THE EASY THING would have been to quit.
All Kieran McKenna had to do was give up on football and go home to County Fermanagh when a chronic hip injury forced him to retire from playing at the age of 22.
He could have been bitter and resentful and turned his back on the game that offered so much before his body had other ideas.
Instead, almost 15 years on, he is finally primed for the Premier League as manager of Ipswich Town and could do so by breaking records in the English Championship.
How?
His days as a midfielder with Tottenham Hotspur ended in 2009. A job was waiting in the family business had he wished. The Manor House Country Hotel by Lough Erne is the product of his parents’ life work after they returned from London.
His father, Liam, was a car mechanic while his mother, Mary, worked as a nurse.
“Seeing the work they’ve put in, the hours, the way they managed people, the passion they put into it, definitely influenced me,” McKenna told The Guardian earlier this year.
Those ethics were clear to see from his teens, when he left Fermanagh for Tottenham after being spotted by scout Gerry McKee.
“He was so studious about the game,” former Spurs striker Clive Allen, who oversaw the reserve side that McKenna starred in as a midfielder alongside Jamie O’Hara, tells The 42.
“He loved the game. You could tell he loved football and wanted to learn. He was always asking questions to get better and it was very evident from an early age. He was demanding of his teammates and coaches.
“He was single minded even then,” Allen continues. “He was extremely competitive and determined. He just seemed to give everything he had to the game even as a young man, so it was devastating when he had his career taken away.”
Allen made a speech when the youngster was forced to retire, declaring that he wished he had a team full of Kieran McKennas.
Spurs also wanted to make sure he stayed involved. A role on the coaching staff with the U18s was offered, and accepted.
John McDermott, now the English FA’s technical director, was in charge of Spurs’ academy and encouraged McKenna to broaden his horizons by furthering his education with a sports science degree at Loughborough University.
McKenna had earned nine A Stars in his GSCEs prior to leaving for England, so the chance to return to the classroom appealed, even if it felt like a step backwards in his new coaching career.
All of a sudden he was coaching Nottingam Forest’s U9s just over 30 minutes from the university.
As fate would have it, McKenna landed at Loughborough in the same year as one of Allen’s sons who was studying economics.
Both got involved with Loughborough’s football team – McKenna took charge of the side in the eighth tier of non-league – and the family friendship strengthened as a result.
“He is a bright and intelligent man, he’s still a young man too and has so much experience,” Allen adds of the 37-year-old.
“When he sets his mind to something, Kieran is the type of person to be driven to succeed. The experiences he’s already had in life and football will take him onwards and upwards.”
When he completed his time at Loughborough and returned to Spurs’ academy, he soon caught the eye of Manchester United’s head of academy Nicky Butt.
McKenna, a childhood devotee of the Old Trafford club, was lured away from London to take charge of the U18s and in his second season won the Premier League Northern Division.
By the age of 31 he was promoted to the first-team coaching staff by then manager Jose Mourinho.
He was retained alongside Michael Carrick when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer got the job and after the Norwegian was sacked in November 2021 McKenna helped hold the fort until the following month.
Ipswich was a club beginning to emerge from a state of bleakness and they trusted McKenna to carry them through.
He has delivered.
In April of ’21, the Ohio-based investment fund ORG assumed control of the League One outfit after buying out previous owner Marcus Evans for £40 million.
Financial Fair Play constraints mean McKenna has not been lavished with a transfer budget to blow rivals out of the water.
It is why one of his first requests when he was given the job was to ensure facilities were improved instead.
“He wanted to make the pitch at Portman Road better, he told the club it wasn’t good enough and needed to be ripped up for how he wanted to play,” says former Republic of Ireland international Matt Holland, who was Ipswich captain when they were last in the Premier League back in 2002.
“It was the middle of the season so they had to wait, so they started with the training pitches.
“The club have got so much right since the new owners came in but the best thing they have ever done is hire Kieran McKenna.
“What he has done, how he has made every single player better, the football we play, it is night and day.
“He is not someone who likes the limelight or to have everything about him. It’s always about the club, but he changed everything around,” Holland, who was also part of an Ipswich side that played in the Uefa Cup, continues.
“I’ve never known the feeling around the club as it is now. I spoke to Terry Butcher about this recently. He was here [under Bobby Robson] and he said ‘Where are the people coming from? It wasn’t even like this for us when we were winning the Uefa Cup’.”
A photo of Robson and that 1981 triumph hangs on the wall outside McKenna’s office at the training ground.
He was asked if he wanted it removed as part of redecoration when he joined but insisted it remain.
Televisions around the canteen and certain areas of the building have certain aspects of training on a loop to help seep into the mind of players.
Ten of McKenna’s squad are already enrolled on their UEFA B coaching licence.
“No one works as hard as him,” Holland adds. “The players buy into it. They don’t get many days off. It’s relentless.”
Ipswich scored 101 goals last season to earn promotion from League One and while they finished with 98 points it was only enough for second spot behind Plymouth Argyle on 101.
This season, though, the true ceiling of those respective clubs seems evident.
Plymouth sit 16th on 26 points while Ipswich are on course for back-to-back automatic promotions with exactly double the amount of points.
In the calendar year of 2023 Ipswich have amassed 101 points – the only club in England’s four tiers to do so – and scored 102 goals, the calibre of which have captured the imagination (below).
The build-up. 🙌
— Ipswich Town (@IpswichTown) December 2, 2023
The strike. 🤤@wesley__burns | #itfc pic.twitter.com/Fz48vTVWbf
For the first time in the club’s history they have more than 50 points before Christmas, even if a 1-1 draw with bitter East Anglian rivals Norwich City halted their momentum somewhat last weekend.
Their next two games are away to third placed Leeds United (10 points back) today followed by the visit of current Championship leaders Leicester City on St Stephen’s Day.
Should Ipswich match their points tally in the second half of the campaign they will surpass the 101 Burnley reached last season and could eclipse Reading’s all-time record of 106 from 2005/06.
“We’re really attacking, really aggressive and brave. I want football that’s exciting to watch and hard to defend against,” McKenna explained earlier this year.
He’s making it look easy when the reality has always been much different.
