McCarthy Targeting Top Six Ahead of Season Opener Against Birmingham Friday, 4th Aug 2017 18:16 Boss Mick McCarthy says finishing in the top six will again be the Blues target for 2017/18 but admits the Championship gets tougher with every season which passes. Town get their campaign under way against Birmingham City at Portman Road on Saturday afternoon. Asked whether finishing in the play-offs is a realistic prospect at his pre-match press conference, which was shown live on TWTV, earlier this afternoon McCarthy said: “That top six is what we’ll be aiming for and we don’t know until we start. “You’ll all go through all the teams, you’ll all be sat in here talking about who’s spent money, Bristol City brought in a £5 million striker [Famara Diedhiou], all the ones Sheffield Wednesday have got, Derby. “I don’t know whether they’ve spent much money this year but they spent £25 million or something last year and they’ve still got their squads. “For all intents and purposes, it looks like we’ve got no chance to be in the top six but that was pretty much the thought when we finished in the top six [in 2014/15], I don’t think anybody gave us a chance then. “Or even when we finished seventh [the following year], I don’t think anybody gave us a chance to be even near the top six. “So, I kind of like the odds, me. It doesn’t bother me that people write us off. All I do know is that it doesn’t matter, we’ll have to play better than we did last year, we’ll have to play better football than we did last year and we’ll have to be just all-round better than we were or we’ve no chance of getting in the top six. “You ask me what’s my aim, what’s my ambition. That’s my aim and my ambition, without trying to be funny about it, is for us to play good football, play better and get better results. “And certainly at home it was a bit of a fortress here, to coin a phrase, but it wasn’t last year, somebody had put the drawbridge down last year.” McCarthy agreed that reaching the top six is a bigger ask as every season passes given the money now being spent in the Championship.
“I’m pleased you realise that,” he added. “It is getting harder and harder. Everybody now will want to emulate Huddersfield, of course. “And I’ve said before, congratulations, they did brilliant, it was a great achievement, but they did buy some players. They knew the market, the German market, they got some good players, but I don’t think he got them that cheaply, although they might not have given big wages. “It used to be Charlton when they got in the Premier League, everybody was trying to emulate them. I’d like to emulate them again actually from last week if I could because they were very good [in the 6-1 friendly victory over Town]. “It is getting harder and harder, of course it is. But we all understand that, it makes the challenge all the greater and I always think the bigger the challenge, the bigger the scrap and be up for it, have a go. “Huddersfield are the model to follow and everybody will be trying it. I don’t know who is going to succeed in doing it. It was a really great achievement by David Wagner and everybody at Huddersfield. And they deserve the pat on the back and the congratulations.” Given last season’s 16th-place finish and fans’ ongoing frustrations with his management, does he feel under more pressure that usual going into the new season? “No, not at all,” McCarthy insisted. “We had a really poor season by our standards, by my standards last year, since I’ve been here. “The football wasn’t great, it was a means to an end and I’ve said previously that from Christmas on we were in a relegation scrap. We had to go to Burton and play well and get a great result and beat Newcastle here. “And so there was a bad taste in everybody’s mouth, I didn’t enjoy it, but what I would say to everybody is that it’s a start again for the club and for the season, and just come and support and if we don’t win and we play badly then I’ll take what comes. But under more pressure? Not at all.” Is Saturday’s match one the Blues can’t afford to lose? “You know my stock answer to that, don’t you? If we lose that and then we go and win five on the bounce it doesn’t really matter. “But the aftermath, the fallout from that, me walking down the track if we lost, I would imagine I’ll be getting a fair bit of abuse and the boos and the number one song would come out again, ‘Mick McCarthy, your football is shite’, number two ‘You’re ruining our club’ and number three, whatever else it is I can’t remember now. “So that will all come out but if you think I’m worried about that before I go out then you’ve got me completely wrong. They’re products of losing or playing badly. It would then be tagged on to last season. “My view is let’s go out and beat them and win and let’s all walk off to a happy crowd. And that’s what I hope we do. If we don’t, there’s not a great deal I can do about it, I’ll have done my best.” McCarthy says he and his team need the crowd on their side: “Of course we do, and we strive to get them onside. We go back to the Newcastle game here when we played terrific and we were all over Newcastle, that was a great day. “A great result, a great performance and that’s what we need to produce and that’s what we’ll be trying to produce.” Having vowed to play more attractive football this season, he says he’ll stick to his guns even if things don’t initially go to plan: “I don’t think I’ve ever been short of courage in my convictions, do you?” The Town boss is in his 26th year as a manager and he says he still gets the same buzz: “Yes, I do. I was really thrilled this morning. We’ve got all the ‘D-days’. D-day one I tell the players the team, I’ve done that today. And D-day two is when we start. “It was great the fact that everything has been got out the way, I’ve told them the team, we can prepare for a game. “We’ve all been friends for the last five weeks, it’s all been nicey-nicey, and, of course, as soon as you tell them the team you don't know how they're going to react. “But I did stress to them that we’ve got six/seven games this month and I think, as I’ve just said, that the 18/20 outfield players should all be able to play in their respective positions and should be able to compete, so if I wanted to leave somebody out and put somebody else in, I’d be getting the equal to that. “That’s got to be their target, so if it’s a right-back they’ve got to be the same as the other right-back. If it’s a centre-back, they’ve got to be the same so I could leave somebody out, give them a rest - Chambo played 46 games last year, that is unusual - but what I would like is the same quality if somebody was injured or knackered and I had to leave them out.” He’s pleased to have competition for places, despite a comparatively small squad: “I like that, it’s when I haven’t got competition for places and I say ‘I can only play him up front or them two up front or I’ve only got that midfield’. “It’s better having competition for places and I don’t think I’ll have total competition for places until Emyr Huws and Tom Adeyemi are back, Didzy’s played, Bersant Celina’s played some football. But it’s nice to have competition. “For example, Jonas Knudsen and Myles Kenlock, either of them could play at right-back, which is great.” He added: “It’s a tight-knit squad, which can be a good thing, providing the 20 players are capable of playing in the team and they’re all solid Championship players and pretty much they are, except for Dozzer, who has only played a bit, Tristan Nydam, Flynn Downes.
"But I have to tell you I'd have no hesitation in playing any of them. They’ve been great, they compete really well. And that’s lovely that, to get some young, fresh blood in the squad. “And yes, what did we lose, 14 players? And have only got four in? I go away and I see the away programme where we’ve got 40-odd names on it. I go ‘Hold on a minute!’. “People say to me ‘How come you’ve got 40 players?’ and I say I haven’t, go through the team. We’ve got 40 players but I’m only using 18 of them, I think we used fewer than anybody last year. Probably pretty much every year, there’s a stat somebody can look up and come back and tell me I’m wrong. “We don’t use that many players, but because of squad numbers and because of cup games we end up with 40 pros. It’s nonsense, we haven’t got that many, we’ve always been a tight-knit squad, a bit more so this year.” The Blues go into the season with some pundits tipping them for the drop, while the bookmakers also have them among the favourites for relegation. “Who are the expectations low with, the bookies? I don’t think they were low up until us getting beaten 6-1 by Charlton,” the Town manager reflected. “My expectations aren’t low though. And I said to the players when we came back in, I get a little bit sick about ‘Aren’t you doing well because you don’t spend a lot of money…’. Bollocks to that. “I get a little bit tired of it, it’s like a patronising pat on the back, that you’re doing well because you haven’t spent. “Howsabout saying ‘Look, we’ve got some good players in our team, let’s exceed expectations, not live down to what they think we’re going to achieve. “No, we should be far more positive than that. And that’s the mood is in the [dressing room], that’s my message, not ‘Let’s settle for 17th, 18th because there are 16 or 17 teams who have got more money than us’. I’m not interested in that. I like upsetting the apple cart.” McCarthy believes that embarrassing humbling at Charlton last week should give the players additional impetus going into tomorrow’s match. They’ll be extra driven far more than if we’d won 6-1, we’d have probably come in thinking we’d got a big cigar on and we’re all good,” he said. “And we’d had a pretty good pre-season, I think everybody was optimistic. Whatever went wrong, Flynn was on his knees, he’d had a tough pre-season, he was knackered and he had a couple of days’ rest because of it. “Skusey had been poorly. Great, excuses, but two centre midfield players playing against three in there does give you a problem and they played round us. They were brilliant, they were excellent. “But it gave me a real opportunity on Monday morning to come in and lay down a few ground rules if anybody had forgotten about how we do things.” McCarthy isn’t entirely surprised that Birmingham boss Harry Redknapp appears to be having trouble spending the significant sums of cash at his disposal. “The problem is that when somebody tells you you’ve got money, you go and ask for a player and it’s five times what they’d be telling me, although I might not even be asking about that player. It just increases the price,” he added. “Somebody says ‘Birmingham have got loads of money, happy days, they come asking me about a player it’s going to be a lot more’. So I guess he's as frustrated as I am that, if he has got money, he can’t spend it.” McCarthy dismissed the suggestion that with their squad in a state of flux now is a good time to be meeting Birmingham. “I disagree with that completely,” he continued. “They’ve signed David Stockdale, who was arguably one of the best keepers in the league, whose [previous club Brighton had] gone into the Premier League. “They’ve signed Marc Roberts from Barnsley, who had had a great season last year, the centre-half. “They’ve got Jonathan Grounds at left-back, Emelio Nsue at right-back, which is fairly solid. They’ve got Jacques Maghoma, Cheikh Ndoye, Craig Gardner, who was there last year, David Davis, who was there last year, up front Clayton Donaldson and Che Adams. “So, out of that team that’s all in flux or change there’s a goalkeeper who is different, a centre-half who is different, a centre midfield player who is different. There are eight other players who have been playing in that team, who have been there. “I know they stayed up on the last day of the season but they’re pretty solid, the players that they’ve got, they’re reliable Championship players.” McCarthy was giving little away regarding his own team selection, including whether he would give 18-year-old midfielder Downes his senior debut from the start. “I can’t say anybody who will be playing tomorrow,” he said. “Flynn’s had a great pre-season, I have to say the emergence of Flynn and Tristan Nydam [has been a big plus], Dozzer’s come back in and he’s stepped it up a notch, he’s been pretty impressive in training, this last week. “And it was interesting watching those two go head to head, so that’s been good all-round. That’s competition for places. “And when we get Tom back and when we get Emyr back, when we get Didzy back fully fit, and Bersant back fully fit, then there’ll be good competition. “It’s going to be a squad of about 24 players, and that’s going to include Michael Crowe as a third goalkeeper, Tristan, Flynn Downes, Dozzer, the younger ones that I believe will play in the team, which is great.” Is Dozzell, also 18 and just back from helping the England U19s to win he European Championships, now ready to make more of an impact at Championship level? “Nobody has ever doubted his ability, he did the dirty work, that’s chasing people back, tackling, he put Skusey on his backside the other day and I thought ‘I like that’,” McCarthy added. “It’s not about kicking people, it’s about competing, with the best players in the world, the best midfield players. “I said to somebody the other day, if you're talking about Steven Gerrard, Roy Keane in the modern day era, they could both play but didn’t they get about and put their foot in and were excellent players? “You’ve got to have the other side of it. I said to our lads today, if we want to go out and think we can just play and beat teams, we won’t. You’ve got to win the scrap.” On last season’s opening day Grant Ward scored a debut second-half hat-trick in the 4-2 victory over Barnsley at Portman Road having come off the bench, scoring with his first touch for the club. “That was a spectacular debut,” McCarthy recalled. “I made the point when Tom Adeyemi came in, he got seven goals last season, and our midfield didn’t score that many. “Wardy got three on his debut, Tom Lawrence got most of them, so it would be nice for somebody else to crown their debut with a goal tomorrow.” Bartosz Bialkowski will start in goal, while McCarthy has decisions to make across his defence. Jordan Spence will probably get the nod ahead of Dominic Iorfa at right-back and Knudsen over Kenlock on the left. In the centre, Tommy Smith has played more football than skipper Luke Chambers and Adam Webster in pre-season and will probably start on the left. Chambers is likely to take the other role having played more games than the former Pompey man during pre-season. The Blues seem likely to start with a four-man midfield which will see Cole Skuse in his usual holding role with Andre Dozzell set to join the former Bristol City man in the centre. Grant Ward will probably be on the right and Danny Rowe on the left with Bersant Celina short of fitness following his recent illness and more likely to be among the subs. New signing Joe Garner seems set to be partnered by Freddie Sears with David McGoldrick coming off the bench at some stage, also having been unwell of late. Birmingham, who have sold out their allocation of tickets, will be without striker Lukas Jutkiewicz, a player the Blues eyed a move for last summer, due to a calf injury. "Everybody is pretty much fit, except Jutkiewicz," manager Redknapp told the Midlanders’ official website "Jutkiewicz has picked up a calf strain so he is going to be out for a few weeks. "That is a blow because we only had three strikers - now we have two [Donaldson and Adams]. “We haven't got anyone really that I can think of that can be ready to come and play, so it's not ideal. Other than that, we are not too bad, most of the squad are OK.” Redknapp, who has confirmed he has had a double bid to Bristol City for Aden Flint and Joe Bryan rebuffed, has made only three additions to his squad over the summer, despite having money at his disposal following the club’s takeover by Trillion Trophy Asia last year, former Blues loan keeper David Stockdale has moved from Brighton, defender Marc Roberts was signed from Barnsley and midfielder Cheikh Ndoye was recruited from French side Angers. Redknapp says Middlesbrough’s former England winger Stewart Downing is still a player he is targeting, while Lazio have turned down a loan offer for ex-England U21s international Ravel Morrison. Historically, Town have had the better record in fixtures between the sides, winning 34 times (31 in the league), drawing 16 (16) and losing 29 (23). Town are unbeaten in their last six games against Birmingham at Portman Road, winning three and drawing three. The Midlanders have won only one of their last eight opening day matches, while the Blues have only failed to score in one of their campaign openers this century, the August 2001 1-0 loss at Sunderland. The teams last met at Portman Road in April when Ward’s 72nd minute cross-shot saw the Blues to a 1-1 draw. Grounds gave the visitors the lead three minutes after the break but Ward equalised with a cross which fortuitously flew over Birmingham keeper Tomasz Kuszczak. At St Andrew’s in December, Webster’s first goal for Town wasn’t enough to prevent the Blues from falling to a 2-1 defeat to Birmingham. Donaldson put the home side in front from the penalty spot in the 41st minute, Michael Morrison made it 2-0 eight minutes after the break before Webster headed his goal as the Blues attempted to stage a comeback in which Christophe Berra had what would have been a late equaliser harshly ruled out. Blues midfielder Huws had a spell on loan with Birmingham while a Manchester City player during the second half of 2013/14 making 17 starts and scoring two goals. Adeyemi spent the whole of the same season with the Midlanders making 36 starts and four sub appearances, netting three times. Ex-Blues loanee Stockdale made 18 appearances for Town between July and December 2011, while defender Michael Morrison hails from Haverhill. Saturday’s referee is Tim Robinson from West Sussex, who has showed 189 yellow cards and nine red in 44 games last season. Robinson’s most recent Town match was the 3-1 home victory over Newcastle United in April in which he cautioned McGoldrick, Tom Lawrence and one Magpie. The last Birmingham game he was in charge of was February’s 2-1 defeat at Preston in which six players - including four of the visitors - were booked and Gardner was sent off for a second yellow card. Robinson also refereed Town’s 1-0 win at Aston Villa in February, in which he booked only Knudsen and Toumani Diagouraga, and the 1-0 victory over Preston at Portman Road in August, in which he booked Skuse and one visiting player. Prior to that he was in charge of the 1-0 win at Derby on the final day of 2015/16 and yellow-carded skipper Chambers and Adam McDonnell and two Rams. Before that he took control of the 2-1 home victory over Reading in February last year in which he booked Berra and two visiting players. Robinson’s only other competitive Town game was the 2-0 home defeat to Middlesbrough in December 2015 in which he again cautioned Berra and two visitors. Before that he refereed the pre-season friendly at Crawley in the summer of 2013 in which he awarded the Blues a penalty, which was converted by McGoldrick in a 2-1 victory. Squad from: Bialkowski, Gerken, Spence, Iorfa, Knudsen, Kenlock, Chambers, Smith, Webster, Skuse, Dozzell, Downes, Nydam, Ward, Celina, Rowe, Garner, Sears, McGoldrick.
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