Birmingham City News: McLeish Quit Rumours Refuted
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McLeish, Pannu Play Down Quit Rumours
Birmingham City vice-chairman Peter Pannu has rejected suggestions that talks between team manager Alex McLeish and the club’s board have stalled.
Reports earlier today suggested McLeish was annoyed about a remark made by vice-chairman Pannu in which Pannu suggested that his wage demands would put him in the same bracket as Real Madrid boss Jose Mourinho and that was a demand the club wasn’t prepared to meet.
“I have been in talks with his representative and he was asking for a very large amount of money which I was not prepared to meet,” Pannu is reported to have said yesterday and while he agreed the manager deserved a bonus for his performance last year, he felt McLeish was still not the finished article:
“He has not been tried and tested yet. The club was relegated, then promoted and last year we stayed up, so he has done well, but to suggest that he is in the top class like a Mourinho, well, he is no Mourinho yet. The ball is in his court.”
Today, though, Pannu adopted a more conciliatory tone and rejected the notion that McLeish was close to quitting the club.
“This is all nonsense,” he said. “We are just perhaps inches away from Alex signing a contract, possibly by next week. Our relationship is phenomenal, we are very strong and close, and I want to dispel this notion that there is anything wrong.”
McLeish is on a rolling contract that pays him £750,000 and is looking to up that to £1 million a year, a salary level not unusual for a Premier League manager, but somewhat less than the £5 million Mourinho is said to be earning at the Bernabeu. However, the Birmingham boss is refusing to be drawn into a public argument:
“I don’t want to talk about my contract publicly,” he said. “
I don’t think it’s the right place to discuss demands and all that. I’m not going to comment on it.
“We’ve signed three players and that’s all I want to talk about.”
McLeish did make comments to a fan’s forum this week in which he suggested that a deal was imminent and that he was not thinking of leaving:
“We’re really close. I have got a project here. We’ve done a lot on the infrastructure. We’ve invested in some new players. I’ve not thought about abandoning ship, and it’s not a ship that’s sinking, it’s a boat that’s turning in a very positive direction.”
With regards to his contract McLeish added: “I’m sure we will have good news on that front very, very soon – within the next week.”
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