McCarthy Delighted to Be Back But Admits to Having a Big Job on His Hands - Ipswich Town News

New boss Mick McCarthy is delighted to be back in management but admits that he had some qualms about taking over at a club which is currently bottom of the Championship. McCarthy, whose appointment on a contract until the summer of 2015 along with his Wolves assistant Terry Connor, was confirmed this morning, was paraded at a Portman Road press conference late this afternoon.

McCarthy said he was pleased to be back in football nine months after be sacked by Wolves: "It’s great. For now! I’ll tell you on Saturday night at five o’clock! It feels good, I’m delighted to be back. It’s a good club, it has a good feel about it.

"I did [have qualms about taking on a team bottom of the Championship]. I would have liked another job in the Premier League, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

"I needed a rest away from it as well. I realised that and then I got this opportunity. It’s a fantastic club with a great fanbase with a terrific history to it.

"What it hasn’t got at the moment is a particularly good team, that’s the bottom line. Paul’s a mate of mine, as is Hutch, I’m certainly not going to be disrespectful to them, they would say the same — if you’re bottom of the league there are problems.”

He admits that he joins Town at a low ebb with thoughts of returning to the top flight a long way from his mind: "Premier League? I’m talking about staying in the Championship for now. I think that the first job is to get them out of the bottom three and stay up, that’s going to be a task in itself.

"Looking at Marcus Evans’s track record, he’s backed every manager he’s worked with and I think if he sees that it’s going in the right way, and it’s being run in the right way, then he’ll back me as well and give me an opportunity to progress.

"But let’s deal with the real issue at hand — we’re bottom of the league, struggling like hell at the minute, let’s try and get them out of that position first.”

He added: "In the short-term we need six points to get out of that. We’ve got two away games, it might take a while to do that.

"We’ll have some good days and we’ll have some bad days but what we’ve got to do is keep focused and confident that we can get out of there in the short-term. And that’s the only way we can push on is by getting out of there.”

He says he was headhunted by Town and admits to more than a sharp intake of breath when he was first contacted: "I didn’t apply for it so obviously yes. I thought ‘Oh shit’ actually to start with when I got the call. I saw where they were and saw they were being beaten."

He admits that the loan situation isn’t ideal: "There’s a problem with loan players I think.

"I do think that is an issue. I hear one of the loan players, Richie Wellens, is saying they don’t care enough. It’s not perfect to have so many loan players but there’s some good talent."

McCarthy says if he senses the same as Wellens, those players won’t be around for long: "If they don’t care, they won’t play, but everybody looks you in the eye and says ‘I really want to play’. Performances tell more than any other words do.

"I’m sad that some of my team now would be casting aspersions against others. But it’s interesting that it’s a loan player that comes in and says it because he’s from outside, a fresh voice, another one that can perhaps see the wood from the trees a little bit. But I hope I don’t see that they don’t care.”

As he prepares for his first game in charge at Birmingham on Saturday the 53-year-old says he’s started to go through recordings of previous games and says some were worse than others: "I don’t know what the root cause [of Town's struggles] is.

"I’ve had a look at a couple of DVDs today. One was horrendous against Sheffield Wednesday, should have watched it on Halloween that one.

"Looking at the Brighton and Derby games, they actually played all right and had chances. It’s bizarre. I’ll get a chance to look at a few more and I’ll see it for myself on Saturday."

Regarding what team he'll play in that game, he is still to make up his mind: "St Andrew’s is a tough place to go and play. A couple of the young ‘uns have impressed me today in training. I’ll see, I’ll have a look tomorrow and make a decision on it.”

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