Town boss Mick McCarthy says Blues owner Marcus Evans remained as supportive as ever when he spoke to him on Wednesday, despite the embarrassing 1-0 FA Cup defeat at Lincoln City on Tuesday, and doesn’t get the feeling the club wants to sack him.
"He was exactly the same,” McCarthy said. "He actually said he’d just about got over it and I said, ‘I haven’t’. That was yesterday. He said he’d just about got over it and I said, ‘I’m glad you have because I’m far from it’.
"He’s always very supportive, he’s great. He doesn’t come on and make me feel worse, that’s for sure.”
McCarthy says that while Evans has previously made his support clear publicly, it’s not something he feels he has to reiterate when the two speak.
"He knows I don’t need to hear it,” he added. "What I wouldn’t want to hear, and I’m sure other managers do get it from chairmen, is ‘why have you picked that one?’ and ‘why have you done this?’, ‘why have you done that?’, ‘why have you done the other?’ and who have got no idea about football and yet are telling you how to do it.
"That is the nice support that I’ve always had from Marcus, I don’t get that. It’s fine.”
He says he spent Wednesday at home with his family as he sought to get over the loss to the Imps: "I got to my bed about 2pm and I was up at quarter to six, didn’t sleep. I took my daughter to work, which was lovely, took her to the train station. Had a bit of a normal day, had my granddaughter, Fionnuala.
"I bought a newspaper and I bought it purposely just to read it and get it over and done with.
"I bought two papers, read what they had to say and I’ve been there, I’ve been that dragon slayer, it’s brilliant, it’s a great day.
"And I looked at it and I thought ‘fair play, they’ve got all the plaudits, they’re doing great, good luck to them, I can’t do anything about the result’. That was cathartic, that. Just got it out of my system.
"Do I listen anybody else? Do I heck. I don’t want anybody else’s opinion on it. I feel bad enough about it myself. Me and [director of football] Dave [Bowman] had a chat, me and TC had a chat, usual. I don’t go seeking anybody else’s counsel.”
McCarthy was again the subject of negative chants from the Blues’ support on Tuesday and he understands fans’ frustrations.
"I prefer it when I’m getting nice chants but it’s part of the gig,” he reflected. "It’s football now. We’ve had four years on an upward curve but we’re having a tough time. I kind of get it and if they want me sacked there’s not a great deal I can do about it.
"I’m going to continue working and be focused on trying to win games. And if it ends up that the club wants to sack me, they sack me, but I don’t get that feeling, I have to be honest.
"The position that we’re in, we’re not great but we’re 10 points above Blackburn, who we beat last week and 11 points from the play-offs.
"We’re kind of mid-table and, do you know what, that’s probably where we should be with the budget we have, compared to the ones above us.
"But it’s not great football, it’s not great results, I get it. Do I lose any sleep over it? I probably did on Tuesday, yes.
"But I’m more concerned about how I feel, not how other people feel about me. I’m more concerned about how we’re playing and the results that we get and not some people who want to say nasty things about me.
"It always gets worse, somebody else gets asked and they try and say something even nastier and it’s even more humiliating and more humbling, but I’m not bothered, I’m more concerned about how I feel about myself.”
He says it’s easier to take now than it was earlier in his career: "I remember being considerably younger at Millwall and how much it did affect me then. I think you tend to take it far more personally.
"I’ve got a bit more perspective on life and people who say things to be hurtful and I can still manage to speak to them now, whereas when I was younger I would probably have confronted them. I still might when the occasion comes.
"It’s a lot easier. Age has to bring something, surely. Whatever that is, I think ‘thank God for that’ sometimes because I wouldn’t want to be as angry now as I was when I was 37 because I was an angry man then. Occasionally it raises its head.
"But that doesn’t mean I want to win any less. It doesn’t mean that losing hurts me any less.
"It doesn’t mean that I can feel any better about being humbled and embarrassed by a National League side. I can’t.
"But I can just get my head around it a bit better and that when I do pick my granddaughter up it’s not eating away at me every single minute of every single day, that I get enjoyment out of that and then when I put her down and she’s gone off with my wife, I might be sat in the chair having a cup of tea and I’ll be snarling about it, but at least I can enjoy other things and it’s not as intense in my head as it always was.”
While he says there has been no progress on adding to his squad, he and Evans are continuing to work on incoming transfers with his one million-plus offers having been increased.
McCarthy says the two liaise regarding moves - "I am very much part of the process" - and on occasion he tells the Blues’ owner where to draw the line when it comes to a valuation.
"Sometimes that would be the case, yes,” he continued. "If somebody asked for a bonkers cost I’d say it’s not worth it.
"That’s not happened too often, I have to be honest. But in this inflated market I would hate to spend a whole load of money on somebody and find out he’s not that much better and end up having to keep him for the next three years on inflated wages. That wouldn’t be right either. But I leave it to Marcus pretty much, in terms of the valuation of players.”
He added: "I’ve always found if you ask somebody, if the answer’s no, it can’t be done asking in a different way and sort of begging. I’m not into that, believe me. If we can’t do it, we can’t do it. That’s been the same way for the last four years.”