Town boss Mick McCarthy says neither tonight’s opponents Fulham nor anyone else has ever made an approach for him since he took over at Portman Road with his contract with the Blues including a substantial buy-out clause. The Cottagers were widely reported to be interested in McCarthy at the end of last season.
Quizzed on whether he had received any interest from Fulham, who are currently managerless following the sacking of Kit Symons, he said: "If I had I wouldn’t tell you but genuinely, no.
"But if I had I’m hardly going to sit here and say ‘Oh yeah, they gave me a call and I had a chat with them’, am I?
"I wouldn’t do it anyway, I’ve told you. They all know the situation. If anybody rings me up I say ‘Ring Marcus because there’s a clause in my contract that you can buy me out’. Nobody’s ever been bothered with that so I think everybody knows now.
"But that’s fine because it stops people ringing me up. If somebody was deadly serious and thought that I was worthy of doing something else, they know the rules, don’t they? And then there’s a decision to make. But that’s never been the case.”
He says the clause was inserted when he was given the job at Town just over three years ago, a few months after he left Wolves: "I did that right at the very start when I took it out with Marcus. Don’t forget, I’d only just left the Premier League at the time, seven or eight months beforehand.
"And it was so if a Premier League club wanted to take me then there was a clause in the contract.
"Not specific to Premier League clubs, it’s a clause to buy me out and it’s pretty restrictive enough that nobody’s even going to bother [asking Marcus].”
He added: "That was there from when I took the job and I’m more than happy with it, so if everyone wants to know that’s there.
"I’m sure people do know because I’ve been asked before and I’ve said before, ‘Talk to Marcus Evans, if that’s the case, if somebody wants to talk to me’ because I won’t speak to anybody.
"But I wouldn’t do it. I try to look at it the other way. If people were talking to Marcus about him giving my job to somebody else, I’d be pretty pissed off, so that’s how I tend to look at it and I wouldn’t be so disrespectful to do it to him. And I know full well he wouldn’t be that disrespectful to do it to me.”
McCarthy currently has no agent and didn’t have one during his playing days. Asked if he’d have one if he was playing now, he quipped: "I’d flipping need one, I’m 56! I’d want one of them super-agents, Ronaldo’s agent!”