McLeish will celebrate two years in the St Andrews hotseat when Blues take on Wolverhampton Wanderers this Sunday.

The former Scotland manager has guided Birmingham back to the top flight at the first attempt after failing to keep them up in his first season.

And Birmingham have begun the new campaign well and sit pretty in midtable position with a third of the season gone.

They can extend their unbeaten league run to five matches when they go to Molineux and McLeish is confident City can go from strength to strength.

substantial progress

McLeish said: "It has been some education over the last couple of years. We have had all the emotions from A to Z and I can't believe it has gone so quickly.

"We are at a decent level if you compare us to two years ago. I believe we have made substantial progress on and off the pitch and, with the support of the new board, believe we can continue to improve as a club.

"We are improving and have just that bit more quality than two years ago but it is a work in progress. There is a still a lot of team building to be done and we hope we can take a significant step to doing that in January. If we've got Premier League ambitions, we need to bring in the quality."