Mick McCarthy and Terry Connor

MICK McCarthy has admitted his start at Ipswich Town has been “better than anybody could have hoped for”.

The Blues boss has overseen an impressive points haul of six from nine after wins over Birmingham and Burnley sandwiched a heavy defeat at Crystal Palace.

Too experienced to get carried away, McCarthy acknowledges that there is still a lot of work to do but a week without any midweek football has meant a decent few days on the training pitch.

McCarthy said: “We’d have all taken six points from nine. It’s a fantastic start – better than anybody could have hoped for.

“I’m not kidding myself though, I know everything is not suddenly all fine because of this good start. There’s still plenty of work to be done, but let’s not let that take away from the fact that the lads have done well so far.”

Asked what he is preaching on the training ground, along with assistant Terry Connor, the manager revealed: “This week has been great, we’ve had a good time on the training pitch.

“We want to be organised and hard-to-beat – we started that from day one and continued it in the games.

“Conceding goals as been a theme of the season, but that’s based on the team performance, not just the goalkeeper and the back four.

“You’ve always got a chance, whether it be a free-kick, a long throw or a corner, but if you keep shipping goals the way we were doing it makes life very difficult.

“It’s about making it stick up front, keeping hold of it when we can and being careful in possession.”