Mick wasn’t the only relieved member of the McCarthy family on Tuesday night.

The Blues boss had a beaming smile back on his face following the 2-0 home victory over Bolton in midweek, a result that ended a frustrating seven-game winless streak.

And back home in Bromley his wife Fiona was cheering too.

“Not winning affects us all,” admitted McCarthy. “I thought I’d been okay, but maybe I wasn’t.

“My missus, Fiona, says it’s nice to have her lovely husband back. I don’t know who’s been in my house for the last few weeks if that is the case, but I think I know what she meant!

“It has been affecting me. It does irk me. Sometimes you have to come in with the red nose on, the silly hat and be juggling just to make a point to the players – you’re saying ‘if I’m okay, then everyone else will be okay’.

“There’s no doubt that takes its toll on you though.

“But if you let it get to you, if your demeanour changes and your personality changes, that’s when results start going belly up completely.

“That didn’t happen for us. We didn’t lose game-after-game-after-game. We may not have been winning, but we remained competitive in most games.

“I think we’re eighth in the table in terms of games lost, it’s just been our inability to force a winner or see games out.”

He added: “Yesterday I just felt like a half-normal human being. I wasn’t walking around with a big smile on my face, whereas if we’d had lost I’d have been scowling.

“It’s a nice feeling not to have that nagging feeling of ‘what if I’d have done that?’ in my head constantly.

“That win just takes away some of that stress that goes on in your head when you’ve been beaten.”

Ipswich take on rock-bottom Rotherham at the New York Stadium tomorrow afternoon.

Neil Redfearn is the first Millers boss since Tommy Johnston in 1958 not to have won any of their first five matches in charge, though the ex-Leeds coach was handed a baptism of fire with opening games against Brentford (2-1 loss away), Reading (1-1 home draw), Sheffield Wednesday (2-1 loss away), Derby (3-0 loss away) and Middlesbrough (1-0 loss away).

“Neil has got his work cut out because that’s not an easy situation to be thrown into,” said McCarthy.

“When you come into a club you immediately think ‘who can I hang my hat on?’ and you find that out very quickly through the tittle-tattle in the dressing room, through the staff and through watching them in training.

“They’ve got a lot of loanees, like we did when I first came here, and you’ve really got to capture their hearts and minds.”

With the Rotherham squad including ex-Ipswich loanees Paul Green and Frazer Richardson, McCarthy added: “You want the players you can trust and Greeny and Fraser are certainly two tops guys, as they showed when they were here.”

Redfearn said: “Ipswich perhaps haven’t hit top gear yet, the bottom line is we’re at home and we’ve got to make the running. It’s a great opportunity to put our foot in the door, put some points on the board and start moving the other way.”

Get involved in all the pre-match discussion ahead of Town’s trip to Rotherham with our Match Centre