Wolves: Mick McCarthy bemoans bad break for his international stars

Oct 13 2009 by Bill Howell, Birmingham Mail

MICK McCarthy admits he is powerless to prevent a repeat of the inept Wolves performance he got the last time his squad returned following an international break.

The Yorkshireman’s side were soundly beaten 3-1 at Blackburn a little over four weeks ago and he is attempting to stop the rot of three straight defeats with the majority of his first team away ahead of Saturday’s trip to Everton.

McCarthy said: “I just hope it’s different this time. But how can I prevent what happened then?

“I can’t unless there’s some way of getting them all back here on the Wednesday, it’s one of those things that are out of my control.

“But even if you do that, they’re up all hours of the night and they don’t get any rest.”

Kevin Doyle, Andy Keogh and Kevin Foley are with Ireland ahead of tomorrow night’s qualifier at home to Montenegro and Segundo Castillo travels with Ecuador for their game at Chile.

Dave Edwards and Sam Vokes are with Wales in Liechtenstein, Nenad Milijas is in Lithuania with Serbia and Stefan Maierhofer is in France with Austria.

“We get them in here on the Thursday morning and they still can’t train if they’ve played,” continued McCarthy.

“There’s no easy way around that because we can’t do any more.”

On the plus side key defender Christophe Berra has returned from Japan with Scotland, goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey is suspended with Wales and Michael Mancienne has returned from England under-21 duty.

McCarthy is no different to any other top-flight manager this last week in wanting to do more work on the training ground.

“I’d have liked to have the players here for two weeks, but they’re not and they can’t be, so there’s no point whingeing about it,” he said.

“We did a bit of work last Monday morning with the ones who are still here and the ones who needed a game, got it last Wednesday in the reserves.

“That’s the frustration of it, and we won’t see them as a whole group until Friday.

“We might see them at 3pm or 4pm on the Thursday but they won’t be doing any training.”