WHEN Roy Keane walked out of the Republic of Ireland camp in the run-up to the 2002 World Cup, he felt compelled to deliver a withering assessment of Mick McCarthy's managerial capabilities.

"You were a crap player and you're a crap manager," blasted Keane. Despite all that has happened at Sunderland this season, it is unlikely that posterity will judge him as harshly.

Instead, the Yorkshireman's three years on Wearside have highlighted both his obvious strengths and his equally evident flaws. When McCarthy was good, he was very, very good; when McCarthy was bad, he was awful.

Consequently, his reign at the Stadium of Light included sky-scraping highs and soul-destroying lows. The joy of promotion was tempered by the despair of the drop. The pleasure of an FA Cup semi-final was balanced by the pain of play-off defeat.

And McCarthy's ability to mould a team capable of winning the Championship was ultimately overshadowed by his inability to cope with the demands of a higher level. He will be remembered as a manager with limitations.

In hindsight, those limitations were apparent from the moment he replaced the unpopular Howard Wilkinson in March 2003. Nine consecutive defeats should have set alarm bells ringing but, with the club imploding around him, McCarthy was able to cite the exceptional circumstances in which he was being asked to operate as justification for his lengthy winless run.

With relegation confirmed, the former Republic of Ireland boss was forced to adopt the guise of an auctioneer, selling off the club's leading assets to the highest bidder.

The departure of more than a dozen senior professionals would have left most managers anticipating a season of strife but, instead, McCarthy set about doing what he was best at.

Eschewing any opportunity to wallow in self-pity, the Black Cats boss displayed the same obduracy that had won him 57 international caps as he pulled the ailing club up by its bootstraps.

Out went the uncommitted, unmotivated superstars who had accelerated Sunderland's demise, and in came the likes of Jeff Whitley and Gary Breen, players crafted in their manager's uncompromising image.

A 2-0 win at Preston prevented the Wearsiders equalling the worst losing run in English footballing history and kick-started a revival that would eventually take McCarthy to the brink of both the FA Cup final and the Premiership.

The cup run, which included an eye-catching win over top-flight opponents Birmingham, ended in defeat to Millwall at the semi-final stage, but the league campaign went into overtime as Sunderland qualified for the end-of-season play-offs.

Two see-saw games with Crystal Palace saw emotions fluctuate wildly, before Whitley's crucial penalty miss condemned the Black Cats to a second season outside the Premiership.

The disappointment was considerable and, with the club at a crossroads, McCarthy was faced with a stark decision. Should he give his ageing squad a chance to atone for their mistakes, or should he rebuild again with an accent on youth and desire?

By choosing the latter, the 46-year-old backed both his eye for talent and his ability to hold his nerve when his judgment was being questioned from all sides. By the end of the season, his decision had been vindicated.

Few managers would have signed Liam Lawrence from Mansfield and Dean Whitehead from Oxford. Even fewer would have kept on picking them when they both failed to score in the club's first 14 games.

McCarthy did, though, just as he also brought Stephen Elliott from Manchester City reserves, Andy Welsh from Stockport and Danny Collins from Chester. All five players made crucial contributions to Sunderland's promotion campaign and have gone on to play in the Premiership.

With a squad of hungry youngsters to call upon, McCarthy's well-honed motivational skills came to the fore. His furious response to a 2-1 defeat at Brighton made the windows rattle - his players' response was an eight-game winning run that all but secured the Championship title.

Yet, while promotion to the Premiership marked the pinnacle of McCarthy's reign, it also proved to be the beginning of the end.

Suddenly, he was no longer a Championship coach dealing with limited expectations. The Premiership is an unforgiving environment and, as he found to his cost, even the smallest of failings are magnified incessantly. Sadly, his squad's failings far outweighed their capabilities.

In mitigation, McCarthy was hardly helped by his board. The fact that he entered the boardroom with a host of names, only to be told they were unrealistic targets, is one of the worst-kept secrets on Wearside.

Darren Bent, Roy Carroll and Kenny Miller all figured prominently on his wanted list, only for transfer fees or wage demands to prove instantly inhibitive.

Consequently, McCarthy was forced to turn to Plan B - the only problem being that his back-up policy was hardly a very good one.

Jon Stead had scored two goals in the previous 12 months, so it should not have taken a rocket scientist to realise there was a considerable risk of him going as long again without finding the target.

Andy Gray was a converted midfielder struggling to hold down a place in the Sheffield United team - McCarthy shelled out £1.1m to make him his side's number one marksman.

Similarly, the likes of Kelvin Davis, Christian Bassila and Tommy Miller all failed to make an impression after moving to the Stadium of Light last summer.

McCarthy could claim he was not given the money needed to keep his side in the top-flight. His board could claim his spending record suggests he would only have squandered it anyway.

An opening-day defeat to Charlton gave a glimpse of what was to come and, by the time McCarthy broke his Premiership win duck at Middlesbrough, his side were already rooted to the foot of the table.

A succession of defeats followed, every one more demoralising than the last, with a three-goal loss to Portsmouth and an embarrassing FA Cup exit at Brentford marking particularly low points in a season of unrelenting strife.

All was clearly not well when McCarthy became embroiled in a public war of words with chairman Bob Murray, following suggestions the club had planned for relegation last summer.

He looked to have survived when the pair put on a united front and, with the dressing room still firmly behind him, thoughts were already turning to how he would fare next season.

Ultimately, though, his Premiership record was simply too disastrous to ignore.

His abject transfer record and tactical naivety eventually proved his downfall and prevented him returning to the environment he knows best.

The irony is that Sunderland now need a new Mick McCarthy to resurrect them once again.

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