Ipswich Town manager Mick McCarthy says the club will be ‘losing a few players’ this summer.

With Easter weekend victories against Burton and Newcastle making the Blues mathematically safe from Championship relegation, the planning for the club’s 16th successive season in the second-tier can begin.

Luke Chambers, Christophe Berra, Steven Taylor, Jordan Spence, Paul Digby, Jonathan Douglas and Leon Best are all nearing the end of their deals, while Tom Lawrence, Emyr Huws, Toumani Diagouraga, Jonny Williams and Dominic Samuel will see their loans expire.

Goalkeeper Bartosz Bialkowski is also set to be coveted.

Speaking ahead of Saturday’s game at rock-bottom Rotherham, McCarthy said: “(Planning ahead) has been tentative because we didn’t know if we were safe. I’ll sit down with (owner) Marcus (Evans) now to discuss what we want to do, what he wants to do and what I want to do. Hopefully we can come up with something.

“There is a real opportunity to freshen it up because there are a lot of players out of contract and quite a few on loan – do they want to stay, do we want them, can we sign them? There’ll be all those things in the mix.

“We’ll be losing a few players. It could be a new look. This is my fifth season and, as I’ve said before, I think people can get tired of you. I don’t know how many team talks you can do? Sometimes it needs changing. There have been calls for me to be changed, but my intention is to come back and build a team capable of challenging for the play-offs again.”

Asked if contract talks had now started with players coming to the end of their deals, he said: “No, because we’ve not been in (since Monday). This is our first day back.”

Asked when his own big chat with Evans will happen, he replied: “When I sit down and talk to him.”

Is there a date set for that? “There is; I’m just not telling you because you’ll be in my earhole then asking me what’s happening. You’ll find out what’s happened as supposed to when it’s happening.”