Birmingham City 2 Blackpool 0

Nikola Zigic struck for the second time in two games to seal Alex McLeish's 50th win as Birmingham manager at the expense of Blackpool at rainswept St Andrew's, with City winning 2-0.

The Serbia international has taken time to adjust to the Barclays Premier League after his £6million summer move from Valencia, but he followed up his goal at Arsenal last weekend with the decisive second against the Tangerines after Liam Ridgewell had opened the scoring.

It enabled Blues to end a run of seven league games without a win and find the net in front of their own fans for the first time since August 21.

City were well worth their second victory of the campaign with Zigic starting to adapt to the top flight after a testing start and linking up well with the midfield.Alexander Hleb also had his best game since arriving on loan from Barcelona and made several incisive passes and probing runs.

Blackpool manager Ian Holloway admitted he had been outwitted tactically by Alex McLeish after his side's 2-0 defeat at Birmingham.

After impressing in defeat to Manchester City last week, Blackpool were comfortably beaten by the Blues.Holloway said afterwards: "We were beaten by the better team and the manager beat me with his tactics."They passed the ball superbly well and I did not expect them to play a diamond in midfield. I felt I let the lads down a bit."But I shall also have a go at our scouting set-up because no one told me they would play with a diamond."It's a fair result.

We've got to learn from that. We created chances but the better team beat us. I said that we are on a learning curve. I'm learning in this division as well."