Lifelong Blades fan McCarthy prepares for rebuild

From the heights of the Premier League to the depths of League One, it has been a heavy fall for the Blades who are now in need of a reversal of fortune.

McCarthy, whose appointment follows the departure of chief executive Trevor Birch, intends to play a major role in the revival alongside new manager Danny Wilson and chairman Kevin McCabe.

Only a few years ago, he was a bank manager juggling a nine-to-five job with his role as manager of non-league Sheffield FC.

Since joining the Blades two years ago, however, he has worked at sister clubs Ferencvaros and Chengdu Blades and impressed those in command at Bramall Lane with his work-rate, passion, and ability to deliver the goods.

Speaking at his introduction to the media yesterday, McCarthy described both his personal and professional life as a ‘30-year apprenticeship’ for his new role.

He also highlighted the areas where he felt the club may have failed since 2006 and stressed his desire to put things right.

“I believe this club needed a different kind of leadership,” he said. “I am not knocking anyone else who has worked for the club, but we needed a passionate individual and I think Kevin (McCabe) has identified that in me because of what I have done in the past in local football and overseas.

“I have gone from fetching balls out of the river at Sheffield FC to dealing with Sepp Blatter at meetings with FIFA so I am not someone who can’t speak from experience and I like to think I have done the majority of jobs well.

“As a fan, I won’t lie, it’s been a miserable couple of years – the football on the pitch has not been fantastic and I think we have been a bit mis-guided through no fault of any one individual. The culture of the club changed and a divide has been created. Sometimes you can only see that right at the end when you are on that spiral.

“I think I will be far more hands on. Trevor Birch was obviously brought into the club to look for investment and had more of a ‘helicopter view’.

“I like to involve myself with every single department and issue in the club. We need to get the mutual trust and respect back between the fans, the people at the football club, and the players. We say we are a ‘family club’ but we have become a bit corporate.”

The word ‘family’ has extra depth for McCarthy, now 45, as he lost both his parents before the advancement of his teenage years. One of eight siblings, he was raised by his brother Kieran and is proud of his ascent from the streets of Southey Green to the Bramall Lane boardroom.

McCarthy even voiced disapproval over comments made last week by Sheffield’s former world bobsleigh champion Nicola Minichiello in relation to the area they both grew up in.

“A certain young lady who was in the press last week, a bobsleigher or something, said nothing good had come out of Southey Green!” he said. “I am sorry but good things have come out of Southey Green and I’d like to think me and my family are one of them.

“I still get het up when I think about what I read, she said there was ‘no hope’ for anyone who lives in Southey Green. Well, I was a 12-year-old orphan in Southey Green and I would like to think I have done alright!

“I believe I have done a 30-year apprenticeship in football to be in this position now,” he added. “One of the foot soliders has actually reached the top and I don’t mean that in an aloof way. When I walk through the gates and go past the away end (at Bramall Lane), I feel like I am representing the hopes and the aspirations of the fans. I want people to come in on matchday, feel their seat is alright, the food is alright, everything behind the scenes is right and the product on the pitch is right.

“I have come in to motivate the staff, look at all areas of the football club, and see how we can improve matters. I will look at the stadium and the club as a whole and see how we can sweat our assets to bring money into the football club to help Danny Wilson strengthen the side.”

Although Wilson – as the first manager to cross the Steel City divide – is still striving to win universal acceptance among Blades supporters, McCarthy says he will bring back a style of leadership last seen at the club in the Neil Warnock era.

“We have been short of that leader in the technical area since Neil Warnock,” he insisted. “But from the second minute of his press conference, Danny Wilson sounded like a Sheffield United manager.

“There was always going to be a bit of a backlash but he is not daft and he understands the banter sparked by being a United manager who used to play for the Owls.

“When he meets the supporters, he doesn’t bulls*** or give them what he thinks they want to hear. He puts his head above the parapet and is a leader who says ‘follow me’. I like that.

“He has also taken on the office right in the middle of our commercial and accounts team and mashes the tea in a morning – you can’t knock him!”

Former Blades defender Frank Barlow, 64, was also unveiled at Bramall Lane yesterday after leaving a technical role with Sunderland to become Wilson’s assistant for the third time in his career.

The pair, who have worked in tandem before at Wednesday and Bristol City, originally met when Wilson was a player under Barlow at Chesterfield in the early Eighties.