March 6 – Taking the Mick | On This Football Day

March 6 – Taking the Mick

IN March 2003 Sunderland were rooted to the bottom of the Premiership, on a horrible run of form, dead certs for relegation, and heading for a record low points haul for the season. The board’s response? To sack manager Howard Wilkinson and replace him with Mick McCarthy.

Exactly three years on and Sunderland were rooted to the bottom of the Premiership, on a horrible run of form, dead certs for relegation, and heading for a record low points haul for the season. The board’s response? Well, given that last time their solution was to hire Mick McCarthy, this time they probably felt they ought to try a different tack. And so it was that today in 2006 Mick was given the elbow by the Black Cat’s fat cat chairman Bob Murray.

In the intervening time the club had been relegated back into Division One but Mick then decided he’d had enough and set about rebuilding the team and the following season he cajoled them to the play-offs where Palace ended their promotion hopes thanks to a penalty shoot-out.

The following season however, Mick’s boys romped to the First Division title with an impressive 94 points. It was then that things started to go wrong. McCarthy’s considered strategic plan to keep Sunderland in the Premier League was to bring in Jon Stead, Andy Gray, Daryl Murphy and Anthony Le Tallec to fire the team to safety.

When McCarthy was sacked Gray had managed just one goal while Stead had not found the net at all. Even worse the club did not have a single home League win (not one!) and had been knocked out of the FA Cup by Brentford.

Just as he had impressed by guiding Sunderland to the First Division title, McCarthy now looked out of his depth in the top flight. Bob Murray could stand it no longer and gave him the boot.

Perhaps the funniest effect his sacking had was the response of the man McCarthy had replaced as manager in 2003. Howard Wilkinson blamed the board for the club’s fate. He said: “In the last three years Sunderland have had three managers. Peter Reid’s record before I took over was very good, Mick McCarthy’s record was very good and my record, some would argue, was decent.

“All three went but the board who appointed them remained and still remain. So you sometimes question whether the directors should take responsibility in these matters. One has to question whether they have the right strategy or if they’ve got one at all.”

Sorry Howard, could we just back up there a sec, “and my record, some would argue, was decent”? Really? That would be the Premiership record that read: played 20, won 2. Do me a lemon, not even his mum could claim that was a decent record.

After McCarthy left Kevin Ball was placed in temporary charge as Sunderland went down with a new record-low points total of 15 – beating the previous record set by the club in 2003. So that’s something.

In the summer of 2006 the club was taken over by Niall Quinn’s consortium and when he got around to appointing a permanent replacement for Mick he chose none other than his nemesis Roy Keane.

That’s all for today folks, but check out what everyone’s favourite football club (from a milk advert) were up to on this day right here.

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