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McCarthy Hails Town Team Spirit
Monday, 3rd Dec 2012 06:00

Town manager Mick McCarthy hailed the team spirit at Portman Road after his side came from a goal down to beat Bolton 2-1 at the Reebok Stadium. The 53-year-old, who was appointed a month ago on Saturday and has led the Blues to four wins since then, admitted that all was not entirely harmonious when he took over at the club.

McCarthy said: “There is a good spirit. I think there was a bit of bitching, a bit of back-biting when I went in, pointing fingers. It was everybody’s fault, not theirs individually because if you’re conceding goals it’s always the defenders and the keeper.

“What about the strikers who should hold it up and the midfielders who should pass it to somebody in a blue shirt? It’s a collective thing. It’s never just one thing.

“I think they’ve bought into that now and there’s none of that finger pointing. We’ve got shot of that. That happens, by the way, that’s nothing to do with Paul Jewell before me, that just happens when a team starts to get beaten.

“You can be the best psychologist in the world and you’re not going to change that until you change the results. The results get the team spirit.”

The win at the Reebok took the Blues to fifth from bottom, five points from the relegation zone having picked up 13 points out of a possible 21 since McCarthy was formally announced as boss on November 1st.

Asked whether he could have wished for better than that in his first month in charge, McCarthy said: “I could have hoped for maximum points!

“It’s funny when you come in and everybody says, ‘What do you hope for? What’s your first month going to get you?’.

“I tell you what, win the first game, that’s all you can do because if you start looking beyond, it just gets daft.

“It’s like if you concentrate on the result, your performance goes. Concentrate on the next game. I know it’s really old clichéd stuff, but if you’re worrying about the end result at the end of the season, you’ll stop playing here. And you have to play here to get the first result, and that’s what we did.

“We’ve just got to keep doing it, because, whilst we’re out of the bottom three and looking down on it, we ain’t safe. We’ve got to keep playing.

"We were crap in the first half, let me just clear that up, so we can’t let that happen, we’ve got to play like we did in the second half.”


Photo: Action Images



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ButchersBrokenNose added 07:01 - Dec 3
Think back to Richie Wellens' comments before Mick took over and the insight that gave us into the attitude in the dressing room. It is a huge achievement that the manager is talking about team spirit less than two months later and, even more importantly, that the performance on the pitch is bearing it out.

I honestly believe that we hit bottom at the end of Paul Jewell's tenure and are now at the end of a years-long period of malaise which started when Joe Royal was sacked. I think Mick will make a couple of quality (long-term) signings in January which will steady the ship for the rest of the season and then start looking towards making an honest push for promotion in 2013/14. I think this is realistic, not mindless optimism, and for the first time in a long while I'm actually looking forward to the future.
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BotesdaleBlue added 07:09 - Dec 3
Excellent down to earth assessment, as we have already come to expect from Mick.

It wasn't long ago, we were five points from safety. Now we are five points clear of the bottom three. This is a significant turnaround (helped by the poor points tally of the bottom four admittedly), but me must now push on and in Mick I believe we have a manager that will help us to do this.

Hopefully his January transfer dealings will set the groundwork to help us progress to safety in this league and take us forward next season. COYB.
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bluelady added 08:02 - Dec 3
You are very kind to Paul jewell! I think players started pointing fingers cause the manager did....
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petermorris added 09:07 - Dec 3
Well put ButchersBrokenNose. We might actually give Villa a game too.... I can't wait.
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itsonlyme added 09:21 - Dec 3
Don't you just love MM's down to earth comments. I must admit, if we had been mid table when he was appointed, he would not have been my first choice, but we needed someone with true grit and he was perfect. I just hope and prey the Republic of Ireland don't come calling at least for a long while yet!
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hadleighboyblue added 09:28 - Dec 3
Just love MM's comments ! he is just what this club needed to turn things round , his man management is superb .

He will get the best out of our players and will bring in the right players when he can .

Chelsea make a bad managerial appointment and we make a great one ........happy days !
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Wickets added 10:28 - Dec 3
He said his name is Mick McCarthy not Merlin the Magician but i think he was wrong!!
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Lennyboy added 11:08 - Dec 3
I haven't felt this positive since Sir Bobby....really. I think MM can take us back to our rightful place in football....the top league..Premier. Once there I think he will keep us there. COYB!!!!!
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Mr_Evans added 14:34 - Dec 3
Lennyboy - although I admire you're optimism, it annoys me when fans say the premier league is our rightful place. Since 1992 when it began how many seasons have we participated? 4? 5? Hell.. Even our yellow belly neighbors from Norfolk have played more premier league seasons than us.
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Gazelle added 16:10 - Dec 3
Chaps admire all the optimism but if you look at the table we've an awful lot to do just to go up half a dozen places . MM says there was a lot of finger pointing but we had some of that on here so lets all do our bit from now on and get behind the team. When that lot up the road were in our position about three years ago they were still getting 25000 at home games, does that say something about us.
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Edmunds5 added 16:38 - Dec 3
Butchersbrokennose

Spot on, to think how inept our previous couple of manager had been and how they had problems with man management and then compare that to Mick who who has only been here two months is remarkable really.and @Gazelle were not all being overly optomistic, the club has been in slums for many years now and things are looking promisisng so we have every right to be so positive, we're still 20th in the league, no ones silly enough to say we can go up this season or even achieve a top 10 finish and why always compare us to other teams even if they are our rivals?, we're in the Championsip, others are in the Premier League we have to accept that not feel so inferior all the time. Seeing that we've come a long way in such a short space of time gives us hope for the future, lets enjoy the fact we're improving and be upbeat instead of instantly looking at negatives.
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BuckieBlue added 19:08 - Dec 3
Agree with the optimists on here. Things are turning round, no reason to think we will start going backwards (losing DJ would be a blow but MM will likely have a replacement in mind alrwady if need be). I appreciate MM's down to earth and straight comments, also the fact he doesn't stick the knife into PJ for how things were when he arrived shows you can be firm but a decent bloke too.
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Lightningboy added 20:36 - Dec 3
The new spirit is down to yourself and Terry Connor,Mick...long may it continue.
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R_LAMB3 added 00:35 - Dec 4
I agree with Mick the team spirit is a lot better now and a few weeks ago most of us were knocking the loan players for not putting a shift in but even they are playing better now.
I think when Mick took over most of the players were not fit and had that dont care attitude and Jewell was in his last year of his contract and had no hope of getting another one and so he was just going through the motions and waiting to be sacked.
How its turned out some of the loan players that Jewell signed have turned out ok now Mick has worked with them and got them fit and changed their attitudes and now it seems all the players are now working harder and want to get in the team as we all saw saturday when the three subs came on and changed the game.
Its all down to fitness and attitudes and to prove what i am saying just look at the loan signing ORR when he looked unfit and rubbish in his first game for town and saturday against Bolton he was man of the match.
I now think some of these loan players might be worth signing now Mick has worked his magic on them.
Going back to the spirit thing its a good job that jewell is not our manager still because we would be rock bottom now and more than likely several points adrift and heading for league one.
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itfc_nik added 12:31 - Dec 4
whats with all this positivity on the messageboard now a days, oooh for the times when fighting between members was the norm.
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