All white, Eck

There's a large whiteboard on the wall in Alex McLeish's office at Wast Hills which lists all the current first team players.

The names are written out according to position in an imaginary 4-4-2 formation, with those not available for selection due to injury or loan underneath.

Scanning the whiteboard the other day, it got me thinking that in little more than five months plenty will have been scrubbed out and replaced by new personnel.

Mehdi Nafti will leave when his contract expires, Radhi Jaidi's deal also ends in the summer, then there's the glut of loan and short-term signings and players who have been on the periphery for most of the season, like Damien Johnson.

By the time the close season comes, Alex McLeish will have a good idea - he probably has already if the truth be known - of who's hot and who's not in his book.

And the Blues boss and his staff have already identified potential new recruits.

For next to the whiteboard McLeish has a big flipchart and on two of the pages a whole host of targets are listed.

Tantalisingly, when we were chatting generally about next season, he went over to the flipchart and turned the paper a couple of times to qualify a point about the research that has been done, and was being done.

Unfortunately it was not for long enough to get a gander at the names, or even whip out the Nokia N96 to take a crafty picture.

I quickly tried to see if Ronaldinho was on there - vis-à-vis Karren Brady's last diary column - but I don't think he was (and I got the feeling she was actually meant Ronaldo as reference was made to his weight, not his teeth).

But suffice to say, the list was pretty comprehensive and McLeish and his staff had obviously been brainstorming recently about what the options were.

Now this may all seem quite strange as gossip has it that Darren Ferguson has already agreed to take over at St Andrew's in the summer.

The Internet message boards have been cackling with this 'insider information' for several days now. Well, it hasn't happened, it's not on the agenda. As Rafa Benitez would say: 'fact'.

The board have not made a decision either way on McLeish's future, whether the club get promotion or not.

Certainly, can anyone seriously imagine some kind of hush-hush deal being done, especially when Ferguson's old man is like a surrogate father to McLeish?

As Brady stated at the AGM, Blues plan to take stock and chat with McLeish once the dust has settled on 2008-09 and, again, regardless whether promotion has been secured or not.

As I write, he's not a cert for the boot, he's not a cert to walk out. He's not a cert to stay either, but then there are few managers you could say are safe and secure nowadays, for a variety of reasons and pressures.

So it's the status quo, McLeish and the board are working according to his contract and he is continuing to plan for next season and the certain overhaul of the squad.

Last year he had to alter his aim after Premier League relegation. Blues were well down the line to signing Edmilson, Michael Bradley, Valon Behrami, they got onto Roman Pavlyuchenko some time before his star rose. Sean Davis and Gary Cahill had been on the January radar too.

Doubtless Blues have players in mind for the Premier League, alternatives for the Championship.

And if McLeish does get Blues back into the top-flight, then he wouldn't - one would reasonably presume - have to juggle loans due to finance. For example, he would be able to buy a Ben Watson instead of having to take a punt on an untried Kemy Agustien.

He admitted to the Scottish press the other week that Kris Boyd was someone he would always be interested in. Boyd's £3.7 million transfer last January bit the dust over personal terms, and his reluctance to leave Rangers. But don't think that McLeish's comments mean he will definitely be back in for him should Blues exit the Championship.

It's interesting to note that when Blues played Doncaster Rovers there were only one two players in the side McLeish had brought to the club on a permanent basis: Lee Carsley and Keith Fahey.

Sure, others were absent because of injury, yet McLeish still has to assemble what he would really consider 'his' side on the pitch and listed on that whiteboard.