McCarthy: Previous Games Count for Nothing Friday, 8th May 2015 13:08 Town boss Mick McCarthy believes the Blues’ two defeats to Norwich City during the regular Championship season and other previous results will mean little as the sides go into their two-legged play-off semi-final. The Canaries visit Portman Road for the sell-out first leg on Saturday with the return game at Carrow Road a week later (Sky Sports 1, midday, KO 12.15pm). Norwich, who finished third, eight points ahead of the sixth-placed Blues, won 1-0 in Suffolk back in August, then defeated Town 2-0 on home turf in March. However, aside from their results against the Canaries Town had a good record against the other teams in the top six, drawing twice with Bournemouth, doubling Watford, winning one and losing one against Middlesbrough and recording a win and a draw with Brentford. McCarthy says none of those games will matter when the teams meet in probably the biggest East Anglian derbies ever played. “Past results, past performances don’t really count,” he said. “We lost to Reading twice, it doesn’t matter really, does it? “Wigan came here and drew against us, you could go through the teams that we’ve dropped points to - Huddersfield slapped us up there and where are they? They’re all on their holidays and we’re in the play-offs. “Yes, we’ve had some bad performances, we’ve had some really good ones, we’ve had some poor results, we’ve had some good results. “I thought Norwich deserved to win here in the first game, they played better than us. In the second game, I know it always sounds daft, but the two goals were the difference, the performances weren’t. “I watched it again yesterday and it was a drab, horrible game, only changed by an unbelievably strike from Bradley Johnson and a scramble of a goal, but there was nothing in the game.” Does he expect the play-off matches to be similarly attritional affairs? “Utopia, I’d love it to be a wonderful game of football and we win and go to Wembley. In reality, I don’t give a flying one what sort of a game it is as long as we win. “That’s how it is, and you tell me anybody at Middlesbrough, Brentford, Norwich or Ipswich who is really bothered about anything other than getting to Wembley and winning. Guess what, I’m one of them.” He says his squad has had a relaxed week and that he’ll be proud of his players however the games go: “Everything’s fine, they’re all really relaxed. “I’m very proud of the players, I think that the club and the fans have got a team they can be proud of because of the way they’ve gone about their jobs. That’s kind of expected, but you don’t always get it. “On and off the pitch they’re exemplary, they are role models, which isn’t always the case with footballers, as gets pointed out. We’ve got some great people in the place and they’ve been great. “Whatever happens over the next two, or three, games my pride for them won’t be diminished at all.” Promotion back to the top flight after a 13-year absence would be worth an estimated £120 million to the club, but McCarthy is more concerned by the footballing rather than financial prize on offer. “It’s fairly big, isn’t it?” he said. “Fairly lucrative. If you’re successful as a footballer or as a manager or as a club those prizes come with it. “But it’s the lure of playing in the Premier League or for me managing, coaching back in the Premier League against the best teams against the best coaches which is my prize. “And I think that’s the same for the players. We’ve pulled a dozen or so in here [media room] for a huge game, in the Premier League there might be 30 or 40. “That’s the difference in the leagues and the interest in them, so we’d all like to be plying our trades in the Premier League next year.” He says his players are still physically strong after a tough season and says they remain confident: “I think they’ve had great belief all season long and I don’t see why that should stop now. “They’ve gone out and played well, we’ve got 78 points which is a great total for the Championship, which has been such a tough league. “They’ve been great and generally when we’ve had a bit of a disappointment we’ve played well and won, and we’re hoping that that’ll be the case at the weekend.” He added: “We’re not kids. We haven’t spent a lot but I still think we’ve got good players and good, experienced players. “Tyrone Mings has come in, this is his first full season, but he’s a ‘bloke’, there’s no question about that. “There’s only Teddy Bishop who has come in and is a youngster. Freddie Sears, what’s he, 25? He’s young but he’s had a load of experience of playing. “And Teddy has taken to it so comfortably. He’s such a talented footballer and everywhere else we’ve got good experience.” What did he learn from March’s game against the Canaries at Carrow Road? “That they’re a good team. But I knew that anyway. “I know the players, most of them were playing in the Premier League and they’ve spent a whole load of money on them. “They’ve got good players, Alex Neil quite clearly has got a talent for managing, he did well at Hamilton, and I thought they were going to get promoted automatically, but they just had a couple of bad results. “It just shows you, we can all have them, even the best teams, the best squads. We can all have those iffy performances and iffy results. But we’re all looking for good performances now.” While looking to take a win into the second leg, he believes a draw would be no disaster: “If we don’t get something [to take into the second leg], if it ends up a 0-0 draw, who’s to say what’s going to happen in the next one? We don’t know. We went to Watford and won 1-0, we drew at Bournemouth, drew with them twice. “We’ve had good results and we’ve had good performances, so I’m not going to put all my eggs in one basket and say that we’ve got to get a win here because if I start doing that what chance have we got when we’ve got to go there the following Saturday? “That’s not the case, these games won’t be over until around two o’clock a week on Saturday.” In front of a sell-out crowd just above the 29,000 mark, McCarthy seems likely to stick with Bartosz Bialkowski in goal with skipper Luke Chambers at right-back, Tyrone Mings on the left and Christophe Berra and Tommy Smith at the centre of the defence. In central midfield, Cole Skuse is likely to be behind Teddy Bishop with Jay Tabb on the left and Luke Varney probably coming back into the side on the right having been unavailable against his parent club Blackburn last week. Up front, 27-goal Championship top scorer Daryl Murphy is again set to be partnered by Freddie Sears. Dean Gerken suffered a minor knock in training but is expected to be OK to take a place on the bench, while David McGoldrick, who is back in training after his thigh injury, would appear to have an outside chance of being amongst the subs but may be more likely to be in the 18 at Norwich. Norwich boss Alex Neil says his side will be going out to claim a victory from the Portman Road leg. “We play to win every game, so we’ll be going there looking for the result to give us an advantage going into the next game,” he told the Canaries official site. “We want to go into the second leg having made sure that we did our job in the first leg. We don’t play to draw any match, we’ll be there to win. “I’m confident going into every game. We’ve only lost three of 22, that’s a good record and we need to make sure that we maintain that. “We know exactly how we’re going to go about the game, and in the main we’ve worked really well. It’s just about making sure that you’re fully prepared for the match, you know what’s coming and that you perform on the day.” He says he knows what to expect from the Blues: “The one thing about Ipswich is they do compete, they are aggressive. “Everybody has said we’re favourites but as long as we win, it doesn’t matter what people say. “I think it’s important that we don’t get carried away and that the occasion doesn’t get the better of us. However, we’ve played in a number of games like this, and the boys have over their careers, so we’ll be ready. “I feel there’s been momentum over the last three months. The fans have got behind us and I think the players have performed exceptionally well in the majority of the matches. We’ve got another opportunity now and we certainly don’t want this one to pass us by.” Neil is “hopeful” that full-back Steven Whittaker (hamstring) and midfielder Alex Tettey (knee) will be fit enough to play having missed the last two games, while striker Cameron Jerome has returned to training following a minor knock. Lewis Grabban is suspended for both semi-finals having been red-carded for violent conduct in the penultimate Championship fixture at Rotherham. At Carrow Road in March, a goal in either half from Bradley Johnson and Grabban gave Norwich City a 2-0 victory. Johnson opened the scoring on 24 with a strike off the underside of the bar with Grabban bundling in the second in the 62nd minute. In August at Portman Road Grabban’s first-half goal saw Norwich City to a 1-0 victory. The Canaries striker flicked home a header in the 24th minute after Town keeper Dean Gerken and midfielder Cole Skuse appeared to leave the ball for one another, although replays subsequently showed the striker was offside. Town’s last derby victory was at Portman Road towards the end of Norwich’s 2008/09 Championship relegation season with the Blues winning 3-2 in what proved to be Jim Magilton’s final game as boss. David Mooney put the Canaries in front before Town struck three times via Alan Quinn, Giovani Dos Santos (penalty) and Jon Stead with Sammy Clingan adding a consolation for the visitors towards the end, also from the spot. Current keeper Bartosz Bialkowski was on the bench for the Blues during his earlier loan spell at the club. Historically, Town have the better record in East Anglian derbies, winning 40 (38 in the league), losing 38 (32) and drawing 17 (14). The 5-1 at Portman Road in 2011 is Norwich’s biggest derby victory, while Town have recorded 5-0 wins on three occasions, in 1946, 1977 and 1998. Town will be competing in the play-offs at what’s now Championship level for a record eighth time, 1986/87, each season from 1996/97 to 1999/00, 2003/04 and 2004/05. The Blues have reached the final only once when they beat Barnsley 4-2 at the old Wembley. Norwich by contrast are in the Championship’s end of season lottery for only the second time having lost 4-2 on penalties to Birmingham City at the Millennium Stadium in 2001/02 after the game had ended 0-0 at full-time and 1-1 after extra-time. Blues boss McCarthy has taken part in six play-offs as a manager but has won only once, the 2002 World Cup games against Iran when he was in charge of the Republic of Ireland, with whom he had previously lost to Belgium for a place at the 1998 tournament and Turkey for a spot at Euro 2000. At Championship level he has faced defeat in the semi-finals with Millwall (1993/94), Sunderland (2003/04) and Wolves (2006/07). Norwich boss Alex Neil saw his previous club Hamilton Academical into the SPL via the Scottish Championship play-offs in his first full season as a manager last year, beating Hibs 4-3 on penalties after a 2-2 draw on aggregate. Norwich centre-half Ryan Bennett was an academy schoolboy with the Blues before being released at 16, while academy coach Alan Lee had a brief spell on loan at Carrow Road, he played for the Canaries in the 2009 Portman Road derby. His Playford Road colleague Steve Foley was first-team coach at Norwich before he joined the Blues and came close to returning to Norfolk last summer. Town keeper-coach Malcolm Webster worked with Norwich’s glovesmen earlier in his career. Given the larger than usual attendance, fans are advised to arrive early, while there will be road closures around Portman Road. Saturday’s referee is Select Group and FIFA listed official Anthony Taylor, who has shown a not insignificant 146 yellow cards and nine red in 35 games so far this season. Cheshire-based official Taylor’s most recent Town match was the 1-0 victory over Derby at Portman Road in October 2009 which ended Roy Keane’s Blues’ winless league start to that season at the 15th attempt. Squad from: Bialkowski, Gerken, Kenny, Chambers (c), Hewitt, Mings, Fryers, Smith, Berra, Clarke, Skuse, Bishop, Bru, Ambrose, Chaplow, Varney, Parr, Anderson, Tabb, S Hunt, Murphy, Sears, N Hunt.
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