The Dean and I

Brian Carey reflects on the long football journey which has taken him from Cork City to Wolves as assistant to Dean Saunders.

Four games, two defeats and two draws into his job as assistant to Dean Saunders at Wolves, Brian Carey has barely found time to pause for breath as the new management team grapple with the task of trying to resuscitate the struggling Championship side.

A spirited performance on Thursday night away to high-flying Leicester City offered grounds for encouragement but, in the end, a luckless 2-1 defeat saw Wolves drop to 19th in the table, just five points above the relegation zone.

So a daunting task then for the 44-year-old from Togher but still a challenge he regards as one of the most exciting in a long football career which began for him as a centre-half at Cork City, took in four years at Manchester United, a spell in the Premier League with Leicester and also featured a long association with Wrexham from playing as a loan signing in the team which famously knocked Arsenal out of the 1992 FA Cup to managing the club to league safety in 2008.

More recently, former Irish international Carey was assistant to former Welsh international Saunders at Doncaster Rovers, the pair the guiding the side to the top of League One and busily intent on plotting a course for the Championship when the call for the manager suddenly came through from embattled Wolves. And if it was inevitable that Saunders would ask Carey to go with him, it was equally inevitable Carey would comply.

They go back a long way, actually even further than they used to think. Not so long ago, Brian discovered photographic evidence in his attic of an encounter between the two players when United and Aston Villa played each other in an end of season benefit match at Windsor Park in 1993.

“We argue about this,” says Carey with a laugh.

“I say I’m holding him off with the ball at my feet and he says that he was running down the side of me.”

Years later, when Brian was managing Wrexham, Saunders – the former Liverpool and Villa striker who’d gained managerial experience as a coach for Graeme Souness at Blackburn and Newcastle and also as John Toshack’s right-hand man with Wales – used to pop into the club where he was a friend of the chairman and offer advice to the kids at the centre of excellence.

“I wasn’t a centre-forward and because he was around the place I asked if he could come in and help out with the strikers,” Carey recalls. “He did — and the following week the centre-forward scored two goals.”

It was another year before their professional paths crossed again, by which time Wrexham had slipped into the Conference and Brian had been succeeded by Brian Little. Saunders, in turn, replaced Little and duly asked Brian – who’d retained his links with the club – to be his right-hand man.

“So it was roles reversed at that stage,” he smiles, “and we’ve worked together ever since. We got it going again at Wrexham, moved onto Doncaster and then the opportunity came up at Wolves. When Dean got that call and asked me to go with him, I didn’t have to think twice.

“There’s no comparison with the clubs. Doncaster were moving in the right direction and we left a really good bunch of players there so the departure was tinged with sadness — but the stature, set-up and infrastructure of Wolves is fantastic. Everything is geared to getting the club back into the Premier League again.”

The stakes might be higher but, essentially, Saunders and Carey have brought to Molineux the same modus operandi which has proved successful for them elsewhere.

“We’re always bouncing ideas off each other,” says Brian. “A typical week might see us in the office at half seven or eight in the morning and it’s eight or nine at night before we finish off. Then we might be staying overnight at a hotel if we’re on the road, and we’re up for breakfast the following morning and going at it again. We’d basically be living in each other’s pockets.”

It helps then that Carey not only respects Saunders as a professional but delights in his company.

“Dean, as a person, is hilarious,” he chuckles. “He’s incredibly funny and incredibly enthusiastic. But ask anyone about Dean Saunders and, first and foremost, they’ll tell you he’s a really good manager. His knowledge of technical skills and stuff like that, I’ve never come across before. Tactically, he’s so switched on. And the way he presents all that to everyone is very appealing.”

In essence, Carey says the management team gets paid to pick the best players and put a winning side on the pitch. But, of course, a lot more goes into it than that.

“What we’ve done at Wrexham and Doncaster, and what we feel is important, is try to get a good atmosphere and spirit around the place.

“And there’s simple things you can do to try and achieve that – like, I will speak to every player, every day, if I can. And it’s the same for the staff as well as the players.

“One of the first things Dean did when we came in is that he got all the staff into the room and he said to the groundsmen and the kit men: ‘The likes of you are as important as Kevin Doyle or Roger Johnson’. Because if the training kit isn’t right, the players won’t be happy. And if the pitches – as Noel O’ Mahony would say – are ‘lovely and bumpy’, we won’t be able to train promptly. So the whole thing only works if everybody is playing their part.

“Personally, I feel I’ve been very fortunate,” he adds. “I spent four years at Manchester United when Fergie was there so I have a good idea of how things should be done. That was a fantastic experience in terms of my playing career but also, in terms of the management end of things, the high standards I learned about at Old Trafford are something you’d want to bring to any club you’re involved in.”

And what about his own ambitions to have another crack at being number 1?

“Honestly, it’s not something I give too much consideration to,” says Carey. “I’m happy doing what I’m doing – and, anyway, I’m bloody too busy to be thinking about doing anything else!”

Picture: Sam Bagnall