McCarthy stays – for now – as the detractors refuse to quit

There was no Sunderland approach for the Irish manager. Steve Tongue says the talk will continue

Mick McCarthy was a red herring in a green tracksuit last week as Sunderland sought a new saviour. The Football Association of Ireland and the club have both confirmed to Sportsweek that there was no approach for him, official or otherwise, and that the question of compensation was therefore never even discussed. What the FAI must be well aware of, however, is that speculation along those lines will occur every time a Premiership vacancy occurs and that sooner or later their manager will jump ship.

His inclination to see out the current European Championship campaign will be either strengthened or, possibly, undermined by a home game against Switzerland on Wednesday. Having apparently made his point as the Republic of Ireland squad pulled together for him following the Roy Keane fiasco, achieving a series of commendable results at the World Cup finals, McCarthy was taken aback by some of the reaction to last month's 4-2 defeat by Russia in the opening Euro 2004 qualifying match. It was not a good performance, as he was the first to admit, perhaps the worst in memory defensively; but even then the Irish twice dragged themselves back into the game against a revamped young Russian side and were not put out of contention until an own goal right at the finish by Phil Babb.

To disembark from the squad's chartered plane at Dublin Airport and see a headline screaming "Mick Mos-go" was therefore something of a shock. McCarthy, as is his blunt Yorkshire wont, made no attempt to hide his annoyance almost a month later, when he addressed the media again last Tuesday. "People said to me [after the World Cup] that maybe I should move on but I said I wanted to lead the team to Portugal in 2004," he said. "Being linked with other jobs is the price you have to pay for the success we've had moving from 54th to 13th in the world rankings and losing only twice in competitive games in the last three years. I think you should ask yourselves what's changed just because we've lost one game – my attitude to the job or some other people's attitude towards me.

"We can all look back on it and think that we didn't perform as well as we might have individually. I'd still take the positives from it – the fact that at 2-0 down we took the game to them. I'd sooner have lost 4-2 and had a go at it than 2-0 and not had a go. I think there's been a real downer being put on me and the team."

Those close to him believe that will not be allowed to continue indefinitely. Cathal Dervan, the author of McCarthy's World Cup diary, due to be published tomorrow week, wrote last week that "he has had enough of the sniping and criticism that has followed ever since his infamous bust-up with Roy Keane".

Dervan was also keen to push his man's claims for the Sunderland job, touting him as first choice, even though it is now clear that Howard Wilkinson was approached within hours of Peter Reid being sacked on Monday afternoon. Stories of the FAI demanding £1m compensation were demolished by their spokesman, Declan Conroy, who said: "I can categorically tell you there was no contact whatsoever, formal or informal" – a statement echoed almost word-for-word by the club. McCarthy's public line, for the moment, is: "I still want to do this job. I wouldn't have taken this contract during the summer otherwise."

The contract runs until the summer of 2004, which would be a natural point – whether Ireland qualify for the European Championship finals or not – to move on to the sort of Premiership job that he has made no secret of wanting one day. In the meantime, stubbornness on his side and loyalty on the FAI's should ensure extending his run as football's longest serving international manager.

The spectre of Keane is one McCarthy will have to live with, especially after a defeat. His adopted method of dealing with any chants of "Keano" aimed in his direction is to agree: "Some player that. I'm his biggest fan. There's nowt wrong with Robbie Keane."

As to The Other Keane, some of those newspapers pushing McCarthy towards Wearside last week were already proclaiming the Manchester United man's imminent return to the Irish squad once the manager had departed. Not this week, though a cunning ploy might have been to include the expletive-fuelled former captain in the party – in full knowledge that he will be involved instead in a Football Association disciplinary hearing over the comments in his book about deliberately setting out to injure Alf Inge Haaland.

Yesterday McCarthy was in Tirana to see Switzerland play Albania, having begun their Group 10 campaign with an impressive 4-1 victory over Georgia. The latter yesterday entertained Russia.

There will have to be at least two changes from the Republic's Moscow team, with Steve Finnan and Jason McAteer among a crop of right-sided players missing. An emphatic victory at Lansdowne Road – where Ireland have not lost a competitive game under McCarthy during his six-year stewardship – would reassure the generally supportive Irish public, if not the more implacable critics. Never mind jumping ship. A bad result on Wednesday and there will be those in the excessively critical Dublin media who would have him walking the plank.