With Wolves an endangered species this season, manager Mick McCarthy's approach will be one of conservation, writes EMMET MALONE
FOOTBALL MANAGERS, as Mick McCarthy knows all too well, put their backsides in bacon slicers every day of the week and no better place to do it, he would surely contend, than the game’s equivalent of Burton’s window, the Premier League.
McCarthy has been down this road before and though he tried yesterday to play down that torrid year he had with Sunderland back in 2005/06, he admits to having some “unfinished business” with the English top flight.
He was, he has said often enough, given just €7 million to spend when Sunderland went up and concedes now that there was a touch of “arrogance” about his belief that he could keep his team up.
This time, he has spent over twice that sum on strengthening a team he insists will be fighting first and foremost for 17th place. He points to Steve Bruce’s activity in the transfer market over the past few weeks at his former club as evidence that, if he can guide his side to survival, targets can be revised upward and better players attracted to Molineux.
Half of the €15 million or so he has spent this summer went on Irish international Kevin Doyle and the striker’s arrival provides McCarthy with three of last year’s top scorers from the Championship. The difference is that the Wexfordman already has experience of playing at the higher level, with an average of a goal every three games during two seasons of Premier League football with Reading.
McCarthy’s primary challenge, though, probably lies at the other end of the field with the 50-year-old needing to embark on a spot of reorientation for the second season in a row. In the summer of 2008, with his team having narrowly missed out on a place in the play-offs, he looked at how Wolves’ rivals West Brom had won the Championship title – by outscoring the opposition – and decided to follow suit.
Wolves had been nearly as good in defence as Tony Mowbray’s men but scored just 53 goals in 56 games compared to the Champions’ 88. But the faith he then placed in the likes of Michael Kightly, Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and Chris Iwelumo, all bought for modest fees, paid handsome dividends and last season his side were the Championship’s top scorers with 80.
The problem, of course, is that West Brom sought to persevere with their attacking football after going up and succeeded only in playing their way straight back into the Championship. McCarthy then, needs to tighten up at the back again.
One part of his solution, he revealed yesterday, has been to narrow the pitch at Molineux. “I have made it smaller because we are not the best team in the league,” he acknowledged with characteristic frankness. “Last season, we were playing with two flying wingers and the pitch suited us fine. This season, it would suit other teams even better. Why would I make the pitch that big that it would suit everyone else coming here?”
His re-signing this week on a season-long loan of England under-21 international Michael Mancienne from Chelsea will help but the ability of his other options (including Robert Zubar, who cost €1.7 million having spent much of last season on the bench at Marseille) to cope at this level remains to be seen.
Both of last season’s full backs are Irish, with Kevin Foley such a consistent performer on the right since arriving from Luton two years ago that he rather than 25-goal man Ebanks-Blake won the supporters’ Player of the Year award in May. Stephen Ward, meanwhile, was signed to play a more attacking role having featured primarily as a winger or striker at Bohemians, but he has settled in at left back and should see a fair bit of action over the coming months.
Along with Andy Keogh, who took some time to win the club’s fans over but who now enjoys considerable popularity, they make up an Irish contingent of four, second within the top flight only to the one down the road at Birmingham City, although that shouldn’t be taken as any sort of indication that McCarthy is soft-hearted about his roots.
True to his character, his squad is somewhat less cosmopolitan than, say, the one at the club at the other end of a Premier League alphabetical list. Arsenal have four first team squad players from Britain or Ireland (all British as it happens) while 14 other countries are represented in Arsene Wenger’s panel. McCarthy has 18 British and four Irish with five other nations getting a look in.
Asked about inclination towards recruiting players with Irish links at the time Foley had become the club’s seventh in August 2007, McCarthy insisted the policy was rooted firmly in his desire to get best value possible.
“Look at the Irish lads in my team and would you get shot of any of them?” he then asked. But Gary Breen, Stephen Elliott and more recently Stephen Gleeson an Darren Potter were shown the door when he felt the time was right.
He says he still has money to spend and, like his chief executive, Jez Moxley, has strongly suggested he will strengthen the squad over the coming weeks. The suspicion is that he could do with more proven quality.
If history, pedigree or the devotion of a club’s supporters were the factors that attracted players, then McCarthy would have his pick of willing new recruits.
Founding members of the league, Wolves have a tremendous tradition even if their best days, under legendary manager Stan Cullis, passed half a century ago in the mid to late fifties. Winners of three titles in six years back then, their strength was such that a succession of wins over visiting teams from overseas prompted the British press to hail them as “Champions of the World,” a claim that irritated L’Equipe editor Gabiel Hanot sufficiently to spur him into organising the first European Cup.
After that there was sporadic League Cup success and a Uefa Cup final appearance against a backdrop of steady decline until Jack Hayward’s money provided the foundation for a revival. Now the aim is to re-establish the club in the top flight, with thoughts of greater success left to the dreamier fans.
Their heftiest league defeat ever, a 10-1 drubbing, was, as it happens, inflicted by one Newton Heath in 1892 (their greatest cup win, incidentally, a 14-0 romp came six years earlier against Cresswell Brewery, whose management, one presumes, was better at organising piss-ups than defences) and McCarthy will be mindful of the need to get points on the board before heading to Old Trafford in mid December.
His side’s first eight matches look particularly important, with home games against the likes of Hull, Fulham and Portsmouth intermingled with trips to Wigan, Blackburn and Sunderland.
Hull last year, and before that Reading have shown the value of getting points early on and McCarthy is under no illusions about the significance of getting off to a winning start, even this afternoon when Gianfranco Zola’s West Ham are the visitors.
“West Ham are a classy side who finished ninth in the Premier League last season,” he says, “and it is a really difficult start for us. We are playing against a good side but getting off to a good start would be a boost. To get a win early would be really vital. It would be a monkey off your back straight away.”
The club’s home form will be vital and McCarthy has pleaded with fans to help make Molineux as inhospitable as Stoke’s Britannia Stadium was last season.
Ultimately, the team’s fortunes will depend more than anything on the capacity of so many young players with no experience of the Premier League proving themselves capable of the step up. McCarthy will, of course, play a major part. He has already signalled his willingness abandon his preferred 4-4-2 formation and have his players scrap for points when required.
Moxley and club chairman, Steve Morgan, showed admirable loyalty to their manager during the 2007/08 season when many supporters were calling for his head. They also stayed calm last season when a run of just one win in 11 games threatened to scupper the drive for automatic promotion.
If things do not well over the first half of the season, their faith in the former Ireland boss will be tested again, for getting relegated from the Premier League is, in its way, a good deal more problematic than failing to get promoted to it in the first place.
For his part, McCarthy insists he is ready. “We have been far better supported (in terms of funds to buy players compared with his ill fated assault on the top flight with Sunderland) and I would like to think we are better prepared. I know I am.”
So, as three o’clock approaches, he will ready himself once more for the gentle whirr of that bacon slicer and the sight of so many noses pressed firmly to the glass.
