Town boss Mick McCarthy says he refused to be “blackmailed” into selling left-back Tyrone Mings to Crystal Palace on deadline day. McCarthy, speaking at last night’s Supporters Club AGM, revealed that the Eagles threatened to end the Blues’ hopes of re-signing Jonny Williams on loan.
McCarthy, who was joined at the AGM by his assistant Terry Connor for a question and answer session chaired by Simon Milton, was quizzed on who had the final say on transfers at Town and cited the situation with Mings as an example.
"Marcus rang me and said that they’d bid £3.5 million, and I said no,” he said. "We sat and had a chat about it and said ‘What are we going to do with that? Where are we going to get a left-back from on deadline day at 11 o’clock at night anyway?’.
"He said ‘Just think about it and I’ll ring you back in 10 minutes’. He rang me back and I said ‘No’. He said ‘That makes the discussion easy then, doesn't it?’.
"It was all based on them not letting us have Jonny Williams if we didn’t sell [Tyrone]. And excuse my language, I said ‘Bollocks to it, I’m not being blackmailed into [it].
"‘If they want to let Jonny Williams, who helped us but we helped him and he had a great time, and he’s enjoying it now… if that can’t just be a mutually beneficial deal separately, then forget it, tell them to get lost’. And that’s what he did.
"And aren’t we delighted because he looks worth every bit of that and even more. So it was my decision and that’s when I appreciate the support.”
Regarding David McGoldrick’s proposed move to to Leicester, he said there would have come a point where a deal might have been done.
"With Didz, Marcus was saying no, he wasn’t having any of it at £7 million. If it got up to what they were talking about, £8 million or £9 million, what I didn’t want to do was to keep a player that we would lose emotionally. I didn’t want to do that.
"There would have come a point when we would have had to have said yes for Didzy and I think we were getting to that point because that was fair, that was reasonable.
"[We got him for] nothing and we were looking at £7 million or £8 million and it was Leicester that pulled out in the end. I spoke to their chief executive Terry Robinson and they weren't having it in the end.
"They thought they’d spend enough on Leonardo Ulloa and they’d got Chris Wood, David Nugent and Jamie Vardy so it looked like a deal that wasn’t going to happen.”
He added: "There’s a misconception about support. Everybody thinks support is throwing money at it.
"Marcus has thrown money at it and it’s gone belly up. He threw loads of money at it, a right chunk of money, he’s got his leg in for £80-odd million and it’s certainly not come in in the last two years.
"That doesn’t bother me because we quite enjoy doing it the way we do it. And you can make a mess with money, you know. You can overpay people and buy them too excessively.
"I see support as when a £7.5 million bid - or whatever it was if you read the papers - comes in for David McGoldrick and I’m saying no while it was going up and up.”
Asked about his targets for January, the Blues boss quipped: "Anybody that doesn’t cost anything and doesn’t want paying a lot!
"And we’re pretty good at that, to be fair. We’ve done all right, haven’t we? Spending 10 grand on Tyrone Mings. There are a lot of others who have spent a lot more money than we have.
"I understand that and TC understands because we sit and chat every day about it. We’re always out looking at players.
"Let’s see if we can get ourselves into the position we were a couple of weeks ago, in that top six and looking comfortable in January ,and I think I’ll be going and asking the question, [saying] that we do need a little bit of help, we do need strengthening.”
McCarthy was applauded by the 75 fans present for the job he has done over the last couple of years during an entertaining half hour in which he was also quizzed on how he gets on with international managers when his players receive calls.
"My relationship with them is good,” he said. "The relationship with the managers is fine. Some of the assistants, it’s not so good!”
After McCarthy and Connor, managing director Ian Milne and off-field staff Sally Webb (club secretary and supporters liaison officer), Mark Andrews (financial director), Lee Hyde (retail and ticketing), Neil Hawes (marketing), Steve Pearce (media) and Jade Cole (PR manager) took questions from the floor for around an hour and a half on a wide variety of subjects from Financial Fair Play to ticketing to the availability of Aspall’s in the club bars.
Russell Claydon of the Suffolk Free Press live-blogged both question and answer sessions on Twitter here.
Milne felt it was a very useful exercise: "I thoroughly enjoyed the debate, people are very honest.
"We’ve got to get over [to them] the issues and the financial side of the club, how successful we are and they got over some very personal points that they feel are important and we have to take them seriously.
"Fans are very emotional and passionate and that’s what we want. We want people to be involved but also to understand what we’re trying to achieve at the same time.”
Earlier in the evening, the formal business of the meeting saw Elizabeth Edwards returned as the chair of the Supporters Club with Steve Doe continuing as treasurer and Irene Davey taking over as secretary from Rita McKenzie, who remains a committee member, along with Martin Swallow, Paul Voller and Nigel Cole.