Ipswich Town manager Mick McCarthy says he is going nowhere after a section of the Blues support turned on him during today’s comprehensive 2-0 home defeat to Fulham.

The mood inside Portman Road turned toxic as the slick visitors cruised to victory. Slavisa Jokanovic’s men dominated possession and could have scored more, while toothless Town never tested keeper David Button.

There were chants of ‘(Marcus) Evans sort it out’, ‘We want McCarthy out’ and ‘Mick McCarthy, your football is s***’ from sections of – but by but no means all – the Town fans during the latter stages, followed by boos at the final whistle.

Ipswich, who are 15th in the Championship table following a wholly uninspiring 2016, now host Bristol City on Friday night.

Asked what he made of the game, McCarthy replied: “We were beaten by a much better team, that’s what I think.”

Why was there such a gap in class between the teams?

“Maybe they’ve got better players who played better on the day. I think we’ve been well-beaten by a very good side.”

So was it a case of them being good, as supposed to his team being bad?

“I can’t take any criticism away form us, because I don’t think we were particularly good, but I think you have to give credit to the opposition when they are a good side,” said McCarthy. “It’s easy for me to come in here and blame my players and say we weren’t any good, but we tried our best, as we always do, and they were better than us.”

A section of the crowd has clearly turned on McCarthy...

“Yep – I can’t complain about that,” he replied.

That’s two wins in nine home games now. A poor record.

“Yes,” was McCarthy’s simple reply.

You can’t dress up the statistics can you?

“No, I can’t. Not at all,” said the Blues boss.

Is January now a key month?

“I would say so,” he said. “We better make sure December ends well first because we’ve got a game on Friday. We’ve got to do better, all of us, because that was poor.”

Were the chants aimed at him personally fair?

“Well I haven’t changed a lot, so whatever I’m doing now isn’t that different from four years ago. I fully understand it; it’s their right to shout, they want to see better football than that and see their team win at home.

“I’ve no complaints about it at all. I much preferred it when it was supportive and ‘super Mick’, but as I’ve said before I’ve always known the mood can change very quickly. It’s going to be a tough job to turn that around now though.”

So does he believe he can turn the tide of opinion?

“We’ve got a game on Friday and we need to play much better than that,” said McCarthy. “We need to win and we need to give them a much better performance, If we don’t it will be much worse than today.”

McCarthy said at last week’s PLC AGM that he had no intentions of leaving the club before his contract – which still has 18 months left to run – was up. Is that still the case?

“Very much so,” he replied. “I won’t be resigning in the morning if that’s what you’re asking me. I’ll be here on Friday for the game and keep scrapping as I always do. It’s been made harder, that’s for sure.”

Is more transfer business required in January than he anticipated?

“There is only a certain amount of business that we can do,” he said. “Just because we’ve been beaten by a really good side today, that doesn’t suddenly say I’ve got to go out and get twice as many players as I thought I needed. No, we’ll try and do our business as we always have.”

Does Marcus Evans now need to show his real support for McCarthy by backing him in the transfer market?

“I’ve told you all along I’ve always had his support and I don’t think that will be any different in January,” he replied.

What did McCarthy say to his players in the dressing room?

“The dressing room is sacrosanct for me. I guess it was a flavour of what I’ve said here. I’ve not dressed it up and said we were unlucky. No, we could have been beaten by more. We now need to pull together for Friday and produce a performance. That’s the flavour of it. I’m never going to tell you exactly what I said to the players and how I said it though.”

And McCarthy will have his usual post-match phone conversation with Evans?

“Yeah. Why would that change?” he replied.