Ipswich Town manager Mick McCarthy is ready to give up on scouring the loan market for new recruits and instead ‘make do and mend’.

Tuesday night’s 1-0 home defeat to Hull City was a fifth loss in six games across all competitions and saw the Blues slip to 10th in the Championship table ahead of tomorrow’s game at Huddersfield.

The club’s chances of securing a play-off place for the second successive season are fading fast, with the key quartet of Cole Skuse, Ryan Fraser, Teddy Bishop and David McGoldrick all sidelined through injury.

McCarthy recently utilised the ‘emergency’ loan window to bring in Fulham midfielder Ben Pringle, but his attempts to strengthen further have all failed so far.

Asked whether that was because clubs were not willing to let players go, or because players did not want to come to Portman Road, he replied: “A bit of both – that was the case during the (January) transfer window and it’s still the same position now. It’s always about who you want and whether can you get them. And it’s just not worked out.

“I’m still looking, but there are not too many around that people want to let go, I have to be honest. If that’s the case then we’ll have to make do and mend with what we’ve got, as we always do.”

Would owner Marcus Evans back him financially to land a loan player he felt was good enough?

“Yes,” replied McCarthy, before adding: “I think that ‘yes’ was fairly categoric wasn’t it?”

Revealing that he picked Larsen Toure ahead of Ainsley Maitland-Niles for a place on the bench in midweek because of the way the French winger had impressed in training, the Blues boss added: “These are the players we have and it’s up to me to get the best out of them. Everybody always starts looking elsewhere for answers when things get tough. The reality is that the answer might just have to be in-house. We may well just have to sort things out without any outside help or influence.

“Sometimes you have to be pragmatic about what has happened to us and understand that you can’t afford to lose the players that we have (to injury) and still be as good as we were.”