MICK McCarthy promised Ipswich Town fans he’s going nowhere after completing Mission Impossible.

Rock-bottom of the Championship table with just seven points when he arrived on November 1, Town’s safety was secured on Saturday with an impressive 3-1 home win over Birmingham.

A return of 53 points from 32 games will make the Blues boss one of the front runners for manager of the season.

Up to 11th in the table, his side could still finish as high as ninth with victory in the curtain-closer at Burnley next weekend.

The former Republic of Ireland, Sunderland and Wolves boss said recently that he has fierce personal ambitions to return to the top level of the game.

However, he promised fans who attended the supporters’ club’s awards night post-match that he would still be in the hot-seat come the start of next season.

“I’m staying,” he said. “The agreement was I’d stay if we stayed up, I’d go if we went down. Relegation would have been a disaster for this club and there would have been a whole host of changes.

“If somebody had said to me when I arrived that it would need 60 points to stay up when we had seven I would have said ‘do my a favour, we won’t get anywhere near it’. It’s just been remarkable this league.”

With the majority of a near 22,000 crowd staying behind to salute the players’ efforts following the final home match of the campaign, McCarthy – whose side sealed their latest victory through goals from Carlos Edwards, Luke Chambers and Daryl Murphy – said: “I’ve just said to the lads that I’m not really happy going around and applauding our crowd because we’ve stayed up and we’re all relieved. I don’t enjoy that.

“Where we are now from where we were is a win, but I’d rather be celebrating the play-offs. I’m not happy just staving off relegation.”

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