Alexander Hleb derby boost for Blues

Birmingham have been handed a massive derby-day boost after midfielder Alexander Hleb was passed fit to face Villa.

The loan star was a doubt for Sunday's trip to their rivals after limping out of the weekend's 2-0 win over Blackpool with a knee injury.

But manager Alex McLeish has confirmed while the Belarus star will miss tonight's Carling Cup visit of Brentford, but will be fit for the Second City showdown.

The Blues boss said: "His knee injury is not as bad as we thought. We think he had a bit of cramp as well and that shows that he's not fully match fit yet.

"But he showed great signs of his ability at the weekend with some great runs forward and some deft change of feet and he'll be an asset to us if we can get him in that kind of form.

"He's not going to make the cup tie but he should be okay for the Villa game."

Hleb has had a slow start to his Blues career after moving on a season-long loan from Barcelona on transfer deadline day.

But McLeish insisted he needs to give the 29-year-old game time because he is still playing catch up following a stop-start pre-season.

He said: "Alexander needs games and match fitness because he never played any pre-season games with Barcelona and only played international football before he came to us.

"We were already two or three games into the season before Alex got a look in and don't forget our players also played five or six pre-season games, so they were maybe nine or 10 games ahead of him in terms of match fitness.

"But if he can bring the level of performance he did at the weekend then we really look forward to working with the guy."