Mick McCarthy NEVER says die

as told to footynotes

First of all I'd like to say I am a diehard never say die Yorkshireman who is, in actual fact, not dead.

And when you've been to the School of Hard Knocks like I have, you know all about never giving up..unless of course you are taking an insurmountable super-impossible task, like trying to scrape a 0-0 draw at Old Trafford.

Take my spell at Sunderland. Evey week I drummed it into my players to NEVER give up. Of course that was before the season started.

Once it did and we lost 1-0 at Wigan,  it became obvious to me that we were going to lose every game 6-0 and I told the players to give up to avoid further disappointment.

Life ain't easy y'know. Little Billy came home from school the other day and only got four out of ten on his math test. Like any died in the wool beligerent northerner I told him school wasn't any use and, what with the mines all being in Taiwan now, all we can do is hope to become very good sausage roll technicians or manage Sunderland.

You just can't try all the time, it's naive in this day and age. If we tried in every game in the Premier League, we might stay up and then imagine the disappointment when we get relegated by a record margin in our second season. People just don't think things through.

You've got to be realistic. That's why I was right not to pick my first 11 for the Man Utd game. If only it could be like the snooker and you could concede a match before it finished. Then we could just give up and catch up on X-Factor, the show of choice for the diehard, never-say-die Yorshireman....whose on happy pills.