Blues boss Mick McCarthy says he’ll continue to manage the club as if he’s going to be at Town next season even if that’s currently far from certain.
McCarthy’s contract with at Portman Road is up in the summer and, although owner Marcus Evans has an option to keep him for a further two years, most fans and pundits expect his time in Suffolk to come to an end after almost six years.
Despite the uncertainty, McCarthy says Evans doesn’t ask about his plans after this season when the two talk.
"He doesn’t because he knows while I’m here [I’ll continue to do the job], as I’m doing. I signed Barry Cotter yesterday. I don’t think he’s a first-team player yet but I think he’ll be a good player for the club.
"I’m sending Flynn Downes out to Luton so he’s going to be a good player for the club for next season.
"I signed Aaron Drinan because I think he’s going to be a good player for next season and beyond.
"He knows he can trust me to keep doing the job whatever I decide to do, or he decides to do for that matter.
"I might get something offered and I might say, ‘No, I don’t want to do it’. But he might not offer me anything.
"But equally, I’m not nipping his ear saying, ‘I want to have a chat to talk about my future’ and he’s not saying, ‘You better come in, I want to do something’.
"And I left it like that when I spoke to him before Christmas and I’m cool with that.”
He says he’ll continue to manage as if he were to remain boss next season whatever the summer might bring.
"Absolutely,” he added. "When I took my first job at Millwall, I was in the office and they brought me a big pile of papers in and I did the pre-season, I made plans going forward, I was looking at signing players, I was doing all that.
"I did it as if I was going to be there. I hadn’t got a clue whether I would be, I’d got 10 games and anything could have happened.
"And, of course, I did. I did the pre-season, I planned all that and I’ve continued to do that here.
"And I will continue doing that until the season finishes or whenever my future is determined. Whether it’s Marcus who determines it or whether I determine it. It could be either way at the moment.”
Evans has faced criticism for his lack of comparative lack of spending, does McCarthy believe the Blues owner shares his ambition to get Town back in the Premier League?
"Yes, he does,” the Blues boss insisted. "But how do you judge ambition? Is it by everybody having to throw shedloads of money at it and spending beyond what you think he can or what he wants to do?
"Or is it ambitious to keep trying to get players in and try and build it, trying to get better? I think on that score, yes. He’s very thorough with the academy and the scouting and all the things that we’re doing.
"But we haven’t thrown shedloads of money at it and we’re not going to start throwing shedloads of money at it, but we still want to be a success.
"And we’ll keep trying to be a success doing it with the, as people say, the model that we’ve got. We’ll keep trying to do it.”