How Kieran McKenna recovered from brutal Manchester United treatment to become elite manager

Back-to-back promotions have made richer clubs covet Ipswich head coach who has spectacularly proved detractors inside Old Trafford wrong

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As the pressure grew on Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United in the autumn of 2021, the club made him an offer. They believed there was a lack of experience on the manager’s coaching staff and he needed help. They wanted to bring in someone new.
Solskjaer responded by telling United’s executive vice-chairman, Ed Woodward, that he regarded his coaches as “world-class” and he did not need anyone else.
So, United backed off. There was even talk of those coaches being offered new contracts, following on from the one awarded to the manager that summer and, later, his assistant, Mike Phelan, which again pointed to the lack of joined-up thinking. Within weeks, Solskjaer was sacked and the attention focused even more on his staff and the roles they had played.
Chief among them was Kieran McKenna and, less so, former United midfielder Michael Carrick. Both were first-team coaches. At the time, sources told Telegraph Sport that McKenna, then just 35, appeared out of his depth, that he lacked charisma and that he acted like a schoolteacher; that the training sessions he put on were more suited to the academy football from where he had been promoted and lacked intensity. And that this had contributed to United’s problems.
The criticism was withering, portraying McKenna as a clipboard coach and that while he clearly knew what he was doing, and put a significant amount of work into it, his relative lack of experience meant he was not always fully listened to and he could not quite push the players hard enough.
How wrong it was. Three years later, McKenna will be in Ipswich Town’s dugout at Portman Road, having earnt extraordinary back-to-back promotions, facing Ruben Amorim in the Premier League in what will be the Portuguese’s first game in charge.
Such has been his impressive progress that it could even have been McKenna as United’s head coach. Not this time around, when Erik ten Hag was finally sacked, but at the end of last season when he was on the list worked through by United and Ineos as they carried out their review as to whether Ten Hag should continue.
No one denies there was interest in McKenna and there were talks with his representatives before the FA Cup final win that ultimately helped earn Ten Hag a reprieve. However, it certainly did not go as far as the more detailed discussions with Roberto De Zerbi and, in particular, Thomas Tuchel.
Tuchel was closest to getting the job before, depending on who you believe, he walked away or United decided against him.
But the very fact that McKenna was in the conversation shows the remarkable steps he has made at Ipswich and the potential many feel he possesses. Ipswich certainly recognised it and quickly tied McKenna down to a new four-year deal just five days after the Cup final.
Indeed, while some sources at United were dismissive of him, others, drowned out in the aftermath of Solskjaer’s dismissal and the ensuing blame game, were talking about McKenna even then as being a ‘top six’ manager in the making.
And it was not just United sniffing around last summer, with McKenna also of interest to Chelsea before he withdrew from the contest. He stayed at Ipswich after majority shareholder Ed Schwartz flew in to head off the prospect of him leaving.
So, maybe the problem for McKenna at United first time around was not him but United. He would not be alone in that and it says more about the egos and corrosive state of the club’s dressing room at the time that some were so eager to dismiss him and blame him.
It will be one of Amorim’s tasks to improve that unhealthy atmosphere, something that eluded Solskjaer and, to a degree Ten Hag, despite making so many of his own signings. It is a familiar complaint of underperforming players to blame everyone but themselves and unfortunately this has been a recurring theme at United.
The man who took over from Solskjaer, Ralf Rangnick, may not have succeeded but he identified the problems, complaining about the lack of “team spirit and togetherness” within the squad. The Austrian also wanted McKenna to stay but shrewdly realised he should forge his own path.
The Northern Irishman had told himself he wanted to be a manager by the age of 35. He was appointed by then League One Ipswich aged 35 and seven months.
It had been dismissively remarked at United that McKenna was younger than some of the first-team players but that has become an increasing trend in modern football where there are career coaches such as Brighton and Hove Albion’s 31-year-old Fabian Hürzeler. McKenna was also on Brighton’s radar to succeed De Zerbi, as was Carrick who has forged a reputation for playing good football at Middlesbrough, even if he is under increasing pressure to deliver promotion this season.
Again, it points to the theory that the problem was not those young coaches but what they had to work with, the lack of support around them and the culture at United. Solskjaer’s approach was collegiate but very much that of a general manager, having naturally used Sir Alex Ferguson as his role model.
But the issue with that was the Norwegian simply did not possess Ferguson’s ability, acumen or bite. With such a young staff, also including set-piece specialist Eric Ramsey – then just 29 – there may simply have been a lack of authority on the training ground which extended to the boardroom.
To add grist to the idea that McKenna was always one to watch, it must be remembered who marked him out in the first place after he went “straight from crutches to coaching” at Tottenham Hotspur. McKenna had been on the verge of the first team only for his playing career as a midfielder to be cut short at 22 due to a chronic hip injury.
Even by then he had been identified as a future manager. First by youth-team coach Jimmy Neighbour and, after that, by academy manager John McDermott and another youth-team coach, Alex Inglethorpe, who have both forged strong reputations as talent-spotters. McDermott is now the Football Association’s technical director – and has just appointed Tuchel as England head coach – and Inglethorpe is Liverpool’s academy director.
There were more advocates. In 2016, McKenna was poached by United and the chance to work at the club he grew up supporting – initially as the Under-18s coach – was too good to turn down. He was quickly noticed by Jose Mourinho and when his long-serving assistant Rui Faria left two years later, McKenna moved up to the first-team staff. While Mourinho’s star is on the wane, he has remained a shrewd judge and encouraged McKenna.
McKenna has undoubtedly benefited from the turbulent experience at United. He identified the pressure and he talked about how every defeat was treated like a disaster. It has hardened him to the demands and expectations of being a manager. With his outstanding work at Ipswich, and backed by the ambitious club, his star has continued to rise. It has risen to such an extent that Solskjaer’s description of McKenna as “world-class” feels increasingly accurate.
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