If you had asked the Manchester United supporters a couple of years back which of their former coaches would end up in the Premier League first, you’d have forgiven the majority if they opted for Michael Carrick.
The Champions League-winning midfielder had already had a brief if promising spell in charge of the first-team, after all, stepping into the breach and claiming impressive results against Chelsea, Villarreal and Arsenal following the tear-jerking departure of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
What’s more, while Middlesbrough may have been struggling at the wrong end of the Championship when Carrick was appointed in October 2022, at least they were a second-tier team. That could not be said of the side who hired Kieran McKenna less than 12 months earlier, another of Ole’s old assistants dropping down to the third-tier in order to kick-start his solo managerial career.
It’s pretty remarkable then that, while most would accept that Carrick has done a fine job at Middlesbrough, it is McKenna’s Ipswich who are just three games away from going up against Manchester United in the top-flight next term.
Former Manchester United coach close to Premier League
“I really hope Ipswich go up. Kieran McKenna is some coach,” Demetri Mitchell, the former Man United youngster, writes on X.
‘Go up’ they will, too, presuming Ipswich win each of their three remaining league matches. Their destiny is in their own hands, third-place but having played a game fewer than promotion rivals Leicester City and Leeds United.
Mitchell came up against McKenna’s Ipswich when they were still in League One. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course, but the one-time Exeter winger claims to have realised straight away that the Tractor Boys were on their way to far greener pastures.
“After playing Ipswich last season, I said they’d go back to back,” Mitchell adds, re-calling the 6-0 drubbing his Exeter side suffered at Anglian hands.
The one-time England Under 20 international then makes another bold prediction. One that might have seemed outlandish a few months back, but certainly not now.
“McKenna will manage Man United in three – five years. Save this tweet.”
‘Genius’
One of – if not the – sharpest young tactical mind in English football, McKenna has long been appreciated by those in the know but the sight of his Ipswich side storming to promotion from League One and then immediately cruising through the Championship have certainly exposed the 37-year-old’s talents to a far more mainstream audience.
McKenna has lost only 20 of his 128 matches in charge of Ipswich. His 57 per cent win rate, meanwhile, is the best of any Portman Road boss since the 1930s.
The Man United job is likely to come too soon – even if Ineos decide to move on from Erik ten Hag – but should Ipswich take to the Premier League like a duck to water too, Mitchell’s ‘three to five’ year plan might start to look even a little un-ambitious.
Does Old Trafford return beckon for Ipswich boss?
“He’s young, he’s got ambitions. There is 12, 13 players in the Ipswich first-team who are taking their coaching badges now because they want to coach like Kieran McKenna,” Tractor Boys hero Darren Ambrose tells talkSPORT (6 April, 11.20am).
“He has his methods and he’s sticking by them. It worked in League One and it’s working in hte Championship. And I have no doubts it will work in the Premier League if they get there.
“I am gutted I didn’t get chance to play for a manager like Kieran McKenna. I think he’d have made me 20, 30, 40 per cent better. He’s done that with all of his players.”
“I have no doubt he would be able to go to Man United today and run that football club. He will be a success wherever he goes,” adds the former Newcastle and Crystal Palace midfielder.
“Yes, he’d have to stop conceding goals. He and Ipswich are very much ‘we’ll score more than you do’. It’s worked. It doesn’t always work when you get to the high level. But I think he is good enough and he will adapt to that.”