Mick axe could cost Wolves

Few experiences in football are more painful than a heavy defeat in a local derby and it won't have surprised many people who witnessed Wolves' humiliating 5-1 home defeat to bitter rivals West Brom on Sunday that Mick McCarthy was out of a job less than 24 hours later.

The relationship between McCarthy and the Molineux crowd had long been rather fractious, while his authority was recently undermined by the club's owner Steve Morgan who went into the dressing room to criticise the players in the wake of a 3-0 defeat to Liverpool, so it's quite possible that his position had become untenable on the back of that final straw setback against the Baggies. Nonetheless, the decision to sack him the following day was, in all probability, a bad one.

Without opening the can of worms that is the expectation level at this one-time powerhouse club and whether the demands from the stands are reasonable or not, it's fair to say a sizeable chunk of the Wanderers faithful have been at their wits end with McCarthy for some time, to such an extent that the Yorkshireman seemed to be one ill-advised substitution away from all-out mutiny for the best part of 18 months.

So it's clear that he was a dead man walking on the back of what must rank as the club's most humbling day for two decades. However, regardless of any information that has since come to light, the decision to dismiss him the following morning was the very definition of knee-jerk. Emotions were clearly running high, the humiliation had stoked understandable anger but that's precisely why it was no day for taking a decision that might yet have far-reaching consequences.

So if we've established that McCarthy was at the point of no return, why keep him in a job? The answer to that follows the sports psychologist's own take on Newton's Third Law, that every action is capable of triggering an equal and opposite reaction. An unexpected negative event on this scale presents an opportunity for growth and that opportunity at Wolves was to be found in the sense of debt that the players had to their manager in the wake of their derby capitulation.

For all of McCarthy's faults, there's no evidence to suggest his personal relationship with his players was anything but healthy. Indeed, the players came out in their droves to speak of their sadness at his dismissal with Karl Henry, Jody Craddock and Stephen Ward all contributing to the instant obituaries. However, it was Michael Kightly who perhaps best summed up the mood when he said: "The boys are all gutted. We've all got a great relationship with the gaffer. We owe him a lot."

So it's fair to assume it was a fairly close-knit dressing room and those players would come out fighting for themselves and for McCarthy in the next few matches. No longer might they have been inhibited by the spectre of relegation. After all, what's the worst that could happen in any one game? Does it really get any worse than losing 5-1 at home to West Brom?

Instead, there was a fair chance that all sense of fear would now be blown out of the water by a burning desire to put things right, to fight for the manager and repay him. By sacking McCarthy at precisely this moment, Morgan and his chief executive Jez Moxey seem to have missed a trick. It's possible they have merely diluted a powerful fuel that would otherwise have burned within for the next few matches.

In many ways, it's similar to the alarming trend of clubs reimbursing supporters' travel costs after a particularly poor away performance, which happened only three weeks ago with Gillingham. The Kent club went down 4-3 at Accrington on the back of a pretty shocking first-half performance in which they conceded all four goals.

Afterwards, their manager, Andy Hessenthaler, came out and revealed that his players and staff had all agreed to put their hands in their pockets and foot the ball for a hardy following of 261 fans. Some might see that as good PR, but in reality it's a cop out. Figuratively speaking, it draws a line under the issue but the debts of any dressing room should always be paid out on the pitch.

In his desperation for instant gratification and his desire to absolve himself of blame and distance himself from the result, all Morgan has done is wipe the slate clean on a rather large emotional tab marked 'Big Mick'. The Molineux landlord might never have been paid back in full but by holding back for a while between now and McCarthy's next blowout, he might have recovered something worthwhile out of the whole situation and reduced the arrears to a level that could be the difference between survival and relegation come the end of the season. Who knows, Big Mick and his men might have even gone on the wagon and paid the debt back in full. Unlikely though that might have been, we'll never find out.

To illustrate the point, consider Wolves' next two matches: away to Newcastle and away to Fulham. The very fact that they don't have to turn out at Molineux is one reason for holding on to McCarthy a little longer, the fact that Wolves are unlikely, by normal standards, to take more than a point from those two games is another.

If you buy into the theory that there's some motivational fuel to be found in all of this, then the risk of keeping McCarthy in position is slight, yet the rewards to be gained from an emphatic backlash (four points, maybe even six) might be the difference between Wolves staying in the division or being relegated come the end of the season. If McCarthy were to lose the next game, at Newcastle, then surely the decision to dismiss him could be taken then in a more calculated manner.

In the meantime, the same process of sourcing McCarthy's eventual successor could still be carried out over the next couple of weeks, albeit in a slightly more secretive manner, because, let's face it, McCarthy would be under no illusions about the fragility of his position. Indeed, that would be the very essence of the fuel that would be driving him and his players over the next few weeks.

History has shown that incredible feats are possible when a group of men find themselves in the last-chance saloon and pull together with nothing to lose. Alas, Wolves might well have deprived themselves of the possibility that something short-lived but nonetheless remarkable might emerge from such a bleak day.