McCarthy Delighted to See Tabb Score But Wants More Midfield Goals
Friday, 20th Mar 2015 06:00

Boss Mick McCarthy was delighted to see Jay Tabb score his second goal of the season in Tuesday’s 1-0 home victory over Bolton but admits that his midfielders need to net more regularly.

Tabb is the only Town player to have scored more than once from midfield this season with Luke Hyam, Teddy Bishop, Kevin Bru, Paul Anderson and Darren Ambrose each having found the net once and Jonny Parr having grabbed one of his two for the season while on as a sub in midfield at Millwall.

Cole Skuse, who hit the post against the Trotters, Stephen Hunt and Richard Chaplow are amongst the midfielder still to open their accounts for the Blues.

“I’ve been saying all season that we should get more goals from midfield and they certainly don’t disagree with that,” McCarthy said. “They try to get them.

“There are some midfielders that get them, there are others [that don’t]. I look at Derby and I think about their midfield last year and the goals they got.

“They’ve got one striker, they’ve got midfield players who can run from there and they can get forward a bit more.

“We’re playing 4-4-2, but they still should score more goals and it was great to see Tabby getting his goal.

“He’d been put on his backside twice just before. He challenged for two headers, he flicked one of them on and the guy put him on his face.

“But he got up, wasn’t whinging at the ref and, like I said on Tuesday, it was a pure strike! He shanked it into the bottom corner. But, who cares? It was the winner.”

He says winning the game was more important than the performance: “That’s always the case. If we’ve lost, you’ve got to analyse it and look for the positives in it and if we’ve played well, I’ll say we’ve played well.

“If we’ve been hopeless I’m the first one to say it as well. It’s always about results, it’s always about getting points.”

McCarthy moved to 4-3-3 against Bolton and says he could use the system again, having made the half-time switch in part to negate the threat posed by Bolton midfielder Rochinha but also to add to Town’s attacking threat.

“It was a bit of both because suddenly they’ve got three centre-backs who have got to play against three strikers and you can force them to put their wing-backs back,” he said.

“And I had to take care of Rochinha and we did. It stopped the supply to him and, whilst we weren’t completely dominant in the second half, I thought we were the better team.

“They didn’t really have anything in the second half, not like they did in the first. It depends, it’s a consideration [for the future].”

He remembers the system working well earlier in the season, most notably at Wigan: “That was one of the best performances that we’ve had. Of course, they changed their formation before the game, they didn’t play the way we were thinking they would but it suited us anyway, thankfully.”

Despite his lack of goals McCarthy has been pleased with Skuse, who he thought was one of Town’s best performers on Tuesday.

“I think Skusey’s been outstanding all season,” he added. “He allows the others to play and he mops up after other people’s errors, he’s just terrific.

“His was a really excellent performance on Tuesday in a really mediocre game, I might add.

“It was good [to watch] because it was wide open and there were lots of chances, but I reckon we both had about 20 per cent of the ball and for 60 per cent it was in the ether or in the air or out or between us both and nobody had it. Not great quality but the three points were.”

Photo: Action Images

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ZurichBlue added 06:29 - Mar 20

Skuse "Outstanding all season" - really? He's been mediocre at best with some decent games mixed in with some very poor ones. I've seen him live a few times this season when home and I've seen almost every game live on TV and for me he's a very average player that would not get into any other team in the top half of the Championship. When he's on top of his game doing the job he's in there to do he gives an 8/10 performance, not inspiring but solid and doing a good mopping up job, but when he's not on top of his game he's a 5/10 drifting around not contributing a great deal. I actually feel that Tabb could do a better job in that position and he has considerably more energy, he presses opposition, he can get off the ground to head the ball (unlike Skuse), he's a 'slightly' better passer, he looks for the ball more than Skuse does and there's a modicum of a goal threat from him. He's just not that good as a left midfielder! Bottom line; Skuse has not been "outstanding all season" - well, not in my opinion but others may agree with MM, who after all knows far more than me as a football manager.

Keaneish added 06:53 - Mar 20 Well stop by passing the midfield then! Its not a difficult equation to solve.
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hogster1970 added 08:07 - Mar 20

I was there Tuesday night and Scuse was poor in the first half but was good in the second. That's the trouble with him you never get a full 90 mins of good out of him. He very rarely makes the challenge comes out with the ball and do a simple pass which is his main job. He intercepts a pass or players pass to him. If he goes for a challenge he does at times hash it up. And I agree if we play through the midfield more then they will score more goals. It's quiet simple MM. We done that at times on Tuesday and looked good doing it. To me poor bishop was our best player first half . But onwards and hopefully upwards. Just need a point tomorrow. Me and my daughter are going some come.on boys give us something to cheer about and if we do loose at least go down all guns blazing and not just sink with a trace please

bluefeast added 08:31 - Mar 20 Skuse was outstanding against Boro.
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Smithy added 09:24 - Mar 20

Skuse started the season well, had a terrible dip in form mid season and recently has been our best player. Thought he had a great game on Tuesday, he wass outstanding against Birmingham a few weeks ago. Add a few goals to his game and he could be a really key player, very unlucky not to score against Bolton.

Look classy in possesion but I do feel sometime we don't have the runner around him for him to pick a pass hence why he sometimes has to just play it simple.

BackTheBlues added 10:01 - Mar 20

Skuse is so underrated - it makes me laugh all the technical brilliance of the fans we have with all their knowledge of the game don't actually understand what he does for the tean - much like underestimating how much we have missed Hyam!
They both do the dirty side, Hyam with a little more forward play - they take bookings, screen our centre backs and make the easy 5 yard pass to a player out of danger!
It's an unglorified job!