Mick McCarthy admits Roger Johnson mistake
Ex-boss Mick McCarthy has admitted he made a mistake in making Roger Johnson captain at Wolves – and says he was undermined by former owner Steve Morgan's infamous dressing room rant.
Johnson was made skipper after signing from Blues in 2011, displacing Karl Henry.
The centre-half, along with midfielder Jamie O'Hara, is seen as a figurehead in Wolves' rapid demise from the Premier League to League One.
And new Republic of Ireland boss McCarthy, speaking to Wolves' Old Gold Club podcast, which is released tonight at 6pm, conceded the pair – plus a number of other signings – weren't better than the players who helped Wolves win promotion in 2009.
"I thought it was the right decision (to take the captaincy off Henry), it just turned out to be the wrong decision to make Roger Johnson the captain instead of him," McCarthy said during an extensive interview.
"That was a wrong decision in my view. I've made some good and some bad through my career (having managed) 965 games.
"It's way down the line now, I've had two jobs since then. Wolves have had seven managers since then and it's seven years ago!
"I don't regret doing it because I thought it was the right thing to do. (Karl had) questioned my authority at the end of the season prior, to the extent he wasn't going to be the captain for doing that.
"He still played in the team, but my captain, as Karl had done for four or five years prior to that, was being my stalwart, backing everything I'd done and banging the drum for what we're doing, not for what the players wanted."
Johnson was one of a number of players who flopped as McCarthy tried to improve a young team that had stayed up by just one point in 2010/11.
McCarthy admitted: "The recruitment turned out not to be great. Roger Johnson, Nenad Milijas, Jelle Van Damme, Jamie O'Hara...I'm thinking we're signing better players, we all thought it (at the time), but they weren't better than Christophe Berra, David Jones (etc).
"We went and watched Jelle Van Damme play for Anderlecht and he was a star in that team.
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"We watched Nenad Milijas play for Red Star Belgrade, a star in that team. (But) they were used to having the ball 60 per cent of that time. We've got the ball for 40/35 per cent and they didn't like running around, the physicality, the hard work.
"Roger Johnson was nowhere near better than Christophe Berra, Jamie O'Hara was nowhere near the lads we'd already got.
"I would commend the likes of David Jones, Christophe Berra who lost their positions and their personalities were still the same and supporting what we were trying to do.
"Steven Fletcher, Kevin Doyle, all those lads bought into what we were doing. We stayed up by a point (in 2010/11) so we had to try and be better.
"In some respects (the signings) made us worse because the dressing room lost a bit of the ethos we had for five years.
"That's sad but it was all done for the right reasons. It didn't work."
Previous owner Morgan famously ranted in the Wolves dressing room after the team lost 3-0 to the team he made no secret of supporting, Liverpool, in 2012. Two weeks later he sacked McCarthy after a 5-1 defeat to Albion.
McCarthy added: "When we played Liverpool and Steve comes into the dressing room and it's his team, Liverpool, I think he was really offended by how we'd played...and kicked off and told us all what he thought of us all, didn't want me to speak.
"Did it undermine me? Of course it did. But it's his club, there's not a lot I can do about it. I could either walk, which I'm never going to do, and then we beat QPR.
"I was never going to interject when he's talking. He was furious, he was angry. In the dressing room I'm not going to be fighting with the owner of the football club."
On his sacking, McCarthy said: "It was no surprise. One of my biggest regrets was I had to walk out the back door, because there were people waiting to give me abuse, but I understand that, it's West Brom, the big enemy.
"Jez (Moxey) came in (the following day)...if he'd come in with a hood and scythe it would have been appropriate.
"It was like 'Mick can I have a word?'. The temperature dropped, we all knew it was happening.
"Jez told me with a heavy heart, he didn't want that to be happening.
"The guys hadn't stopped fighting for me, they hadn't dropped tools. Some of the lads were in tears about it, the spirit was still there, but we weren't getting results.
"The only surprise was it went to the Monday morning. Jez the grim reaper came in. We'd had five-and-a-half years of pretty much success, staying in the league was success with the budget we'd had.
"I don't think anything bad about Steve or Jez."
