McCarthy Delighted to Be on Right End of Late Drama
Saturday, 9th Nov 2013 18:26

Town boss Mick McCarthy was delighted to be on the right end of late drama for once after the Blues’ 3-2 victory at Blackpool.

“It’s a reverse of what’s happened to us in a couple of games,” he said. “I’m really pleased having suffered the Barnsley second half where they were excellent and deserved the point, probably deserved to win. I think the same could be said of us today, having had a pretty awful first half.”

At the end of that lacklustre first period, the Town boss brought on Frank Nouble and Paul Taylor, redeployed several other players and moved to 4-3-3. He says different systems have been looked at in training earlier in the week.

“I’ve worked on training on ‘what ifs’,” he explained. “We’d had the three up front and one in behind, have tried two in behind, three up, about three or different shapes on Tuesday.

“And I did it for that reason. Very often when we’re playing 4-4-2 and you take one off and put another one on, it’s still the same shape, you’re not causing them a problem. We’ve worked on it this week and it’s paid dividends.

“They were better than us, I thought [in the first half]. Stephen Dobbie was causing a problem playing in behind, we were trying to look after that and not looking after our own [game].

“There were a number of things but it’s not for me to go into in here. I can cover it by saying we didn’t play well in the first half.”

McCarthy was delighted that Nouble netted his first goal of the campaign and Taylor scored his first for the club 15 months after joining from Peterborough for an initial fee of £1.5 million.

“I was chewing just after half-time,” he admitted. “We should have had one then. Frank had a chance, Murph had a chance, it didn’t look like it was going to be.

“But really good goals. They’re screaming about Frank being offside, but I don’t know. I always say to them, put the ball in the net and then we’ll argue about it. Don’t stop and think about it, put it in the net and if he flags for offside we’ll all come back, if he doesn’t you score.

“We paid a lot of money for Tayls and hopefully that’s him starting to repay it. He looked like a handful and the winner was a great header from Murph. It’s nice to have your strikers scoring, and not Dids!

“It would have been interesting if I’d have had the heart rate monitor on [during injury time] because I think it was above my maximum.

“I thought Hunty’s shot was flying in the top corner. It was a great header from Gary MacKenzie and I think they were all still congratulating him when the corner came in and Murph scored the winner.”

As for New Zealand coach Ricki Herbert’s decision to keep strictly to FIFA’s rules regarding the deadline for Tommy Smith to get to the All Whites’ training camp in LA, McCarthy was sympathetic.

“There’s nothing we can do about it, what’s the point?” he said. “That’s the gig, he has to go, doesn’t play.

“I’ve been an international manager. I would have wanted him. This is qualifying for a World Cup, this isn’t pissing about, it’s qualifying for the World Cup in Brazil.

“He wants his players, he doesn’t want them to play on Saturday, he’s put the rules down. We can’t do anything about it.”

Was he in similar situations when he was Ireland boss? “It has happened but we had plenty of time to prepare.

“If I’d have been planning to go and play in Iran when I qualified for the World Cup [in 2002 via a play-off] I’d have wanted my players there and not playing on the Saturday to give them the best chance. And I don’t blame him, fair play to him. It’s in the rules and we can’t do anything about it.”

Blackpool assistant manager Alex Rae, standing in for Paul Ince, who is serving a stadium ban, was unhappy with the way the Seasiders conceded the third goal and also with one of the officials.

“We’re disappointed, we tend to pride ourselves on our defensive responsibilities and to lose having got back into the game is obviously disappointing,” he said.

“I’ve known Mick for a while and I wasn’t surprised at all that he changed it around at half-time. I think the game switched on the offside decision that the linesman didn’t see.

“With the hindsight of video footage and he’s clearly offside for Ipswich’s first goal, he’s a yard offside.

“It’s disappointing, it gave them a bit of momentum because at that stage we were coping relatively well with what they threw at us.”

Photo: Action Images

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