. He said: 'No, no, I'll come down, I'll show you, I'll train with you for a week, you don't have to commit yourself, I'll prove I've got plenty left in the tank.' I wasn't worried about any other aspect of his game because I knew what he could do with the ball. He can look after it in any company in any stadium in the Premier League. The big thing was, did he still have the legs? And, aye, he does. He's been brilliant. His consistency has been out of this world. The challenge for him now is to come back next season still buzzing and still hungry and do it all over again."

They've spoken about Scotland, of course they have. The ins and outs, the good and bad, the whys and wherefores. McLeish and Ferguson have discussed the player's international future in this very office we're in now, in this small room at the Birmingham City training centre in the southern suburbs of the city where the manager does his thinking against a backdrop of a framed Scotland jersey signed by all his former players at Hampden.

Not easy, this one. Not easy at all. "I tell him: 'Don't make me the fall guy, Barry. You're the only one who can make this decision, you and your family.' I have a letter here somewhere from a Scotland fan. A patriot. If I can find where it is I'll reply to him. He's saying that I was saying Barry shouldn't play for Scotland. But I would never say that to a player. I know what a player goes through physically at this level, the intensity that is required nowadays. The demands on players are huge and it's difficult to combine the two at his age. He's looking at Paul Scholes, but I don't know how it will play out. I've tried to pass the buck. If he goes back then he's going to have to give outstanding performances in every single game or he'll be the first to be criticised. That sounds like I'm putting him off, but I'm not. It's his decision."

McLeish has made many decisions of his own this season and they've been unerringly correct. Nobody outside the blue shades of Birmingham thought that a top-ten finish was possible, but McLeish always believed. When he was Scotland manager he often spoke of his party political broadcasts on behalf of what he called the Positivity Party. "Oh aye, we're perennial merchants of doom up the road, aren't we? Woe is us. We needed something to cut through all of that. We all need self-belief. All of us. I still use it. I'll always fly that flag. Oh aye, the Positivity Party is still going strong."