There will be vitriol and passion, but Harry..it’s all about the points
ALEX McLEISH, the last Birmingham City manager to taste victory in the Second City derby, has warned Harry Redknapp his baptism would be “fiery”.
Big Eck was a veteran of secular Old Firm hatred, but even he was taken aback by the ferocity of Blues’ rivalry with Aston Villa.
McLeish, who later defected to Villa Park, says 70-year-old Redknapp will be walking into a melting pot of vitriol as he launches his three-game mission to save Birmingham.
Disregard the partisan fervour of the Brum derby at your peril. It’s the fixture where Dion Dublin put the nut on Robbie Savage and where Big Eck knocked out Villa in the quarterfinals on the way to Carling Cup glory in 2011 – only to be relegated on the last day of term.
When the music stopped in a crazy game of musical chairs with Wigan, Wolves and Blackburn six years ago, poor old Birmingham were the last team without a seat at the top table. They have not been back.
McLeish pitched up at Villa, where owner Randy Lerner required him to trim the wage bill like a barber dispensing haircuts with a chainsaw. “I’ve seen the rivalry from both sides and it’s fiery,” said McLeish from Doha, where he is a visiting TV analyst but hoping for another job in English football.
“Harry is great talker, a great ‘people’ person,” he said. “But with survival at stake he could not have asked for a more difficult first game as Birmingham manager. In terms of results, the club has been on a downward spiral and he is the ideal man to lift the mood around the place, galvanise the supporters and give the players confidence.
“By nature, derbies can be a bit vitriolic, but somewhere in all the emotion and the passion, it’s about the points.
“Harry has been parachuted in because he has the experience and the knowledge to gain the points that will make them safe – I hope he does it, and I think he will. Make no mistake, it would be absolutely devastating for Birmingham if they went down. It was really heartwrenching when it happened to me, on the last day of the season, at Tottenham in 2011 and I would hate to see them go through the same anguish again.
“We had won the Carling Cup at Wembley only a couple of months earlier, and for the supporters that might have softened the blow, but I felt events conspired against us.
“Every team suffers its share of injuries but most of ours on that run-in, for whatever reason, were up front, and we struggled to cope with losing some handy strikers when we could least afford it.
“We were safe for about 10 minutes after Craig Gardner equalised to make it 1-1, but then Wolves scored in their game (against Blackburn) which put us back in the bottom three on goal difference. That left us with no option but to go for it, and Roman Pavlyuchenko picked us off in the last minute.” The memory of beating Villa that night in late 2010, however, still burns brighter for McLeish than the fireworks lunatics were throwing at each other. He said: “The crowd’s reaction felt as if turning them over was the be-all and end-all, but I didn’t want the club to have that mentality.
“Sure, I wanted us to compete with them as equals in the Premier League, but I felt Birmingham City was big enough to stand on its own feet as a major club in the Midlands.
“In my first game against Villa, we were heavily beaten 5-1, but by the time I left I felt we were more or less on an even keel with them in derby games.”
And his year at Villa (left)? “We did enough to get across the line,” said McLeish. “But subsequent seasons have shown you cannot take Premier League survival for granted.
“The fans don’t care that I had to reduce the wage bill substantially, but Villa were not in a position to sustain success.
“It didn’t help that we lost Stiliyan Petrov to a lifethreatening illness and there were other factors which left us with mountains to climb.
“Recent history has shown I did a better job than some people thought at the time.”