Alex McLeish admitted he would love to keep Mauro Zarate after the on-loan striker scored twice in Birmingham's 3-1 win over Manchester City.Zarate joined Birmingham on loan from Al Sadd of Qatar in January and took his goal tally to three in the last two games on Saturday.

Al Sadd's reported asking price of around £15million may prevent City from signing the Argentinian on a permanent basis, but McLeish would be keen for him to spend at least another season at St Andrews.

McLeish said: "I'm really delighted with Mauro. He was outstanding with his dribbling skills today. He was superb entertainment.

"You pick up contacts in the game who help to find you a player like Mauro. I had only seen him on video before I came here when I was manager of Scotland.

"I watched the FIFA Under-20 tournament in which he scored the winning goal in the final and you could see that he is a fantastic young talent.

"He has got a great future ahead of him and hopefully, if we retain our Premier League status, we can talk to Zarate about staying on for another season."

Birmingham's second win of 2008 has moved them four points clear of the bottom three after Bolton were beaten 3-2 at home by Arsenal.

The margin of victory may have been greater but for the sending off of Franck Queudrue for holding back Benjani Mwaruwari.

Elano scored from the spot to give Manchester City a lifeline before a dubious penalty award for a foul by Sun Jihai on Gary McSheffrey resulted in the Blues midfielder settling the issue.

McLeish said: "I'm just happy to win. We have too many draws at St Andrews even though we have played extremely well.

"The first-half performance was exceptional and we deserved to be leading at half time.

"The second goal made it comfortable for us but they we made a mistake which let City back into the game but I've got to compliment the team for their organisation after that and all round it was a satisfactory day."

McLeish did not have too many complaints about Queudrue's red card. He said: "From where I was sitting, it looked like a penalty because when Benjani gets goal-side of any defender, he has fantastic pace.

"Franck thought Jaidi might have been able to get across and make a tackle. But, if the referee deems it a goalscoring opportunity he has got to go off.

"People said we may have been fortunate with our penalty but we have been on the wrong end of one or two of them ourselves. If people say we had a bit of luck, then we will take it after some of the decisions that have gone against us previously."

Manchester City boss Sven Goran Eriksson had no complaints about the outcome and was unhappy with the performance of his side.

He said: "I feel the referee got it completely wrong regarding Birmingham's penalty but before blaming the official, we should blame ourselves very much.

"If we want to talk about European football next season, we can't lose as many balls like we did today. Even when we were under no pressure, we gave the ball away.

"We should have done much better than that. If you concede two goals like we did, you will also never win a game in the Premier League.

"For Birmingham's first goal, we have a throw-in and 10 seconds later they have a man in behind us (Zarate) who scores.

"The second goal was crazy as well. They have a goal kick and three touches later they have scored.

"I thought our penalty was a harsh one and gave us a chance to get back in the game but that chance died when they scored their penalty."

More Football News from TEAMtalk