Birmingham City co-owner David Sullivan wants manager Alex McLeish to be careful with his summer spending.
"You do as best you can, without bankrupting the club," said Sullivan. "You don't want to do a Leeds United who went for gold and went bust.
"But if you look at them, other than Bellamy, they've never spent more than two or three million pounds on anybody and they have got a very good team up there.
"People say 'why aren't we like Portsmouth?'. They lost £24 million last year and I'm not sure as a club that we can afford to lose £24 million.
"You need a bit of luck with your signings and a bit of logic and we've probably not used our money as wisely we should have.
"Last summer we brought in six or seven players and virtually none of them are in the team.
"The other problem is that some players do not want to come to us.
"For example, Cahill. We offered the same transfer fee as Bolton and the player £2,000 a week more than Bolton, and he chose them above us.
"There are many more players over the years who just haven't wanted to come. They have wanted to stay in London, join a top four club.
"That said, I think we are better off spending money on three or four good players rather than seven or eight lesser players and we have identified some exciting targets."
