Mick MacCarthy – the man

[drummerboy]

I have never been a huge fan of Mick McCarthy. I could take him or leae him. When he was at Millwall he done nothing so I was surprised he got Ireland job. In the particular job, overall, I reckon he done reasonably well. Yes he made costly mistakes but seemed to learn from them, (3-5-2 and all that). Saipan was really the deathknell for McCarthy as Irish manager. So, after he left for Sunderland, I decided I'd keep an eye on him as see if he has improved since his early years at Millwall. A couple of things have really impressed me about the man.

• Firstly, he stripped Michael Gray of the club captaincy. The reason was that on a day when Sunderland were letting go 60 club workers and players, Gray drove into the ground to show off his top-of-the-range car valued at £60,000. Gray was placed on the transfer list shortly after.
• He turned down the use of similar type car for a modest family car on the same grounds as above.
• He has being going into work at 8am each morning to put Sean Thornton through a rigorous workout in an effort to get the young lad back on the right tracks and revive he career.

Add these to the relative success he has had on a shoe-string budget. He took a gamble on Stephen Elliott and being rewarded handsomely. I hope he continues to grow as a manager and hopefully we will see him in the premiershop next year.

[barglee]

Dont think Mick was ever ready to manage an international team.
O'Leary said recently he'd need a lot of club experience before he'd manage a nation and i think he's spot on....

Still Mick wanted the job and got it(due to idiots in FAI) and in the end did o.k. in a tough enogh time for irish football

Hope he manages to bring Sunderland up and have a proper crack at the premiership......

[Dublin12]

I could never imagine him as a successful Premiership manager,he just hasn't got the man managment and PR skills to succeed imo.I think he's a good Championship manager though and I could even see him manage Celtic one day,but a big club in the Premiership,forget it.

[colster]

I think Mick did a whole lot better with Ireland than most people give him credit for, when you consider the players he had when he took over and that he changed the style of play.
The man had the courage to blood new players and change the playing style.
When he took over I thought we would stick with the Charlton formula but McCarthy didn't.
He had the courage to try new things and then to drop them when they didn't work.

I think the Saipan incident has tainted people's opinion of. In the long run I think he will mature into a very good Manager.
He's made an excellent start at Sunderland.

[Éanna]

He got the Ireland job too early in his career, and had to learn on the job. I wasn't his biggest fan by any means, but when you look at the players he had, he did an excellent job as ireland manager. he's doing very well at sunderland now, and I think he's going to be an excellent manager at Premiership level in a few years- maybe then people will appreciate the guy

[livehead1]

I could never imagine him as a successful Premiership manager,he just hasn't got the man managment and PR skills to succeed imo.I think he's a good Championship manager though and I could even see him manage Celtic one day,but a big club in the Premiership,forget it.

i dont think the fact that he's unlikely to manage a huge premiership club is down to his ability as a manager more to do with the anti-english/irish/scottish/welsh feeling amongst prem.chairmen who generally see other european managers as better choices, obv. a couple of exceptions (newcastle) but in general arsenal, man utd (queiroz looks to replace fergie), chelsea, spurs (most of theirs), liverpool