Sports are rife with what-ifs and hypotheticals, but there was a point in the late spring where we almost had the scenario of Kieran McKenna landing one of the biggest jobs in world soccer. McKenna was heavily tipped to join Manchester United, replacing the under-fire Dutch manager Erik Ten Hag. United – somehow – managed to beat Manchester City in the FA Cup Final, causing a wave of fan pressure to keep Ten Hag. McKenna, who also had talks for the Chelsea job, decided to stay with Ipswich Town, a team he has led to two successive promotions to the big time, the Premier League.
Now that the speculation has died down, McKenna faces the reality of the Premier League. His transformation of Ipswich on a shoestring budget has been remarkable, but it is his tactical nous that caught the eye of some of England’s biggest clubs. Ipswich secured promotions from League 1 and the EFL Championship while playing attractive, progressive football, and that is no mean feat. But the issue for McKenna is that he may have to be more pragmatic and conservative in the Premier League – just ask Burnley fans what can happen when you stick to a purist’s philosophy of open football across a season.
Ipswich Backed For The Drop In Betting Markets
Of course, we don’t know what’s going to happen yet, but the football betting odds for the new Premier League season predict that the three Championship teams that went up – Leicester City, Ipswich, Southampton – are the most likely to go straight back down again, so McKenna knows he is up against it.
Yet, one might argue that the consensus that newly promoted teams always struggle is overexaggerated: In three of the last ten seasons, all three promoted teams have avoided relegation. Overall, 19 of the 30 teams promoted to the Premier League from the Championship have managed to stay up for at least one season.
McKenna does have Premier League experience, at least to an extent. He was a former youth coach at Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United, and he was assistant to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at the latter (one of the reasons that the links to Manchester United this spring made sense). But there is a world of difference between being an assistant and head coach/manager, and the difference in pressure levels between the Championship and Premier League can seem exponential at times.
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The Goal Of Establishing The Club In The Premier League
For a team like Ipswich, survival is crucial. McKenna can look to teams like Brighton and Brentford, both of which are now established Premier League clubs after many years in the lower leagues. Those clubs are well known for playing attractive brands of football, and they should offer some kind of blueprint for McKenna to get this Ipswich team established. But there are also concerns about playing too open, trying, in a sense, to be too stylish, and then being torn to shreds by stronger teams. Last season’s Burnley was an example of that.
As such, the argument is that McKenna should stick to his principles while recognizing he must also be practical. He cannot play too negatively, as defensive-minded teams have usually struggled, with some exceptions (Stoke City). Moreover, McKenna has drilled his players in expansive, attacking football for two years, so he cannot suddenly start commanding them to drop deep. His players must adjust and recognize that they will see much less of the ball than they did in the Championship while also maintaining their attacking flair. It’s not always an easy balance to strike.
McKenna has just turned 38, making him younger than a handful of active Premier League players. As a novice manager, he has been turning heads, with many believing that he has the makings of being one of the best around. It seemed like the smarter move for him to sign a new contract rather than join Chelsea or Manchester United. If he can prove his worth in the Premier League by keeping Ipswich up while playing good football, you can be sure the big clubs will be circling around him again.
