Mick McCarthy

Currently replacing the Mourinho picture on his dartboard with one of Mick

How do I enter the running?

People who think we’re gonna play lovely football are living in a fantasy world 

The Irwin one is my favourite. This is a full back picked by Bobby Charlton as United's best ever right and left back and named by Alex Ferguson as the first name on his best ever United team - i.e. ahead of Ronaldo, Cantona , Keane, Giggs, Scholes, Robson, Schmeichel, etc, etc. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.independent.ie/sport/soccer/micks-prove-yourself-jibe-really-hurt-irwin-26071805.html ;

Main relevant bit says

"...When the Republic of Ireland played Argentina in a friendly at Lansdowne Road that month, Irwin was left out of the team in preference to Jeff Kenna. It wasn't the first time Irwin had been overlooked by McCarthy but what stung most was a post-match remark attributed to the manager when asked to comment on Irwin's outstanding contribution as a second-half substitute and explain why he hadn't been in from the start.

McCarthy's reply about Irwin "having to prove himself" was a stinging criticism of the Manchester United player...At 32, in his prime and with a career CV that included four Premiership medals, two FA Cup wins, success in the Cup Winners Cup and League Cup finals, and experience of the '94 World Cup finals, Irwin felt he had nothing to prove.

Oh sweet jaysus, you didn't say something a wee bit negative about our Mick did you? How very dare you!

4 campaigns, 1 qualification. A horrid first campaign where there were some desperately bad results. Iceland. Macedonia. Absolutely blew it against an over the hill Belgian side with bizarre tactics and selection along the lines of MON vs Denmark in the 5-1 loss.

2000 campaign sees big Cas starting ahead of star striker away in Croatia (was happy to be corrected about Keane being out of the yugoslavia away game, would have been interesting to see his starting line up if he was available). Cascarino at about 84 years of age was involved in plenty of games in that campaign iirc. McCarthys horribly defensive tactics led to feeble defeats in the big away games to Croatia and Yugoslavia.

2002. superb campaign. Couldn't have went too much better, knocking out a very strong Dutch team and playing some great football along the way. Saipan, a total and utter shambles. Even McCarthys biggest cock sucking advocates can't say he came out of that situation well. We lost our best player, easily the best midfielder in the world at that time imo. Had a decent world cup, playing some good stuff again. Spain defeat on penalties was devastating. McCarthy failing to realise Spain were down to 10 men in extra time was a comedy show of incompetence.

2004. Appalling display away to Russia, 4-2 iirc. Was Phil Babb recalled for that one  Home to Switzerland, 1-1 late on, McCarthy knows his job is one the line and only a win might save him. Throws a load of lads forward and we get done and lose. 2 losses from 2 against our only rivals in the group. The campaign is effectively over or a minimum a massive uphill effort to have any chance of going through. For some reason, McCarthy seems to always escape any criticism for the '04 qualifying campaign. Did we lose 3 games in the entire group and finish 3rd? MCCarthy lost 2. Yet his fanboys say he had no real role in that campaign, it was really Kerrs. Sweet f*cking suffering jaysus.

It's a long list of incompetence McCarthy had while managing us. It's strange to me that a lot seem to want to brush it aside and never speak of it. As for his clubs, I'm not going to go back over all of them as his fans here must be surprised that Real Madrid didn't come calling for him at some stage such were his incredible successes. I will mention his most recent gig as it's mentioned in the previous posts there. The Ipswich fans hated him, his style of football was deplorable. A youtube clip of goals is an embarrassing way to try and disprove what is the reality. They ran McCarthy out of there and it was mainly to do with the style of play. Obviously lads have no idea about that themselves as this is very well known and any quick bit of research or 2 mins on an Ipswich fans forum will show this.

A truly abysmal appointment. No doubt about that. I yearn for the days of MON and Keane abusing half our players and playing a 9-0-1 formation already. It won't be too long before many others are feeling the same watching Shane Duffy win the puc fada competition come March. The only saving grace is that if the FAI are smart enough they will sack McCarthy by the end of the qualifying campaign and put someone else in for those playoffs we should be in. That is the only hope left now in this qualifying campaign.

Mick McCarthy didn't start Denis Irwin for a friendly game. 

This widespread grumbling about Mick not starting Irwin in a friendly in 1998 is absolutely fascinating.