Town boss Mick McCarthy says there was no post-match dressing-room finger-pointing or screaming and shouting following last week’s dismal 2-0 home defeat to Nottingham Forest with the Blues manager preferring to take a more measured approach.
McCarthy felt the way the match progressed was shaped by Forest scoring so early on: "They scored after 19 seconds, whatever analysis I’m going to do or anyone else wants to do, we weren’t going into the game full of confidence after the Rotherham game and they scored after 19 seconds.
"The game was skewed, the game was compromised within a minute, [it changed] performances and how it was going to be played.”
McCarthy says he has no problem with players making their thoughts known in a dressing room, although feels sloganeering alone isn’t particularly effective.
"That kind of stuff, ‘Come on, we need to improve’, is a real generic comment which means nothing unless there’s any substance to it or more thought behind that - how do we need to improve?” he added. "
"I don’t know if I could put a session on that could stop a goal after 19 seconds, I thought it would have been impossible actually when the team’s got the kick-off to conceded on 19 seconds.
"Then I saw Tottenham concede after 39 seconds when they’d just scored, so maybe there’s something in the wind at the minute.
"It’s me that does the speaking generally, sometimes there are a few [players who speak], but I’m not into finger-pointing, that’s nonsense because they’ve all made mistakes at some stage, me included.
"Screaming and shouting at people, whether it’s players doing it to players or me doing it, I don’t do it. The only way I would do it is if somebody’s not tried or somebody’s done something completely against what I’ve been asking them to do. Then I might take a few stripes off them.”
McCarthy says incidents from games are analysed in the days following a match, although not usually as a group.
"I don’t do it particularly as a squad, although I did on Monday,” he continued. "I showed them a number of things, it wasn’t just the goals we conceded, it was the fact that we had loads of chances, no, loads of crosses into the box, and at some stage somebody was going to have to get across somebody and score.
"There was a bit of that, how we can better get chances and when we do get chances take them.
"And also the goals, but it’s always the same when you concede a goal, somebody’s made a mistake.
"But that doesn’t mean to say he’s played that badly or it’s all down to him, that one person.
"And I’ve been there because when you make that mistake you know you’ve made a mistake, you don’t need anybody to show it in front of everybody else and embarrass you.
"No matter how you dress it up as constructive criticism or positively, it’s criticism and that’s what they see it as. But they’ve all seen it and the people who were involved in the goal have all seen it.”
McCarthy says players are taken aside and shown particular incidents on their own.
"We pick it out and TC’s very good at showing them and it’s sometimes better coming from the coach as well,” he said.
"It was done by me collectively on Monday, everybody. We didn’t watch all the game, we didn’t have to.
"We then we picked bits out and showed them individually, which is a lot easier and it’s a lot more constructive doing it that way.
"It’s like one of you [the media] getting criticised in front of your office staff. If they do it I think they’re wrong, I think they should pull you in and tell you what’s going wrong.”
He says a manager pointing fingers publicly in that manner is counter-productive and can lead to everyone blaming everyone else in a squad.
"I’m not into pointing fingers because I’ve been in teams when it starts going wrong - the frontmen don’t get good service from the back guys and, well, the midfield players never pass it in there, they just bypass them and actually when it does get up there they never lay it off to the midfield players because the centre forwards aren’t that good.
"And the wingers don’t cross it and the full-backs, they’re not giving it to the winger and the centre-halves, well they’re just shit!
"I wouldn’t have that happen in here, I just don’t have it. But I’ve been in teams where that does happen, and there’s none of that going on.”