McCarthy Not Expecting Clough Exit Tuesday, 1st Oct 2013 06:01 Mick McCarthy admitted that he wasn’t expecting Derby to sack manager Nigel Clough in the wake of their 1-0 defeat to local rivals Nottingham Forest on Saturday. Steve McClaren has been confirmed as Clough’s successor but will take over on Wednesday with academy manager Darren Wassall in charge for tonight's game against Town. The Blues boss said he was a touch surprised to hear the news: “Slightly. I wasn’t expecting it, that’s for sure, because Nigel’s done a remarkable job there. “There was a lot of cleaning up he had to do from a Premier League team that was with high wages and they players they’d got. “And he’s had to get this squad together, which he’s done, and they’ve had great results away from home. “TC and myself went to watch them against Reading and they lost and they’ve not won any at home. I think they’ve drawn one and lost the rest of them. “To lose to Reading, all right, it’s at home, but they are one of the best sides with one of the best squads and then to lose to Forest, who have spent Brewster’s, I don’t think it’s the end of the world. Then to see that he’d got the sack was strange. You don’t know what goes on, do you?” He says he’ll be in touch with a consoling message: “I do know him, I’ll probably give him a call or send him a text, that’s the usual one you get: ‘Have a rest and get back to the madhouse as soon as you can!’. “I don’t know him that well, I know him through football and I’ve always found him to be a thoroughly decent fella, who keeps himself to himself, is never in the limelight, he’s never putting himself forward. “I certainly think he did a great job at Burton and he’s done a great job at Derby. But listen, they make changes, let them got on with it. “I feel for him because you don’t want people to be out of work. I think he’s done a really good job there, but it’s not my bag. I’ll go and slap them that are still there, make it worse!” McCarthy says he expected Derby to have a decent season: “They have played really good football. When they started off I thought they’d got a really good squad, they looked like they were going places. “It’s the indifferent form, you win away, you lose them all at home. I think they’re only two points behind us. “You’re better off entertaining 22,000 of your own fans at home rather than 2,000 at Brighton or 1,500 at Millwall. “There must be a few squeaky bums in our league if Nigel Clough’s been sacked with 11 points. I think there’ll be one or two checking that nail on the back of the door to see if it’s wobbly!” The Town boss recalls coming up against Clough soon after he became manager at Pride Park: “It would have been five years in January, he took over the year we got promoted at Wolves. “We played them there and, I have to be honest, they murdered us and we beat them 2-1, which was crazy. “What was he, the fourth-longest serving manager? Somebody told me I’m the 50th-longest serving manager. I don’t know who’s done that research but I’m going up the pecking order and, let me tell you, by the end of November I’ll be considerably higher!” Does the sacking of a manager affect players? “I think if they’re glad to see the back of the bloke that’s gone, then yes it does have an effect,” McCarthy says. “It lifts the camp, definitely. But I didn’t see that with Nigel. “I don’t know that much about it, but if you think about the results they’ve had away from home, they beat Millwall 5-1, they beat Brighton away from home, they’re really good results, so quite clearly it’s not a team that looked like they’d stopped playing for their manager. “But, let me tell you, for footballers, and I was one, it’s a case of ‘the king is dead, long live the king’. You’re sad to see him go but when the next one comes in you think ‘I want to be in the team, I want me appearance money and my bonus for winning’.” He says any protests against the decision to sack Clough during the game won’t affect his players: “There’ll be 25,000 there protesting, making a noise and if they score first they’ll be going mental and they’ll be supporting their team and they won’t be bothered about Nigel Clough or anybody else who has been there. “I’m telling you, that’s just what happens. Win the games and it changes completely. That doesn’t affect me, that doesn’t affect the lads." McCarthy believes that expectations can be too high at some clubs in the Championship: “The league’s full of big clubs, that’s a sad fact of life. We’re talking about managers getting the sack, they’ve all got delusions of grandeur, they think they should be in the Premier League. “I think a desire or a want to be there is different to thinking they should be there. And I get that sense here, that they want us to be a success, our fans want us to be in the Premier League, they all know it’s the golden goose, but I don’t get that nonsense from people talking about Bobby Robson’s teams or ex-players and all that, ‘They were the greats…’. “We know they were, but they’re too old to play now, so there’s no point in talking about them. I don’t get that here, whereas I’ve had it at other clubs. Sunderland, Wolves think it’s almost like divine right to be in there because they’re ‘a big club’. And yet we’re a big club, I think we were the fourth best supported in the league on Saturday.” As for Steve McClaren, the man replacing Clough, McCarthy says only time will tell whether the Rams’ board has made the right decision: “We’ll find out in about 15 months because that’s the average tenancy of a Championship manager. “Steve McClaren is an excellent coach, he’s had good results when he was at Middlesbrough, he went out to Holland and won the league there [with FC Twente]. “The irony was that he came back here to Forest and Derby hate Forest and Forest hate Derby. But he’s been there before [as assistant manager], whether he’s a good choice will be determined by results. “I know him, he’s a good guy, he’s a good coach, he’s had success as a manager, but time will tell whether he’s a good choice for them.”
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