Hi all, was a regular reader on the old site but never posted so here goes.
When Carsen and and his team joined blues, much was written about their desire to have a big say in transfer dealings, one of the reasons Bruce was unhappy when they first attempted a takeover and I believe that Mcleish has been dealing with this unneccesary annoyance throughout his time at blues.
Pannu seems to me like David Sullivan in disguise, likes to shout his mouth off and always wants to have the last word.
Mcleish is a man of integrity but maybe the board have annoyed him that much that the best revenge in his eyes would be joining our fierce (yet in the Premiere League) rivals over in the borough of aston.
Picture the scene if you will...
Mcleish is relaxing by the pool on holiday last week still hurting from relegation but fuming more I would think because his chief scout was dismissed without him knowing, throwing his pre-season transfer plan into the abyss. In the back of his mind he knows that he will at somepoint think enough is enough with the board but, although he is not the happiest he's been recently, he is still commited to blues as he is an honourable gent.
Mrs. Mcleish returns from the hotel shop with the morning papers.
To Eck's astonishment one headline reads 'Birmingham sign Marlon King'.
The best possible player in the country to destroy the morals, team-spirit and togetherness that has taken him 2 years to build.
Eck decides enough's enough and as he couldn't get a signal on his blackberry!! emails the board and quits.
I think it became impossible for Eck to work with the board and I don't blame him one bit for quitting if what I believe is true. Pannu is to blame in my opinion.
I was at first understandably gutted that he left but... losing the most defensive and negative tactician seen at blues for many years and selling him to the vile for £5 mill + seems like a pretty good deal in the end.
KRO SOTV
Missing the point?
posted on 15/6/11
As far as relegation is concerned I'm afraid twice in 4 yrs is one too many. McLeish should have resigned after relegation and when he didn't the board should have negotiated a pay-off and sacked him. Neither happened.
The board didn't sack McLeish because they are potless and he is worth some money, it really is that simple. They did not keep him because they believed in him. If they believed in him they would let him sign the players HE wanted to sign rather than foisting on him unwanted "gifts".
I don't blame McLeish for walking out of a club which is run by incompetent liars and crooks. I believe McLeish to be honest & decent & honourable; three things which Pannu & Yeung are not.
I am very disappointed that he is going to the Vile. But imagine how he must have felt, less than a week after winning the ONLY major trophy in the history of our club & doing it with a rag-tag team with so little depth that it got us relegated, to be booed and jeered at St. Andrews by 'loyal' Bluenoses. Shocking & shameful.
He must have looked around at the dump that we all call home and thought back to his days at Ibrox when he was a manager at a proper club with proper facilities and proper owners and proper fans and thought, 'Sod this'.
KRO
posted on 15/6/11
you must sit in the main stand , ,
what are proper fans , i have only ever supported BLUES,
and the thought of me not being a proper fan in over 66 years intrigues me
posted on 15/6/11
Mcleish is a man of integrity
What quits while on Holiday then masterminds his way to Villa really
We do not know if McLeish had a say in King or not, we do not know and we may never know.
As far as King goes he has a strike rate of just over 1 in 2 in the Championship so on average over 46 games we could expect a return of about 20 goals which will help get us Promotion and so is not as big waste as Bent was and Bent earned more than £12K more a week than we are paying King.
Regardless of the Transfer debate, seems maybe McLeish was not keen on Hleb or maybe Bentley and wanted Keane, and Pavy.
The facts are that with the set of players at his disposal McLeish never used it to its best and his tactics was shocking.
McLeish will use the excuse that he should have been backed to bring in 2-3 of the 4-5 targets he wanted over the last 2 season even though we bid for them sadly not to the overpriced fees and wages those players wanted.
So eck may come out if only we had N'Zogbia, Pavy and Keane and never los Dann we would have stayed up.
I say if we had not seen us stick with the 4,5,1 with Jerome uptop and playing Fahey, Bowyer and Larsson more than Hleb, Bentley and Beausejour maybe we would have stayed up.
If McLeish decided to his his subs, and not just use one and with 5 minutes to go maybe we would have stayed up.
And finally had it not been for Zigic and Martins we would not have Won the Cup.
Now please McLeish go jog on
The KiD
posted on 15/6/11
But the thing is JK if McLeish was so mr right with honor etc why go walk into Villa, this is just pittyfull revenge.
As far as players goes should we list who Eck missed out on?
Can our club really afford to go paying £10-15M and £50K a week for players, we are not a Top 8 club.
Should Yeung had let McLeish sign a Pavy or Jones for £13M and £3M a season contract, and sign either a Babel or N'Zogbia for £10M and £2.5M a season contracts.
If we offered what Spurs wanted for Pavy and what Liverpool wanted for Babel who is to say that even if we offered them £60K a week each they would want to come to Blues back then.
Maybe Beausejour was not in McLeish's list of main players he wanted, yes he wanted N'Zogbia or McGeady instead.
I am sure WBA would love to sign Downing but he would not go to them, Spurs would love a Messi but he is to big for them.
We have to make do with what we can, and financially Beausejour was in budget and as far as a player he is not that bad, just not given chances like every other attacking player we have had under McLeish.
Honestly what if we signed another Striker and had signed N'Zogbia chances are McLeish would still play Jerome on his own and would not drop a Larsson or Bowyer.
Bottom line McLeish played the hand he was delt very poor.
If WBA had Hleb and Bentley look how well they would have done.
If we signed Odemwingie and he had to put up with the same tactics that supported Jerome then he would not have scored half what he did at WBA
The KiD
posted on 15/6/11
The KiD!!!!! Im sure i remember you saying that when 606 closed down you wouldnt be signing up for any other forums...? I am glad to see you have decided to join here, i always appreciate your opinions. Keep right on.
posted on 15/6/11
Well i was not going to.....
But this shocking situation with McLeish i just could not help but debate on such a HUGE TOPIC
I was not going to sign up because i waste to long on these kinds of things, i gues a good point with this site is you no longer have to wait 3mins between posts and the site closes latter.
So i can get say a few things said with out having to wait 3 minutes each time.
Before it would take 12 mins to post 4 things, not no more.
The KiD
posted on 15/6/11
Funny enough i did joke that there was more chance of McLeish joining Villa then me joining another 606...
The KiD
posted on 15/6/11
Hi KiD! I'm really pleased that you have chosen to post here & it is great to exchange messages with you again.
The fact is KiD, that as Birmingham fans we have to accept that we have drawn the short straw. We support a club which has, for as long as I can remember in my 30-something yrs, only ever been a shoddy, shameful, rather pathetic lame duck of a club.
The owners have all been chancers, liars and thieves. Any decent player we have had has sprinted for the exit as soon as they could. Any decent manager we have ever had has been undermined by the various boards, booed and loathed by the fans and thus have failed.
McLeish is simply the latest in a long line.
It comes down to who you believe. I know you do not like McLeish and never really have and I too found his style of play at Blues somewhat insipid. But I will not indulge in an ad hominem attack on him for that.
I see Peter Pannu & Carson Yeung on one side & Big 'Eck on the other and I find it impossible to take ANYTHING that Pannu says seriously. I have found his handling of the affairs of the club amateurish from day one. I find his manner brusque and unattractive and I doubt the wherewithal and honesty of Our Dear Leader.
On the other hand I find McLeish to be honest, straight forward and sincere; as much as I wish he had gone anywhere other than the Vile, I cannot blame him for leaving Stans. For me this is a no brainer.
KRO
posted on 15/6/11
The thing is though everything seemed fine between McLeish and the board untill Xmass time.
I like McLeish for the man he was and his attitutde towards team ethic.
I just felt his tactics was poor and he was reluctant to make changes, most of the signings he made this season gone never played more than the players he already had at the club.
The same was in the Championship how many signings made in the Championship played?
Fahey, Bowyer, Carr and Qaushie really and those first 3 played often again this season gone.
The only changes as far as the team that played most from this season gone and the Championship seasons side was.
Ferguson, Foster, Gardner, Dann and Johnson the rest was the same.
What has changed my mind with McLeish is the way he has gone about quiting Blues to go to Villa.
He is only looking out for himself and maybe its more about hurting Panu and Yeung than caring for us fans.
I beleaved that mass changes needed to be made, Ecks tactics would have worked in the Prem if we had a Darren Bent or simular calibre player who can work on their own and then we would need two wingers the calibre of N'Zogbia etc.
The problem is Hleb and Bentley are not bad players and should have been used more.
McLeish has proven he does not play players who was not orginally his main target. And players who sacrefice defence work and responsibilities in return for attack.
McLeish also wasted a lot of money on players, what i mean by that is look at the players we had under McLeish who hardly kicked a ball names could inc Quincy, Costly, Sinclair, Bouzza, Zarate, Hleb, Bentley, Michel, Bent, Martins, Derbyshire and even Beausejour and Zigic to some extent.
These players cost a lot of money, if you worked out their combined fees/wages per minute they played the money they cost would be huge per minute/game.
Maybe Chucho too who had that run with Jerome but when we finally started to lose a few it was Chucho dropped and back to 4,5,1 which led to relegation form (0.6pts per game) lucky that after that unbeaten run we had got over 38-40 points.
There are maybe others i forget to mention in that list, but if you look at the players who never got used much nearly all of them are attacking players the kind of players our side has cried out for.
Thats attacking wingers with a bit of pace/flair to beat and take on his man, and Strikers with a Football brain and finishing.
McLeish would rather play Larsson at RM because of his workrate and his dead balls (that was poor this season) over a more natural wide player like Hleb or Bentley. Even though Larsson had failed to commit his future and chances are instead of us giving Bentley a chance to impress with a view to maybe then sign him for £7-10M as replacement. We stick with a player who lacked that penetration needed who was most likely going to be off in the Summer.
We play Fahey a RCM at LM who goes missing and is much better at RM/RCM or we play Bowyer at LM and also get him to defend more (which he is a liability) where Bowyer needed to be played more central with more freedom.
Bottom line Ecks tactics are off.
He only knows how to defend, and play players who offer the side a ability to close down and break up play at the expence of create chances and venture into the final 3rd.
The KiD
posted on 15/6/11
As far as Yeung goes i think he is like a naive kid who had a dream to run a Prem Football Club and tap into the chinese market.
Sadly his ambition was great and his dream was, but he just never had the cash to pull it off, he also found out that its not so easy to pull in players in the Prem and that sometimes you can expect to overpay if you want your man.
Sadly Blues was not seen as a big club, at first maybe money was there to spend like a Sunderland would etc but we just lacked that pulling power of a Top 8-10 side.
Maybe Yeung expected that purely having chinese owners would tap into the chinese market faster than the trickle it has become.
Maybe he had backers who wanted to back his plans who then got cold feet and no Yeung is a ambitious man wth no experience at this level of running a Football Club and sadly does not have the kind of money to bank things if they dont go to plan.
His plan could have been purely based on being in the Prem and so relegation means now he may have to take a hit on losses, while rebuilding for Promotion and the cost will come from debts on us, or debts to his pockets or he will have to try and raise cash he potentially does not have.
This is a worry.
And i think McLeish knew this was going to happen, and so decded to jump ship before it potentially sank.
The KiD