Ipswich (H) 23/12 Build Up Thread

[Langers]

Mick is ace.

 

[YoungWolf]

I still love him. I don't miss him, but I love him.

 

[Dinowolf]

Mind games

 

[slink]

Got to be honest i can't stand Mick. He did a fantastic job here in those first few years no doubting that but by the end i couldn't stand him and when i hear him now it's exactly like that. He says some entertaining things but most of the time it's just outdated, narrow minded stubborn bollocks. Here's hoping Nuno guides us to our first victory over him since he left.

 

[Dire Wolf]

Got to be honest i can't stand Mick. He did a fantastic job here in those first few years no doubting that but by the end i couldn't stand him and when i hear him now it's exactly like that. He says some entertaining things but most of the time it's just outdated, narrow minded stubborn bollocks. Here's hoping Nuno guides us to our first victory over him since he left.

I'm with Slink. I couldn't stand him as our manager. A total dinosaur whose brand of anti football was exposed as complete shite as soon as we had to play teams that were halfway decent. I'll not let the odd decent battling performance erase the endless.hours of utter drivel we played in the PL. We frequently went entire games without forcing a meaningful save out of opposition goalkeepers. You know how horrible Sunderland and Birmingham were the other week? That was us 8 out 10.games under Mick. Utter bilge.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Very, very, very harsh indeed from both of you.

Let's not forget where we were after Hoddle. I despised Ken's football for his final year here, but that doesn't mean I write off everything he did after picking up from the burning wreckage of the Saunders era.

 

[YoungWolf]

I think that is slightly unfair on him. Over various seasons we played quite good, attacking football (especially promotion season, we were breathtaking at times with the two wingers and forwards). The first season in the Premier League when we went very, very defensive it was utter bilge but I will still always maintain we played good football for a lot of the second season. Had we sacked him at the end of that season, which in hindsight we should have, he would have left with very positive memories. Its just that when it was bad it was REALLY bad because even when we were entertaining it was very one dimensional.

He is a very limited manager and always will be but as a person I really loved having him in charge.

Anyway, we are onto much better things with Nuno in charge unless something stupid happens.

 

[slink]

I said he did a fantastic job in the first few years but i just never warmed to him as a person. I know our fanbase can be dicks and were at times but i always thought he looked to bait them which wasn't needed. We did play well at times in the Premier League but again i was never convinced and even back then i was crying out for a manager that would attempt to do what Nuno has done. To be fair i've thought that with every manager since apart from Jackett for a period but he lost it too.

 

[Tony Towner]

I think history will judge McCarthy's tenure positively, however in hindsight I wish we'd not sacked him when we did so that those media and supporters alike couldn't falsely claim we'd have stayed up if we had kept him.

 

[YoungWolf]

I said he did a fantastic job in the first few years but i just never warmed to him as a person. I know our fanbase can be dicks and were at times but i always thought he looked to bait them which wasn't needed. We did play well at times in the Premier League but again i was never convinced and even back then i was crying out for a manager that would attempt to do what Nuno has done. To be fair i've thought that with every manager since apart from Jackett for a period but he lost it too.

The type of football we play now is pretty close what I've always ever wanted, within reason. Agree on Jackett but he wasn't brave enough in the end when it got tough in the Championship.

Mick had a very love-hate relationship with the fans to be fair.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

even back then i was crying out for a manager that would attempt to do what Nuno has done. To be fair i've thought that with every manager since apart from Jackett for a period but he lost it too.

The type of football we play now is pretty close what I've always ever wanted, within reason.

You've got to apply context to it, it simply wasn't realistic in our circumstances to be expecting a manager to rock up and play aesthetically beautiful yet incisive stuff with those tools.

I'm not sure what people expect, as if we've been blessed with amazing managers for the last 35 years. Mick has never pretended to be anything he isn't, we all know what you get from his teams. I would say in this league we were broadly positive and his promotion winning team didn't cost that much really:

Hennessey (£0, and the guts to stick with a 20 year old kid when he first came in)

Foley (£750k)
Stearman (£1.6m)
Berra (£2.3m)
Ward (£150k, there's a bloke pulled from the League of Ireland who has made a PL and international career and has Mick to thank for the bulk of it)

Kightly (£50k, nuff said, we could see he was worth literally 100x that inside weeks)
Henry (£100k)
Jones (£1m)
Jarvis (£750k, moved for £10m five years later)

Iwelumo (£400k)
Ebanks-Blake (£1.5m)

Under £9m there if my late night maths is right. And I could easily swap out Berra if I wanted being as he didn't even get here until late January and include Craddock (inherited) or Collins (£150k).

There are definitely aspects of his PL management you could criticise but to say you "couldn't stand him" is warped to me.

 

[MARKakaJIM]

Being good or successful at something doesn't mean you have to like them though, you can still appreciate the achievement even if you don't like the person behind it. Plenty of people on here hate Warnock but he's got plenty of success to his name, at this level anyway.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Warnock is a different bag because he sends teams out to be deliberately snide, pushes the rules right to their very limit or even endorses hurting the opposition. I have never seen a Mick team do any of that. I once saw one of Warnock's Sheffield United teams timewasting after two minutes.

Colin is a good manager at this level but I can't ever respect him. He's actually a very knowledgeable guy and he does get results most of the time (although people tend to whitewash some of the awful spells he's had at a few clubs, and there are several - plus he'd kill to have Mick's achievements at Wolves in the PL on his CV because he has fuck all in that respect) but he behaves like a twat, all the time.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

- Won this league, which we'd not done since 1977 (still haven't done it since either, though I'd back us from here)
- Got us to the playoffs on a net spend of a bag of Skittles and a Wham bar
- Stayed up in the PL twice
- 40 points in the PL
- Beat Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool and Spurs in the top flight
- Fought our corner when the media were undeservedly having a go at us for overly physical play
- Predecessor left us with no money and a squad of about 16 outfield players, successors double relegated us and left us in the third tier for the first time in nearly 25 years
- Signed what were at the time, some of the most exciting players I'd ever seen at Wolves

Yeah mate, can't stand him.

 

[slink]

You've got to apply context to it, it simply wasn't realistic in our circumstances to be expecting a manager to rock up and play aesthetically beautiful yet incisive stuff with those tools.

I'm not sure what people expect, as if we've been blessed with amazing managers for the last 35 years. Mick has never pretended to be anything he isn't, we all know what you get from his teams. I would say in this league we were broadly positive and his promotion winning team didn't cost that much really:

Hennessey (£0, and the guts to stick with a 20 year old kid when he first came in)

Foley (£750k)
Stearman (£1.6m)
Berra (£2.3m)
Ward (£150k, there's a bloke pulled from the League of Ireland who has made a PL and international career and has Mick to thank for the bulk of it)

Kightly (£50k, nuff said, we could see he was worth literally 100x that inside weeks)
Henry (£100k)
Jones (£1m)
Jarvis (£750k, moved for £10m five years later)

Iwelumo (£400k)
Ebanks-Blake (£1.5m)

Under £9m there if my late night maths is right. And I could easily swap out Berra if I wanted being as he didn't even get here until late January and include Craddock (inherited) or Collins (£150k).

There are definitely aspects of his PL management you could criticise but to say you "couldn't stand him" is warped to me.

Totally different to the football we are playing now but the football we played to get promoted was entertaining but once we got up Mick didn't have a plan on how to make us better so we could play the football we had played or something similar. Even against the not so good sides we never really looked like that side apart from the odd occasion.

Again i've said he did a fantastic job in the first few years but i like i've also said he had an attitude that he was better than the fans at times which i never got and he was too stubborn for his own good. He's probably a nice bloke away from football but when it comes to listening to him when he was here and even now i can't stand him. That's not warped, i'd say that was a fair opinion to have. Others love him and that's fine by me but i don't think anyone can deny he's spouted some absolute shite and divides opinion between fans from his teams.

 

[Trips]

Some very harsh thoughts on Mick here. He walked into a car crash when Hoddle left us in the lurch yet got us to the play offs. 2 years later he got us up as champions which was a fantastic season. Then kept us up 2 seasons running with some great moments in there such as beating Utd at home, Liverpool away, West Ham away was a great performance. For me he should have gone at the end of the 2nd season, and he would have gone after the Swansea home game if not for the late comeback.

Will always be happy with the job he did here and will get a warm reception from me on Saturday

 

[Tony Towner]

That Swansea game was when he lost a large core of the home support. If he'd said he'd picked the wrong side, he'd have got away with it, but trying to claim his substitutions were tactical genius and effectively calling the fans out meant his departure was a case of when not if. It's when I would have pushed the button as it was a week after being tactically outsmarted by QPR and Colin at home.

 

[YoungWolf]

Liverpool away was awesome. Such a brilliant team performance where we actually thoroughly deserved to win too. And for Ward to score the winner was even more beautiful considering the stick he got along with Mick.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I never got the impression he thought he was better than the fans, I think he called them out on some utter shite which was fair enough. The way our lot treated Keogh, Ward and Collins in particular was disgraceful.

Whether you took to him personally or not is down to you really, I can't argue either way on that one. I enjoyed listening to him and again, you compare him to McGhee, Jones, Hoddle, Jackett, Saunders, Zenga, Lambert...I know who talked more sense and was less annoying.

He got plenty of stuff wrong as well as all the good stuff. That's what you get when you appoint what is ultimately, a top end second tier manager and nothing more. I might add we had no right whatsoever to get him given our circumstances at the time. He's never spoken ill of the club, he does delude himself that he'd have kept us up but I suppose he's got to say that.

There are two managers in my time supporting Wolves (30 seasons now, lest we forget) who have taken us to the top tier. Dave Jones was a fucking bluffer. Mick McCarthy will forever have my respect, no matter if there were plenty of times I disagreed with him on multiple issues.

We all love Nuno right now, let's see how he reacts if we go up and then next season lose five in a row. I'm sure there won't be people crawling over broken glass to laud what he says in public in that case.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

That Swansea game was when he lost a large core of the home support. If he'd said he'd picked the wrong side, he'd have got away with it, but trying to claim his substitutions were tactical genius and effectively calling the fans out meant his departure was a case of if not when. It's when I would have pushed the button as it was a week after being tactically outsmarted by QPR and Colin at home.

Everton away for me, there was a fair gap between QPR (17 Sep, and we were diabolical) and Swansea (22 Oct, and yes, we were garbo for 80 minutes). In between we played ok at Anfield and should have got a point at home to Newcastle.