Boss Mick McCarthy wasn’t too downcast not to have won the Manager of the Month award for December. The Blues boss was nominated alongside Birmingham’s Lee Clark, Nottingham Forest’s Billy Davies and Derby’s Steve McClaren, who won the gong.
"I would like to have won six on the bounce and to have won the Manager of the Month,” McCarthy admitted. "I didn’t deserve to win Manager of the Month because Steve McClaren deserved it. But if I’d won six on the bounce and drawn one, I’d be thrilled to be picking it up.”
Nevertheless, he says it’s nice to receive a nomination: "It’s recognition. I heard Steve use the cliché we all come out with that it should be the Team of the Month, but the manager gets it because that’s what they’re sponsoring, the Manager of the Month.
"And all’s said and done he gets the Chump of the Month if they get in the bottom three, so they might has well give him the Manager of the Month as recognition for it.
"December was our best month, TC puts all the scores down, marks the players and I have a look. It’s probably our best month for the team average of how we’ve played. That stacks up really nicely.”
McCarthy’s only previous Manager of the Month nomination while at Town came exactly a year earlier in December 2012, which he says is easily explained: "It’s because I’m dressed as Santa!”