SITTING PRETTY
Championship king McCarthy on Fulham radar as Ipswich eye up play-off position
MICK McCarthy likes to remind everyone t hat the white initials on his tracksuit don’t stand for Merlin the Magician.
Football folk in East Anglia may beg to differ should McCarthy wave his wand and guide the Ipswich Town buttons brigade to the play-offs today.
No manager has spent less (just €15,000 for left-back Tyrone Mings) for potentially greater reward than McCarthy — the Sky TV deal next season will see the bottom-placed club in the Premier League pocketing at least €136million.
Were the Tractor Boys to continue at full throttle, McCarthy’s deeds would compare with Ipswich icons Alf Ramsey (who won the League) and Bobby Robson (who won the FA Cup).
Like the recently retired AP McCoy, McCarthy has shaped winners out of work-a- day competitors — 27-goal Daryl Murphy is just one example.
For the club’s reclusive owner the play-off end game is the key to a golden ticket. Marcus Evans has ploughed €80m into the club and is believed to be unwilling to stump up the amount which a Premier League overhaul would require.
Were McCarthy to deliver, Evans could recoup much of his investment from the huge TV pay- off next season, even if Ipswich finish paddy last.
Rarely has any manager walked out on a club he has taken to the Promised Land but there are no cast-iron guarantees McCarthy would remain at Portman Road should he oversee a third promotion, even though he is under contract until 2017.
A decade ago, McCarthy steered the Sunderland chariot to the Premier League as champions, found it had little petrol, and was sacked the following season with the club in a hopeless position.
At Wolves, where a modest amount of funds were made avail- able after going up in 2009, McCarthy was adamant he would have kept the club in the top division for a third straight season when the axe fell.
Would McCarthy risk getting shot down like a burning Spitfire for a third time? Those close to him suggest it’s not a scenario he would welcome.
Even so, at 55, McCarthy has acknowledged he is running out of time to manage for a sustained period in the top flight of British football.
‘I don’t think I’d get a Premier League job now,’ he acknowledged recently. ‘Why? I was out eight months when I lost the job at Wolves and there wasn’t a sniff of a chance really, which I found quite sad.
‘I had to take a club at the bottom of the Championship. I had nothing else offered. It disappoints me and surprises me a bit.
‘I just think I lost the giltedged o pportunity to become a bit more of a recognised Premier League manager by not staying up for a third year with Wolves.
‘I think my CV would be a lot different, but they sacked me before I got the chance to do it.’
FOR all his Barnsley bluntness, and mean line in self- deprecation, McCarthy knows his own value and believes his track record is worthy of employment at a higher level.
He has become a little weary of his reputation as a firefighter, someone who comes, douses the flames and patches things up with a Band Aid.
McCarthy would l ove a project with the potential to offer a continuous, and competitive, involvement in the Premier League – he may get one at Fulham.
The h o mel y London c l ub lost their 13season top flight status a year ago and were in peril of a second successive relega- tion until pulling clear in the last month. Now on their sixth manager since 2010, the club are understood to have identified McCarthy as a manager who can provide stability and plot a route back to the Premier League. The financial clout of mega-rich owner Shahid Khan means Fulham can offer him a lucrative deal – a €10m four-year contract has been suggested – as well as provide funding for a promotion challenge, and beyond. The package is bound to appeal to McCarthy, not least because he wouldn’t have to travel far from his h o me in Bromley, Essex, to work.
In one way, it may suit McCarthy if Ipswich run out of puff in the play-offs as he could argue he has taken them as far as possible and jumping ship to Fulham would become that bit easier.
To stick at Ipswich, or twist to Fulham, that is the dilemma for McCarthy as summer beckons, when he can take to his bike on the Broads, and give his future some clear-headed thought.
IN 23 years in management, McCarthy has come a long way, and learnt a lot. He was hugely tested in his early days as Ireland manager when he dabbled with a 3-5-2 system which wasn’t to everyone’s liking in the dressing room.
As he picked his way through the minefield, he stuck to the principles shaped by cleaning boots, and toilets, as a Barnsley apprentice: graft hard and keep the spirits up.
After Ireland internationals, he would ring members of the backroom staff, irrespective of the result, and thank them for their help.
For those games, while he did his homework on opponents, he wasn’t overly hung on up on detail; he preferred to keep things uncomplicated and build up the strengths of his own players instead.
‘I always say I love players that work hard and epitomise me; that put a shift in,’ he said.
The Ireland job will always hold appeal and McCarthy was privately piqued when by-passed in favour of Martin O’Neill after Giovanni Trapattoni departed in September 2013.
With O’Neill under mounting pressure to deliver a win against Scotland on June 13, McCarthy’s name is certain to figure on any FAI list in the succession stakes, should it come to that.
Some 25 years after he led Ireland out against Italy in the World Cup quarter-finals, the Barnsley boy with the ‘rough edges’ continues on a smooth career path.
To stick at Ipswich or twist for Fulham is the dilemma