 How Mick McCarthy Accelerated His Own DepartureWritten by HarryfromBath on Sunday, 1st Apr 2018 10:44 HarryFromBath charts how three aspects of Mick McCarthy’s management style may have conspired to play a significant role in his exit from the club. Celebrity adulation has never ceased to fascinate me. On so many occasions working in the book trade I have seen readers walking up to a beloved author with trepidation to get a book signed with the author smiling benignly at a stranger who feels they have a deep connection with them. If this seems rather odd, think of what it must be like for football managers. Replace beloved readers for a thousand or so passionate supporters lacking patience and perspective, many with only a basic and tangential knowledge of playing the game, and you are in an irrational world most of the time. As a Dubliner with a deep admiration for Mick following his 2002 World Cup exploits and with a sad enthusiasm for small tactical details, his arrival at Ipswich in 2012 was delightful. Press conferences were littered with pearls of wisdom and his small tactical adjustments during games were manna from heaven. I was secretly and romantically hoping for a successful cup run and a statue. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three things marked out Mick’s management style. He was intuitively strong at spotting and quickly nullifying opposition threats and dangers, often making switches or substitutions within seconds as he had anticipated an opposing manager's chess moves. The prioritising of the elimination of risk was vital in his early days as a chaotically inherited team needed organising and structure. The concept of control was a strong motif in his world both on and off the pitch. His paternalistic style quickly became apparent, and when I brought my partner to watch our Jonny Williams-inspired win over Derby in 2014, she noted how tactical discipline played an over-arching role in the side’s make-up, with only Williams and Stephen Hunt expressing their personality with any great freedom. The control paradigm stretched into the close collegiate world of his dressing room. I have heard ex-players talk time and again about creating strong bonds of trust on the pitch, and this was pivotal in Mick’s thinking. It was also possible to be excluded from this world. The departures of Michael Chopra and JET were unsurprising and we all nodded knowingly when Cameron Stewart was quietly sidelined. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Little did we realise at the time but it was also possible for fans to be excluded from this close-knit world. The first obvious instances were Mick’s disagreements with supporters after the August 2016 defeat at Brentford and the drawn Norwich game at Portman Road two weeks later. I remember being horrified about the Brentford incident in particular but it was to be the start of a pattern. As other teams overtook us and the football stagnated in the 2016/17 season, there was a growing schism between Mick and an increasing proportion of the fanbase. Every so often there would be an emetic release such as after the humiliation at Lincoln in the FA Cup. The fanbase also grew ever more divided with the manager’s approach becoming as defensive off the pitch as the teams on it. It has to be said that our growing relative weakness on the pitch in the division didn’t help. As we declined in status from promotion hopefuls, the former certainties of being organised and efficient took hold. We reverted to a grim version of the unbalanced team Mick reshaped after his arrival, getting safe and grinding out results. Nullifying opponents became the objective in many games. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick’s growing hostility to the fans was a shock in the 2016/17 season and it established a pattern which really took hold in this campaign, alienating an increasing proportion of the wider and more patient fanbase. Looking back now, I believe his foul-mouthed outburst after our win at Burton in October drove an immovable wedge between him and the supporters and sealed his fate. “Bobby Robson would have turned in his grave if he thought that any Town manager would speak like that.†It wasn’t just middle-of-the-road fans who were confused by now. Loyal diehards such as myself felt that we were getting the Cameron Stewart treatment. The gently inquisitive local press was being treated with defensiveness, suspicion and occasional hostility as the weeks went by. Things came to a head around the Sheffield United and Hull games this month, but the outcome was inevitable in hindsight. In a game which was crying out for an Ian Holloway approach, Mick decided to take the cautious route against the Blades – matching up opponents and stopping them playing – as one poster described it this weekend, trying to mug a 1-0 win built on solid heroic defending. The wins over Watford and Aston Villa will linger long in the memory, but you cannot build a play-off or promotion campaign on these foundations. It felt like Mick had given up on promotion when the supporters had not, and it also felt as if his circling the wagons on the pitch after the Hull defeat was the moment he lost the remaining fans. He didn’t lose the dressing room, but he lost everyone else. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This potential divide between the dressing room and the supporters is a source of profound danger. One of the most telling moments in Thursday’s press conference was Mick’s reflexive “absolutely†when asked if Bart or Jonas might rethink renewing their contracts. In Mick’s thinking, they were in his world and not ours, so why should they be loyal to the club or its supporters? I felt that the other telling and related moment in that conference was when he highlighted the pattern of decline and relegation after he left previous clubs, but this may not be a surprise given how his approach here mirrored his time both at Wolves and Sunderland. I ran my thinking past fans of both clubs and it wasn’t long before they were finishing sentences for me. The arc of Mick’s time here will be repeated at his next club. He is a brilliant football man who will panel-beat a team into shape, get them organised and win the crowd. Once the cold winds of adversity start to blow again, I fear that a fatal combination of a desire to control everything on and off the pitch coupled with the growing exclusion of anyone perceived to be against him is a toxic blend that will always doom him to failure. Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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