Through the six years-plus he was manager of the Ireland team it was commonplace for Mick McCarthy, when asked for his impression of prospective opponents, to answer in rather vague terms, writes Emmet Malone.

Invariably he would qualify his answer with the promise he would be much more au fait with his opponent's strengths and weaknesses by the time it came to deliver his pre-match talk to his players.

Most accepted the line and so it came as something of a surprise when, along with two English journalists, I arrived in a taxi at the Stadium of Light in Lisbon in the autumn of 2000, took a wrong turn on the way to the press box and ended up hearing pretty much all of McCarthy's pre-match spiel before the first of Ireland's two 1-1 draws with Portugal during the last World Cup qualifying campaign.

Figo was, perhaps, mentioned by name but a star-studded Portuguese team was otherwise described in just the way we had become accustomed to at the press conferences. We stood a few feet outside a dressing-room with a partition wall but no ceiling and marvelled at the fact this could be as technical as it got in McCarthy's international set-up.

It didn't take long looking at his own teams, though, to figure out McCarthy wasn't a tactical wizard. His strength came instead from getting players to play for him and the regularity with which players performed better for their country, particularly in the biggest games, than for their clubs suggested it was a talent he had in abundance.

When McCarthy was originally linked with the Sunderland job in the wake of Peter Reid's dismissal the bulk of the speculation seems to have been generated by those close to him in the hope he would get an opportunity to walk away from the Ireland job at a time when it was turning sour.

There was some scepticism that the club was seriously interested in hiring him at that stage or, in particular, that Bob Murray had phoned Howard Wilkinson in some bizarre attempt to sound England's technical director out about McCarthy and that it was agreed the former Leeds boss should have the job instead. When Wilkinson was unveiled, though, there was almost complete unanimity, even among his critics, that McCarthy would have been a better choice.

It's hard to overstate the English media's love of McCarthy at the time. He was regularly feted by the BBC as a hero and even after he resigned his Irish job the Observer alleged the Irish media's criticism of him had been motivated by racism because he was English born.

The consensus was, having supposedly missed out on the Leeds job last summer and Sunderland in the autumn, he would be a shoo-in for the next vacancy that arose in the Premiership. The Fulham job was said to be his in the close season but Sunderland came around again, a week or so before Terry Venables left Leeds, Murray admitted Wilkinson had been a terrible mistake and off McCarthy went to take charge at another Stadium of Light.

By that point Sunderland needed something approaching a miracle but his many admirers weren't ruling anything out. That he might fail was widely accepted but that he would fail so gloriously was more or less unthinkable.

Sunderland have lost 14 league games on the trot and McCarthy has been in charge for the last eight. Arsenal's own rather dismal run-in has deprived the Wearsiders of having a late say on the championship race and the club is already going down with the lowest tally of points in Premiership history.

Having failed to get the players playing for him, McCarthy looks like he will have to prove himself all over again and it's not clear how much time he has. We will start to get an idea how much value all of the experience he has picked up in the international game is to him at club level as he tries to cope with a drastically reduced budget and the need to offload at least a third of his squad.

If he can generate some cash he will also get the chance to buy in some players of his own choice but there isn't too much in the squad that would attract much of a fee in the present climate. Kevin Phillips will leave for a third of what could have valued at 18 months ago and David Bellion, reportedly a target for Manchester United, will go on a Bosman ruling with Sunderland receiving only a small sum in compensation as the Frenchman is under-24.

If he does get a chance to buy it is rumoured McCarthy hopes to add further to the remarkable numbers of Irish already at the club with Richard Dunne, David Connolly, Gary Breen and Matt Holland among those being linked the north east club.

On the face of it the approach might make some sense for these are players who have performed for him in the past and have a track record of doing well in the first division. It's possible as well, though, that viewing his new job as some sort of continuation of time with Ireland would suggest a certain lack of confidence in his own ability to spot, buy and motivate players he has not dealt with before.

Hitting the ground running is undoubtedly important and keeping the element of gamble to a minimum at the outset has a certain logic to it.

Statistically speaking a relegated club's chance of returning to the Premiership is strongest in its first season after going down and so McCarthy must hope Sunderland can emulate Leicester City by bouncing straight back while operating under terrible financial restraints. If Sunderland fail the club's finances are likely to get worse and it may take years to halt the downward spiral.

McCarthy's fate will be closely watched by his successor. It would obviously be better for Brian Kerr if established players like Kevin Kilbane, Jason McAteer and, perhaps Phil Babb, who has been told he can go for free but who may well not find a club willing to pay him in excess of £1 million per season for the next two years, are playing in a winning team next year and back in the Premiership after that. And it would be beneficial for the Irish youngsters at the club, Seán Thornton, Thomas Butler and Ritchie Ryan.

The months ahead will be interesting but in the meantime it's been noticeable how the enthusiasm for McCarthy has dampened just a little. On the various websites the supporters blame his predecessors for the state of affairs at the club but there is a good deal of caution in relation to the team's potential for next year. Journalists, meanwhile, have made it obvious over the recent weeks how surprised they have been with the team's continuing inability to muster a single point.

Seven years after he left Millwall, it's almost as if his time with Ireland was a dream. We're about to find out if he has what it takes to prevent his time at Sunderland turning into a nightmare.