One week into his time at Town new manager Mick McCarthy says he’s not been surprised by the size of the task he has taken on. Last Saturday’s 1-0 victory at Birmingham was followed by a 5-0 thrashing by Crystal Palace.
McCarthy said: "I knew what I was taking on, so I’ve not been surprised at all. We’ve had a great response and I think we had a good response on Tuesday night, actually.
"That’s not a problem. They’ve responded well in training. I knew it was going to be a really tough job.
"I think I said that it might be the last week of the season before we’re out of the bottom three, who’s to know? But that’s got to be the objective.”
He says he is getting a feel for the club and can see why Paul Jewell was so frustrated that he was unable to bring success back to Portman Road: "What I have found in my week here is everything that I was told about the place - and even more so from Paul and from Hutch - about what a great club it is, what a great place it is, what great people they are and the fans. I can understand now why he was so disappointed when he left.
"Not for himself, there was no self-pity going on, it was that he felt he hadn’t been able to create something that Ipswich Town could be proud of and that he could be proud of.
"When a manager leaves and says that to you, you often wonder but I’ve been here a week and I can understand that now.”
McCarthy says he has to look at things in his own way to try to succeed where his friend Jewell failed: "Our job now is to try and do it with a different perspective from Paul. All I know is that Paul is a good guy and a good manager, and I know he’s been tearing his hair out about certain things in the club as well.
"And I don’t want to be pulling my hair out because I haven’t got that much, and there are a few in here that haven’t either!
"I’ve come here and I’ll get them all grafting, I’ll get them all working, I’ll try to get the best out of them and they have got to get in my team.
"And if they don’t and if I start pulling my hair out then the first chance I get I’ll replace them with somebody else.”
He says what had Jewell tearing his hair out has been all too evident when has reviewed DVDs from earlier in the season and during the Palace game.
"When you get to be a manager like Paul or like myself, who has been experienced, he’s had lots of success, I’ve had lots of success, you get to know,” he said.
"You can organise your team, you get the best out of them. They don’t make mistakes on purpose, they hate it, I hated it as a player more than anybody if I made a mistake.
"But they have made a lot and I’ve looked at some of the games and that does make you pull your hair out.
"We’ve organised them and we played well for 25 minutes at Crystal Palace. The game’s settling down, we’ve just had our best period and the keeper’s palmed it over the crossbar.
"So we’re getting into the game against a really good side and then it’s in the back of our net. Those are the things which pull your hair our and we’ve got to stop that.”
Former boss Joe Royle instituted a token fines system when players were similarly in the habit of making individual errors during his time in charge, but McCarthy says he’ll not be going down that route: "I don’t think we pay them enough, to be honest.
"I don’t subscribe to that, you can make them fearful. You can make them even more fearful if they’re going to lose money from it and nobody does it on purpose. They don’t go out there to let me down or the fans down.
"They feel so horrible about it, as I’ve done in the past when I’ve made mistakes as a player. You don’t compound it by taking a few quid off them.”