Birmingham City manager Steve Bruce is looking to the arrival of Spanish midfielder Borja Oubina Melendez to stoke up his misfiring engine room.

The Blues boss left it very late on Friday night to make the 12th and last of his summer signings as Oubina completed a season-long loan from Celta Vigo.

Bruce admitted that, late hour though it was on Friday before the deal was done, Oubina's signing was starting to prove even more timely after he had witnessed Blues' performance in a 2-0 defeat at Middlesbrough 18 hours later.

"Fabrice Muamba and Johan Djourou were terrific at Derby last week," said Bruce. "But you could see how inexperienced they looked this week.

"They're only 19 and 20 and they found it difficult and bringing in Oubina gives us the extra body in there that we were after.

"We knew Borja Oubina was leaving Celta Vigo and thought it was a done deal that he was going to Benfica. They'd got an agreement to sign him for somewhere between £8 million or 10million.

"But we acted swiftly. We'd already done our homework on him, we'd seen him a few times and he'll be a good acquisition.

"He's already played twice for the national team and he'll give us that bit of experience we were missing at Middlesbrough."

The 25-year-old Spanish international, who has the option of making the deal permanent at the end of the season, is signed up now until May 15. Although he has spent his whole career to date at his hometown club in northern Spain, he has admitted that Vigo's relegation from La Liga in May was what tempted him to leave.

"I would have liked Celta to transfer me and not go out on loan, but the club didn't want that," he said. "But I'm happy because I'm going to play in such a powerful and attractive league."

Oubina was Bruce's second signing of deadline day after also deciding to take a chance on Honduras midfielder Wilson Palacios and turn his trial into a short-term contract until January.

Although skipper Damien Johnson is still not right, having once again had to pull out of the Northern Ireland squad with his pre-season hamstring injury, Bruce is hoping for a few more options by the time Blues return from their international break against Bolton Wanderers on Saturday week.

Bruce will spend the next ten days fretting over the fitness of Muamba (England Under-21s), Djourou (Switzerland), Maik Taylor (Northern Ireland), Garry O'Connor (Scotland), Richard Kingson (Ghana) and his Republic of Ireland duo Stephen Kelly and Colin Doyle, who appears to have gone from first-choice to third-choice goalkeeper inside a week. But he is looking to be back nearer full strength by the time Bolton come to St Andrew's.

"We've got one or two more to consider now too," said Bruce. "We've got the Honduras lad [Palacios] to come in and we've got three or four coming back after injury, especially Daniel de Ridder, who we've not had since the the first day of the season.

"I've got eight or nine of them now away for 10 days and that's a problem as really we'd love to play next Saturday and get this one out of our system. But we've just got to dust ourselves off and start again and we'll go about it better against Bolton in two weeks' time, as we know it can't get any worse."