Birmingham City boss Alex McLeish admits sheer persistence won Gregory Vignal a deal at St Andrews.

"Although Lens were looking to get Gregory off the books, I think they made him their captain in their pre-season games," he told the Birmingham Mail. "He came to us at a decent level of fitness, and that was one of the reasons for taking a look at him before we put pen to paper.

"We were trying to go down another road, but because of the injury situation I tried to get a leftie as soon as possible. He was a little bit of an emergency.

"I've followed his career a little bit since he left Rangers. I have met him a couple of times. When we played Portsmouth he came to see us from his base in Southampton.

"I kept in touch and he has hinted at working with me again and having seen that he wasn't really figuring for Southampton and had problems with Lens, then I wondered if maybe his career had gone backwards a little bit, and I'm sure he would admit that it had.

"He texted me himself to say that he would come in and train with us for a few days. I thought 'why not?' I know him, he had a good campaign with Rangers, he won a Championship medal with us.

"He looked really assured in training and to be fair to the other lads who had been at left-back - both right-footers, Stuart Parnaby and Jared Wilson - they would have admitted that bringing a bit of balance in the shape of a left-footer helped the team anyway.

"So Gregory came in and impressed. He was quite robust against Gijon, although he has got to be careful with the challenges because of the new rules in the Premier League. He went forward well, he used it well. His energy was good and he carried on in that vein at Manchester United."