Boss Mick McCarthy said his players’ effort and industry is never in question but sometimes you need more than that in order to win a Championship game.

“There’ll never be anything in it in terms of effort and endeavour and work-rate and belief and having a go, and that will get you results,” he said after Saturday’s 3-1 home defeat to Wigan.

“But at times you need to have that extra touch of quality, a bit of finesse, something that can win you a game when it’s tight because I thought we’d given as good as we got, certainly in the first half.”

He added: “We will keep on scrapping to get in that top six and who knows? They’re a good side and when we’ve contributed to the opportunities, they’ve managed to score.

“In the second half we needed it to stay at 2-1. Who knows, we may well have got something, but we gifted them a goal.”

Meanwhile, Leeds, Blackburn and Huddersfield are reported to have joined Town in keeping tabs on midfielder Kenny McLean, whose St Mirren contract is up at the end of the season.

McCarthy recently watched the 22-year-old, who was previously linked with Town in January 2013 and last summer, in action for the Scotland U21s.

If McLean, who is also believed to be interesting Rangers, were to move to England in the summer the Buddies would be due around £350,000 in compensation.

Photo: Action Images

hogster1970 added 06:48 - Mar 17 no sh@t sherlock, well we have a few players with unforchantly you never seem to play them, in the likes of taylor ect, im sure with taylor aswell as williams on sat we would have had a better chance agaisnt wigan, 3 massive games coming up, so we will see how that goes, i think with the right team selection from the off we may have a half a chance against them
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Keaneish added 07:46 - Mar 17 Like attacking ambition?
6

northstand78 added 08:16 - Mar 17 Jeez..even we know that mick..i think the play offs have long gone so why not recall Marriott and the others and give the kids a go..the least it would be is refreshing..the worst it could be is what we have already..
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Flewitt85 added 08:29 - Mar 17 Same s**t different day! These interviews are getting boring! *we can still make the play offs *the who knows *the must wins games sorry but I think we should be looking forward to next season, not the play offs.
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brittaniaman added 08:38 - Mar 17 Nothing wrong with the work rate MM, It is just the pace and skill we are missing to take us forward ??? By the way MM. What is your Grievance with Taylor ??? come out in the open about it instead of certain rumours that keep floating around !!!!!!!
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roytheboy added 08:56 - Mar 17 Work rate was impressive agreed, pace and skill required up front, Taylor to start please.
4

pazelle added 09:23 - Mar 17 Play Tayls
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carsey added 10:15 - Mar 17 Get all the players we have on loan back and play them. Send all the loan players we have back - if they aren't good enough for their own clubs why would they be good enough for us. Play our own players and give them some real match time. We will then know if they are good enough to get us out of this division next season and if not we can off load them. MM & TC did a great job last year keeping us up for which I am grateful but that is now history. Since then nothing has changed and we haven't improved. Please Mick be a little adventurous since the play offs are now way beyond us lets start planning for next season. If you're straight with the fans and tell them this is what you are doing I believe they will back you and the team whatever the results.

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ArnieM added 10:52 - Mar 17 Too true Mick. The effort had never bern in doubt. But that element of quality in midfield to unlovk defences or put in s forward pass most certainly has. However all said and done due to yours sndxTC work we have spent the majority of this season vourting pksy offs and not a relegation oog fight. Thank you for your monumental efforts on bugger all funds. Next sesson will be ours!

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blueherts added 11:22 - Mar 17 ArnieM - yes good point that it does make a change to be 'challenging at the right end of the table' We did well to get into sixth place but having seen all the teams above and around us this season , at present , we have a side that sits in about the right place in the division A pretty decent 'goal scoring defensive unit' ( shame we cant add the goal scoring to our midfield - Skuse , Hyam , Tabb etc etc seem to be incapable to finding the net . And without our one class act up front 'Dids' we are pretty toothless in that area . I know for the sake of the owners MM and players have to spout on about the play offs but if MM was really serious he would actually send out a team to win a game , and not go out 'not to lose' . There is a big difference and the amount of games we have taken a lead - against good teams - but just looked incapable of holding on The Derby nightmare was probably the worst - we just cannot kill teams off We have some of the pieces in place but for next season we really need to look at our lack of ability in killing teams off . That has become a major problem

3

Lightningboy added 11:30 - Mar 17 Huge game next saturday,nothing less than a win and it's bye bye play-offs. I think our last 10 games sum up where we are at the moment..4 wins,3 defeats,3 draws..15 points from 30.
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broadside added 11:32 - Mar 17 Six points off the play offs and thirty points yet to play for. I wonder why some people want to throw in the towel already. We can still be contenders and there is always a team that makes a late run into the top six. We have come a long way since last season. There's more to come and I think we can be just a tad more positive.
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brendenward35 added 11:39 - Mar 17 Let's be very honest here everyone saying next season we'll be in the play-off or automatic promotion? Do you really think this club has the ambition to succeed taking into account the money Mick has had this season to spend on players? First time in ages we have had a decent manager and good coach and like monkeys been given peanuts to spend. You reap what you sow in this league and it's going to get harder and harder with the fair play restraints to get out of this league especially with the crowds dropping and it's looking bad for season ticket renewals. I live 300 miles away and just cannot get to games so season ticket is out of my league but if many of you fail to renew your season tickets then the club are going to be in even more trouble next year. 30 million to 80 million owing to Marcus doesn't look good on paper this club is in real big trouble sooner or later things are going to go bang and god knows what's going to happen. We can all hope and pray but just cannot see promotion this, next or many seasons after because we'll never have a big enough or good enough squad of players.

3

Help added 12:13 - Mar 17 So If I may, the sort of players MM likes are the sort of players he is saying are doing the hard work bit, but not the extra skill bit. So if we had some players like that (skill) in the team, and got the balance of hard work/ effort and skill we might do better. Then buy and play those that have those qualities. I feel MM you may just be pointing out your own failures as a manager more then anything else. Unless of course you are saying there are those that have the skill and are not using it?

2

Jimmy86 added 13:30 - Mar 17 Work rate and effort has never been in question, reason being we are top heavy with grafters and work horses, more suffolk punch than race horse thorough bread if you like and this is purely because this is the sort of player mick wants, hence why taylor and wordsworth haven't had a look in this season. Also been looking at clips of mclean on youtube and he has scored some corkers. Would be a good signing if we pulled that off

3

GerkensBeard added 13:41 - Mar 17 Yep well spotted mick which has been obvious all season, but just effort doesn't win you games. Look at the game on sat. Wigan worked hard as a team but ultimately it was a player like Jordi Gomez who started every attacking move and delivered an excellent free kick for their second. Then you look at our team, if your foundations are built on working hard then why is Paul Taylor not playing week in week out? When he's played he's been the hardest working player on the pitch but MM has always got onto him about it. If him not working hard wasn't getting him in the team then why was David McGoldrick starting week in week out? In our team earlier in the season he was the least hard working player. He was our best and most creative player and Paul Taylor is now. MM clearly has a personal feud with him so he finds any excuse even if its not true to not play him. He will be sold in the summer and I fear on the cheap. So instead of playing people who "won't do the dirty work" who can actually win the game for you, he'll play people like Paul Green who works hard but lost us the game on Saturday due to his lack of ability. That baffles me

8

theobald1985 added 15:07 - Mar 17 attack team and score goals that will win you games keep lumping the ball up in hope and lose possession and we will go no where which is exactly where this big goon is taking us-its football but not as we know it.
2

ArnieM added 16:00 - Mar 17 Thats being a bit smplistic though isn't it.
0

theobald1985 added 16:02 - Mar 17 simple game at the end of the day
1

J4ck22 added 16:40 - Mar 17 Taylor isn't even that good.
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sereneblue added 17:41 - Mar 17 A manager with attacking ambitions would be a start.
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Blue041273 added 18:54 - Mar 17 While I can understand everyone's frustrations I think we have to be realistic and accept that with the set of players we have on the books we are not going to make much further progress. To be fair, MM's brief was to keep us in this league and that has been comfortably achieved. But you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and the squad put together to avoid relegation won't become promotion contenders overnight. I really wonder how many of the contributors on here actually see the games. Those of us that have understand that it is the MM work ethic that has got us to where we are. Of course we all want to push on now but as MM has hinted, we need more than pure energy to do that. Flair players are in demand all across this league but are in short supply. It's all very well pointing out Gomez but he is essentially Premier League class and players of his ilk are out of our range. To really mount a promotion push we still need a major overhaul of the squad. Tinkering by bringing the odd loanee in won't hack it. Thus IMO we need to decide if promotion with the core of the current squad is achieveable and fund the promotion push accordingly by adding the 2 or 3 additional players needed. If the price is too high then the patient long term view will need to be accepted by all of us.

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blueboy1981 added 19:26 - Mar 17 Blue041273 ........ not disagreeing with your post - but as 'sereneblue' has rightly said, some attacking ambition would now be most welcome - within our current team / squad. For example :- instead of setting out, at home in particular, to couteract the oposition with an identical plan - let's have a go at teams and let them worry about us for once. We have 'some' attacking potential / options within the squad - let's at least use it to see what we are perhaps capable of. We may be surprised - who knows ? - because it never happens !!! This was all too evident against Wigan in so failing - and as expected, I guess - we lost and never really looked like coming out on top to be fair.

2

muccletonjoe added 19:41 - Mar 17 roll on the summer and we can wave a very welcome farewell to mr Taylor and the posts on here referring to him as some sort of messiah who is kept from setting the championship by a manager , who unlike his 23 other contemporaries does not want to win games . If he was any good , don't you think he might at least have got close to scoring a goal by now,????
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theobald1985 added 19:53 - Mar 17 taylor is a flair player in a similar vein to JET who would thrive playing in a 4231 in a role behind the front man-JET is now playing that role for bristol and guess what hes banging them in. mcarthy favours defending playing long ball with no flair. i see the games-its terrible embarrassing and the excuses people make for it are worse. all this with the players we have we cant play properly nonsense-do we really think thses lads cant actually play-rubbish-swansea got up playing good football with no real superstars -holloway got blackpool up on a shoestring playing gung ho stuff. under mcarthy its not so much cant play as wont play.

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