Emotional McCarthy toasts first Blackpool win in 15 games

Emotional Mick McCarthy toasted his first win in 18 months after Blackpool held on to beat Stoke 1-0 at Bloomfield Road.

Ian Poveda’s seventh-minute strike secured Blackpool’s first win in 15 games and moved them off the bottom of the Championship table.

Stoke wasted several glorious chances and Blackpool were indebted to goalkeeper Chris Maxwell, who made a string of brilliant saves.

McCarthy’s last win came as Cardiff boss in September 2021 and he admitted it has been a long wait.

“I didn’t need any reminding! I was a bit emotional at the end, that’s my first win in a long time that,” he said.

“The lads have been brilliant, I said to them when I went in at the end that it was never in doubt. That was slightly tongue in cheek!

“They’ve given me everything in every game. I think some people think if you don’t put in hard work then you get beat, but we keep putting in the hard yards.

“If you keep doing that you’ll get a break and thankfully we got one. They’ve had their luck today and we deserved it.

“It seemed a long time to that final whistle after we went ahead. I don’t care when we score as long as we keep a clean sheet.”

McCarthy made the bold call to take the captaincy off goalkeeper Maxwell and hand it to defender Callum Connolly, and says he was thrilled with the outcome.

“We were superb. Maxi was outstanding, I gave the captaincy to Callum. I didn’t take it off Maxi for any other reason than I don’t think they can affect the game as much,” he added.

“Callum’s been brilliant again. I said to Maxi ‘if you play like that without the armband on, then why do you want it?’ He was absolutely outstanding today.”

While Blackpool are looking up the table, Stoke continue to peer nervously over their shoulder.

The gap to the bottom three is just six points after a disappointing display that was in stark contrast to their mid-week 3-0 thrashing of Huddersfield.

“I thought it was a very disappointing result. I thought we had ample opportunity to win the game or certainly get a goal and a goal would have changed the dynamic at that point,” manager Alex Neil said.

“Ultimately it’s about scoring goals and we didn’t score a goal. Their goal was fortunate with a deflection. It could go anywhere and ends up in the back of our net.

“I thought we started poorly. Their two wide players caused us issues for the first five or six minutes and once they got the goal we were much more aggressive and much better in terms of our general play. We had opportunities to get goals but we didn’t take them.

“I think how it gets judged is by taking chances. If that shot from Tyrese [Campbell] ends up in the back of the net we’re having a different conversation.

“That’s basically the margins we’re working with and ultimately we didn’t take the chance. Naturally there is going to be criticism and different points of views.

“The fact is we didn’t win the game and it’s so frustrating and annoying from our point of view. But we had enough moments in the game to win it so that makes it doubly difficult.”