Ipswich Town manager Mick McCarthy has insisted that he holds no ill feelings towards Wolverhampton Wanderers, as he prepares to face his former club at Portman Road.

During his five years at Molineux, the 58-year-old guided the Midlanders to the Premier League and became the first man in 30 years to keep them there for more than a season.

Plenty of water has passed under the bridge since McCarthy was sacked by Wolves in 2012, but even now he is confident that he would have again kept them up had the club shown more faith in him at the time.

"If you get the sack you're never happy with how it ended," the Ipswich Star quotes the Yorkshireman as saying. "I'm still belligerent enough to think we wouldn't have gone down because we'd been in that position before. There were certainly still enough games left to get out of it.

"It wasn't like the dressing room was against me. It wasn't like Leicester where they sack the managers and suddenly win two games and look brilliant. Poor old TC (Terry Connor) was left on his own. I'm sure we are better together than individually.

"That's all history though. I loved my time there and have no resentment at all. I have nothing but good things to say about my time there. I loved it."

Since relegation from the Premier League, Wolves dropped into League One but returned immediately after for three more seasons of Championship football.