Alan Curbishley is confident Alex McLeish can handle second season syndrome at Birmingham City.

Along with his board, McLeish is busy this summer ensuring that he does enough to prevent Blues going the same way as Hull City by becoming the next club to fail to build on their against-the-odds achievements in the top flight following promotion.

"Alex grasped early on last season that when you're a newly-promoted side it's important to get off to a decent start and that's what he did well," Curbishley told the Sunday Mercury.

"He got a bit of a base, signed experienced players and then progressed. I think most people expected it to tail off at the end because of the effort they put in.

"It reminded me so much of my first couple of seasons at Charlton and it's the way to do it."