Ice, ice baby

Reading may have stolen a march on Blues thanks to the events of the last 24 hours.

Alex McLeish remains quietly confident, though, that his remodelled side will ultimately not be found wanting.

And the manager thinks that there will be an improvement in respect of attacking verve and creativity as the weeks pass.

Speaking today from the team bus as it headed back from Blackpool, where a frozen pitch meant a second successive postponed match for Blues, he revealed that he was going to 'unleash the wingers' - Scott Sinclair and Hameur Bouazza.

Triggering an improvement from the flanks is something that McLeish vowed to do during the current transfer window.

The difference when Reading - 4-0 winners over Watford last night - beat Blues at St Andrew's was the speed, mobility and quality of their wide players, McLeish noted. Reading's forwards benefited from the ball they got, and the way they all dovetailed.

Wolves success has been based on wideboys Michael Kightly and Matt Jarvis. And remember when Coventry City swarmed all over Blues at St Andrew's, they had Jay Tabb and Michael Mifsud buzzing about in the wide areas, Clinton Morrison pulling defenders out in the channels.

Quincy wasn't the man to do it, hence his departure. Instead McLeish got two for the price of one in loanees Sinclair and Bouazza, players he had respectively been tracking since the summer and his Rangers days.

Blues play has been prosaic and sterile in comparison to some sides this season. A lack of pace and movement has been evident.

Throw in Lee Bowyer to the mix, whose strength is to get forward and make telling runs into the penalty area, Blues are altering their make-up significantly.

Bowyer is 32 and Blues have been monitoring him carefully to be sure that, as some reckon to the contrary, his legs haven't gone. If he was a plodding slouch, McLeish wouldn't have proceeded with his loan.

Keith Fahey, too, is a dynamic, attack-minded player.

It's difficult to see McLeish sending Blues out with, say, David Murphy on the left and Kemy Agustien on the right with two 'sitters' in the middle of the park again.

What of the pair who have played most of the season on the flanks, Sebastian Larsson and James McFadden?

Put simply, they have to respond to the challenge. That's what McLeish will be telling them.

Both have been hampered by groin problems, and Larsson hasn't been the same player he was in his previous two seasons, for whatever reasons. Often Blues have been too narrow, which hasn't helped, or played a kind of 4-3-3 to varying degrees of success.

McLeish - who has no intention of selling either, by the way - wants the game taken up the pitch quickly by players who can get up the pitch quickly. That's the Reading template, and it doesn't mean the big boot either.

And, from gauging the manager's mood, there are more players on their way into St Andrew's.

The Kris Boyd transfer is dead until such time it isn't, in that classic kind of Blues way when it comes to hard bargaining on personal terms, and a centre-half remains a requirement. Calum Davenport is back on the market.

McLeish's scouting team are taking in games at home and abroad presently.

One of the worse things you can do in football as a manager is stand still and rest on your laurels.

Had McLeish not used the current trading period to breathe some life and new blood into the side, accepting that Blues needed to be more dynamic and proactive rather than reactive in games, then it might have all gone off.

Anger would have given way to disinterest and apathy, doubtless.

Instead it's now going to be fascinating to see how this change of tack pans out, and what else materialises between now and the closure of the January transfer window.