McCarthy: Friday Was a One-Off Tuesday, 15th Sep 2015 06:00 Town boss Mick McCarthy says he’s confident that Friday’s 5-1 thrashing at Reading was a one-off and that his team will quickly get over it and get back to their best. “I am because I don’t see that too often,” McCarthy said. “I came on straight away and said I took a big part of the responsibility for that, for the team I set out. We were a bit open. “We should give Reading a bit of credit though, when they broke they were clinical and punished us. “There were goals that we wouldn’t concede normally, crosses in the box - one striker up and beating two of our defenders. “But you know those defenders have been outstanding ever since they’ve come in or ever since I’ve been here in the case of Tommy Smith. They’ve been rock solid, so I don’t see it as a problem, they’ll be back to their best again.” He added: “I think we’re dwelling slightly a bit too much on our deficiencies on Friday as opposed to giving Reading a whole chunk of credit. “I think we should have blocked the cross and I don’t think the header should go in but let me tell you, if we score it we’d be waxing lyrical about the first goal. “The second goal, the break from our attack. If we’d have done it we’d be saying what a great goal it was. I’m looking and saying what bad defending it is. “The third goal was just comic cuts but that does happen because we’re all human beings, we all have failings. “The fourth goal, they break on us again. We looked like we were going to get a shot in at goal but it was a fantastic bit of football by them. “If that’s us [again we’d be saying what a great goal], and the fifth goal just put the tin hat on it and it was like ‘For God’s sake blow your whistle ref because it’s going to end up with even more carnage’. “They played well, they were excellent in what they did. And we just had a bad night. It happens.” McCarthy has more attacking players in his side this season but he says the likes of Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Ryan Fraser do their share defensively. “We’ve certainly got more attack-minded players in the team,” he continued. ”If it’s Ainsley as opposed to Paul Anderson or Ryan Fraser as opposed to Tabby, you’d have to say they’ve got more flair and they’re more attack-minded players. “But they can still do the dirty stuff, tackle back and track back and work and get into shape. “We just got out of shape a little bit [on Friday] and we were punished by a good team. And yet we had enough chances as well to have made it a scoreline that wouldn’t have been so embarrassing.” He says Friday's XI was essentially the same one which had played so well in the opening weeks of the season, impressing both supporters and their manager. “I was quite excited by them, but if you consider how open we were, and I’ve looked at it [again and] we weren’t that wide open," he continued. "We’d got Freddie playing on the right, if it had been Ainsley Maitland-Niles that would have been exactly the same team that we’ve been playing that we’ve been waxing lyrical about. “There were some mistakes made in the game, we didn’t defend particularly well. I’ve always predominantly played 4-4-2 and we’ll be doing the same mostly.” The Town boss has no plans to simply shut-up shop at Leeds and backed his defenders, who he says in some cases were returning from illness and injury. “When I look at Friday night, I don’t look for excuses at the time, I look for reasons," he added. “Chambo had just come back from tonsillitis and before half-time I was going to take him off [and replace him with Jonny Parr] because he’d got a migraine. He came in and had whatever makes him better but he was having a tough time. “Christophe Berra had been out for two weeks with a hamstring and came back, maybe that was me picking them and trusting them just as much. “And they had a tough night. We had a tough night as a back four. But they’ve been brilliant, so I’m not worried about them, not in the slightest.” Just as he didn’t get carried away when Town hit the top in the first month of the season, McCarthy is remaining similarly composed after Friday’s setback. “It’s a matter of being consistent with how you deal with things, how you are when you’re winning and how you are if you’ve lost a couple, how you are with everybody around the place, whether it’s you guys [in the media] or whether it’s the lads in the dressing room or the staff. “It’s the same all the time, try to be even-handed, even-minded. We pick the bones out and work at it but it’s what you end up with in May. I seem to remember saying that for a long time last season and we’ll get back at it and we’ll have defeats again, it’s how you respond to those defeats.” He says there was no change to the weekend plans despite the result: “They were off on Saturday morning because that’s how I’d set it up and I’m not one that’s going to throw my toys out of the pram, ‘Right, you’re all back in!’. “They all spent the day with their families, TC and myself went to watch Leeds, which is important. I can’t do anything about the Reading game, but we were planning for Leeds and we went to watch them. “We were in on Sunday morning and then we did what we had to do then and everybody’s ready for it now.” He says he reacts to results such as Friday’s differently to how he would have done 10 or 15 years ago. “Yes, of course I do. I think I’ve always been pragmatic but I’m even more so now because I know what football can give you and what it can take away from you very quickly, and it does change very quickly. “I’ve had enough jobs now to know that I’ve had success and within three or four months, five months it can be going the other way. “So, take the wins and the defeats all the same way if you can. They always hurt. Wow, that hurt on Friday night, I’m not saying it didn’t. “Did I want to be showing my face in the hotel in Nottingham when I was having my breakfast on Saturday morning? People were looking at me and saying ‘What happened there, Mick?, and I’m going, ‘I don’t know…’ “That hurts but you’ve got to get on with it and try and make sure that you’re reasonable in your assessment of the game because that’s the problem, you can suddenly start throwing your toys out of the pram. I don’t do that any more.” Is he confident his side can quickly move on from Friday? “Absolutely. Have you ever had a bad day in the office? What do you do when you’ve had a bad day? Do you go and cry in a corner, go and get rocking drunk, do you go and do something bonkers? Or do you get back to work and doing what you do? “These have done it time and time and time and time again and we all had a bad day in the office, me included. "I’ve been doing it for 23 years now, this job, I’ve had more successes than I’ve had failures and that’s by being the way I am - getting back to work.”
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