ONCE DEAN SAUNDERS decided that he was going to Wolves, he wasted no time in getting on the phone to his right-hand man — Cork native Brian Carey.
One half of a double-act on the rise, Carey was the assistant manager as Saunders guided Doncaster Rovers into the League One automatic promotion places.
That was before the Molineux bosses came calling last weekend. Now they’re ready to steer Wolves back up towards the right end of the Championship table, a job which started with a 1-1 draw at home to Blackburn Rovers on Friday night.
“We’re in each other’s pockets as much as we can be to be honest,” Carey says of a relationship which has changed and evolved as they rose through the leagues together. Initially he was the boss when, during one of his two brief spells in charge at Wrexham, he brought in Saunders for a few days a week to help the Dragons’ misfiring strikers get their mojo back.
The former Welsh international made such an impression that when Carey’s replacement Brian Little quit in September 2008, he was asked to take charge. Saunders kept Carey on board as his number two and they’ve been virtually inseparable ever since.
“We’re together all the time,” Carey continues. “A club like this is 24/7 the way things go on so that suits us down to the ground because that’s how we operate.
Football’s not an eight till four, nine till five type of thing. Every day there’s things going on and we’re continually on the phone bouncing ideas off one another, watching games, going to games. He’ll ask me my opinion and I’ll give it to him or I’ll see things happen and I’ll tell him. He needs that as well, that honesty and somebody to bounce things off him.Ultimately he’s the manager. He makes the decisions. I give him my opinion but ultimately he makes the decision and I’ll back the decision. I don’t mope around or anything like that.
Last Saturday evening the two were together in the office of another Irishman, Joe Dunne. Doncaster had just beaten Dunne’s Colchester United 1-0 to move back into the automatic promotion places and keep their dream of Championship football alive but 48 hours later, Saunders was being confirmed as Stale Solbakken’s successor.
“It was a wrench in a sense,” Carey says of the decision to leave. “It was our team, we were doing well and we were trying to get into the Championship but having said that, Wolves is a very very big club and it’s a great opportunity. We left with a tinge of sadness but we’ll hopefully have a decent future here.”
Last night’s draw moved Wolves up to 17th overnight and seven points clear of the relegation zone but the newest recruit to the club’s strong Irish tradition is looking the other way, confident that they can bridge the eight-point gap to the playoff spots.
I think generally at the club there’s possibly been a little bit of a hangover from the relegation from the Premiership. The previous manager is gone for one reason or another and that’s never a good time to be coming in to any football club.We’re not going in to the job thinking we’re going to keep Wolves up and that’s the challenge. What we’re going to try and do is latch on to that last play-off spot if we can. It’s going to be a big ask but we can do it if we get some results together.
