“Every week you come and see the improvement in these kids, and it comes from upstairs. They are being managed the right way, and it would be criminal for these lads to move on too early in their careers.
"If the manager feels like they need to move on he’ll do it, but he won’t let them leave too early either, as he has seen it with the likes of John Bostock.”
For McCarthy, leading his side out at Wembley would have seemed unthinkable less than two years ago, when Crystal Palace went into administration and stood on the brink of ruin. “It’s not nice,” he remembered. “You aren’t getting paid from one month to the next. But all the lads stuck together.”
The second leg takes place in a fortnight, and although Palace’s success this season has been based on defensive tightness, McCarthy warned his team-mates not to play for a draw.
“A clean sheet wins the game, but we can’t go there and be negative,” he said. “We have a tough second leg at Cardiff, but we know the goal at the end of it would be the ultimate, to get to Wembley.”
Either of the other two semi-finalists would provide a poignant final for McCarthy. He spent five years at Manchester City as a youngster, while Liverpool were the club he supported as a child.