Mick McCarthy has it busy these days, first he has been rumoured to havereleased Irish International Andy Keogh on a free, and now he is reopening the box of worms that is and will always be Saipan.
Mick is busying himself with throwing some ink down on paper in the form of clever words and thoughts for the Manchester Guardian. In today's guardian he talks about how one player doesn't make a team.
"You can manage without a player. It's nonsense to say otherwise. There is not one player that a team cannot do without. The only time a team cannot cope without one player is when they are allowed to think that. A manager cannot allow that to happen. Can you imagine England, for example, going home after the first round and saying it was because Rio went home? It's not going to happen."
He also talks about what advice he was offered in the wake of the Roy Keane walkout, can i say walkout? was it? it was.
"Somebody said to me after it happened that I should have had contingency plans in place," McCarthy recalls. "I'd like to meet the man who had contingency plans for that. It just doesn't happen. That was a unique pressure, but we are all under pressure – players have expectations too – and as a manager you have to deal with them all. You are managing everyone else's expectations and trying to protect the players from that while ultimately trying to get results. No matter what is going on around you, you have to got to get results."
Whatever about Mick and Roy, this box of worms has given us the chance to show you this again..
