Kieran McKenna / Ipswich manager

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

It's almost as though it's not possible to accurately judge an individual coach's impact and ability at a club when they are one of numerous members of the coaching team!

Mindblowing stuff really

 

[Ace of Spades]

McKenna has shut the mouths of plenty of CAF armchair managers that he’s actually a pretty good coach & not useless as many would lead you to believe on here. Actually got Ipswich playing some rather good football too

I mean that was pretty obvious to anyone who watched even a little youth football that he was a good coach.

 

[Tom Cato]

Very happy for McKenna, hope he keeps it going and gets a bigger job down the line.

 

[arthurka]

One thing I have learned here is that what they noisiest members go on about is never the right thing. Glad to see him doing well,. It's so much more than obvious where there problem lies at Utd and it ain't the managers.

 

[Adnan]

He was a fantastic young coach but he was saddled with AWB and Maguire who were signed by a combination of Ole, Simon Wells and Phelan. Ole also neglected the midfield by prioritising the signings of Bruno (when we already had Pogba) and Sancho.

McKenna did his best as a first team coach but you can only do so much when signings were being made by the aforementioned three, who didn't coach either, which caused a imbalance.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

I opened this thread hoping he's doing well. Good to hear. He was so highly rated as a youth team coach.

 

[Abraxas]

Early days but slightly embarrassing for those that couldn't see any other possibility than him being shite. He seemed to be guilty simply by association.

 

[Ali Dia]

One thing I have learned here is that what they noisiest members go on about is never the right thing. Glad to see him doing well,. It's so much more than obvious where there problem lies at Utd and it ain't the managers.

10000%

 

[Ali Dia]

He was a fantastic young coach but he was saddled with AWB and Maguire who were signed by a combination of Ole, Simon Wells and Phelan. Ole also neglected the midfield by prioritising the signings of Bruno (when we already had Pogba) and Sancho.

McKenna did his best as a first team coach but you can only do so much when signings were being made by the aforementioned three, who didn't coach either, which caused a imbalance.

Seems to me more like. Ole was the vibes guy - keep playing him and telling what to do, it’ll sink in eventually. McKenna was stuck with these dunces who didn’t give a shit for the club or each other as long their PR is correct. I really wish our fans would finally realise the problem is the dude making 250,000 a week who looks like he doesn’t give a shit and not the coach on 5k or even the manager on 50k. It’s the players and the owners. The managers and staff are the ice cream stuck in between two toxic wafers and until that changes nothing will improve. The youth team and their hunger to get into the team and show us what they can do is literally the only joy i find in the club post Fergie. I hate all these half baked signings. Sancho yes but crazy wages. Ronaldo just no. For example, why not just find the best young centre back in the world instead of Varane or centre forward instead of Ron? That’s what Fergie would have tried to do and it never let us down. When will these fools learn? The blueprint to success was literally left on their laps with unlimited funds and they still couldn’t get it together. In the meantime let’s blame a coach.

 

[Ibi Dreams]

Early days but slightly embarrassing for those that couldn't see any other possibility than him being shite. He seemed to be guilty simply by association.

Him doing well now doesn't mean he wasn't shite as a first team coach for us. Of course there were/are many problems and maybe he wasn't one of them, but we looked like a really badly coached team

 

[OldRed1]

He wasn't 'SHITE' as a first team coach according to people that know him. They're the ones I take notice of.

 

[Daengophile]

He's learned some tough lessons that will serve him well in the future.

No doubt about that

He'd do well to stay put next season and not be tempted by any bottom dwelling PL outfit

 

[hobbers]

Early days but slightly embarrassing for those that couldn't see any other possibility than him being shite. He seemed to be guilty simply by association.

It wasn't guilt by association it was a collective failure from a team of poor coaches. Very easy for someone to be shite at coaching Premier League prima donnas but amazing at managing a team of lower league players.

 

[Roboc7]

He got so much criticism because it deflected blame from Ole. Time after time read people on here wanting Ole kept and coaches replaced. McKenna could only work with what he had which consisted of the players recruited and the limited management of Ole.

Pleased to see he’s doing well as he was highly rated before working with Ole.

 

[VidaRed]

One thing I have learned here is that what they noisiest members go on about is never the right thing. Glad to see him doing well,. It's so much more than obvious where there problem lies at Utd and it ain't the managers.

I've always maintained that the primary fault is with the players.

We could assemble a team of managers and coaches who won the title across europes top leagues and they'd still look like fools managing our players.

The startling fact is that most of our players either lack quality and are not technical players or pass their prime. To top it off they have a fragile ego and are unwilling to put in a shift.

I reckon some might even lack a bit of intelligence like rashford.

Quite simply our players are mid table quality, to expect them to challenge for the top honours is harsh on everyone including the players themselves.

 

[Red_toad]

One thing I have learned here is that what they noisiest members go on about is never the right thing. Glad to see him doing well,. It's so much more than obvious where there problem lies at Utd and it ain't the managers.

Whatever the issues are within the dressing room we'll probably never know the truth. Would love to know why 5 different managers haven't managed to seriously challenge for a major trophy over the last decade, the only consistent things we've had during that period are the owners, Jones & Dave

 

[Champ]

Does anyone realize that being a coach is a different job to being a manager?

Anyhow, McKenna is a well respected coach, has been for several years, even before he joined United.
Seems as if he has the assets to be a good manager also.
Hopefully it continues for him.

 

[golden_blunder]

And a United fan too

we should have been keeping him

 

[SER19]

Chalk him down as another coach scapegoated in the name of our embarrassing players

 

[SecondFig]

by prioritising the signings of Bruno (when we already had Pogba).

Broadly I'd agree with your points, but Bruno has done so much more for this club (on the pitch at least) than Pogba. Signing him, and at a very reasonable price, was one of the best decisions Ole (or whoever made the final decision) made

 

[Revaulx]

And a United fan too

we should have been keeping him

Well I hardly think we pushed him out. It looks pretty certain that Ralf would have kept him if he could.

From McKenna’s point of view, he probably felt a change of scene would do him good; the challenge of a front-of-house role even more so. I’m delighted it seems to be working out for him so far.

 

[pascell]

And a United fan too

we should have been keeping him

Funny how it works, I feel like he'd have flourished and utilised best under the next manager, whether that be Poch or ten Hag.

 

[captaincantona]

Odd reactions here. He was part of an extremely poor coaching team here that had us looking clueless in every aspect of our play bar counter attacking. So all the revisionism in here is basically saying either a) he wasn’t given the freedom to get his messages across (didn’t seem that way with how Ole lauded him and Carrick at every turn) or, more likely imo b) he wasn’t able to get that message across to multi millionaire prima donnas. Both scenarios mean he was not suited to a larger club with bigger expectations and would indicate that his methods and ideas would perhaps be accepted more or be more effective in a lower level team. That has turned out to be the case - but you are hardly saying McKenna, if given free reign, would have gotten us to where we neeeded to be? Even if he is a wonderful coach, he clearly lacked the character or charisma or reputation to be taken seriously by players expected to challenge for every trophy going...and that is essential to being a top top coach...the players have to believe in you and your approach.

I would imagine the Ipswich players are in dreamland having a former Utd coach raising standards there. Doesn’t mean we should have kept him though.

for me, I’m delighted for him and a young Irishman showing serious coaching potential at the top level- not many of those around. But I’m not crying that we let him go. Good move for all.

 

[golden_blunder]

Well I hardly think we pushed him out. It looks pretty certain that Ralf would have kept him if he could.

From McKenna’s point of view, he probably felt a change of scene would do him good; the challenge of a front-of-house role even more so. I’m delighted it seems to be working out for him so far.

Sorry I don’t mean we pushed him out, i just don’t think we did enough to keep him. For example sitting down and chatting with him “when ole goes, no matter who comes in, we believe in you and want you to stay”. If it’s done in a genuine way it’s hard to say no to.
But anyway he’s gone, glad to see him doing well

 

[James Peril]

Broadly I'd agree with your points, but Bruno has done so much more for this club (on the pitch at least) than Pogba. Signing him, and at a very reasonable price, was one of the best decisions Ole (or whoever made the final decision) made

Has he? We have won zero trophies since Bruno came here and we have gone backwards for sure. He occupies a lot of space on the pitch and he doesn’t seem to be the most popular player around, always shouting and throwing tantrums, his stats are way down since losing penalties.

 

[Revaulx]

Sorry I don’t mean we pushed him out, i just don’t think we did enough to keep him. For example sitting down and chatting with him “when ole goes, no matter who comes in, we believe in you and want you to stay”. If it’s done in a genuine way it’s hard to say no to.
But anyway he’s gone, glad to see him doing well

That’s just it though: I can’t picture there being anyone in the United hierarchy who would be capable of saying stuff like that. Murtough seems like a techie geek rather than a warm and fuzzy type. Ralf couldn’t say it sincerely as he hardly knew him. Fletcher? Too junior, despite the impressive title. Matt Judge?

 

[golden_blunder]

That’s just it though: I can’t picture there being anyone in the United hierarchy who would be capable of saying stuff like that. Murtough seems like a techie geek rather than a warm and fuzzy type. Ralf couldn’t say it sincerely as he hardly knew him. Fletcher? Too junior, despite the impressive title. Matt Judge?

Fergie

 

[devilish]

Whenever I asked people with connections at the club what's going on behind the scenes they all used to say the same thing. Mckenna is the only decent coach OIe had. Most of the rest were jobs for the boys. However, let's not get carried away here. There a huge gap between League 1 and the EPL. Actually youth level (were Mckenna excelled both with Spurs and us) is closer to the former then the latter

 

[Revaulx]

Fergie

Seems only to get involved when it’s one of his own boys, sadly.

 

[King7Eric]

Seems to me more like. Ole was the vibes guy - keep playing him and telling what to do, it’ll sink in eventually. McKenna was stuck with these dunces who didn’t give a shit for the club or each other as long their PR is correct. I really wish our fans would finally realise the problem is the dude making 250,000 a week who looks like he doesn’t give a shit and not the coach on 5k or even the manager on 50k. It’s the players and the owners. The managers and staff are the ice cream stuck in between two toxic wafers and until that changes nothing will improve. The youth team and their hunger to get into the team and show us what they can do is literally the only joy i find in the club post Fergie. I hate all these half baked signings. Sancho yes but crazy wages. Ronaldo just no. For example, why not just find the best young centre back in the world instead of Varane or centre forward instead of Ron? That’s what Fergie would have tried to do and it never let us down. When will these fools learn? The blueprint to success was literally left on their laps with unlimited funds and they still couldn’t get it together. In the meantime let’s blame a coach.

This a thousand times. People keep on blaming our managers, Jose, Ole, Ralf and will invariably blame the next guy as well when we don't win trophies. But all these guys did the best they could with the resources they were given. And by resources I don't just mean money to spend. You need a proper structure for any organization to succeed. You don't give the responsibility of mapping a company's future to a manager, that's the CEO's job.

In reality to really get back to the top, we need a massive clear out not over 2-3 years, but instantly. But the board will not approve that as that will incur massive short term losses so doesn't really matter who the new manager or signings are, we are gonna stay stuck in this merry go round.

But of course, the fans are gonna spend hours analyzing the manager's tactics, or training methods and lack of personality or whatever, things they are absolutely not privy to at all.

 

[AneRu]

Seems to me more like. Ole was the vibes guy - keep playing him and telling what to do, it’ll sink in eventually. McKenna was stuck with these dunces who didn’t give a shit for the club or each other as long their PR is correct. I really wish our fans would finally realise the problem is the dude making 250,000 a week who looks like he doesn’t give a shit and not the coach on 5k or even the manager on 50k. It’s the players and the owners. The managers and staff are the ice cream stuck in between two toxic wafers and until that changes nothing will improve. The youth team and their hunger to get into the team and show us what they can do is literally the only joy i find in the club post Fergie. I hate all these half baked signings. Sancho yes but crazy wages. Ronaldo just no. For example, why not just find the best young centre back in the world instead of Varane or centre forward instead of Ron? That’s what Fergie would have tried to do and it never let us down. When will these fools learn? The blueprint to success was literally left on their laps with unlimited funds and they still couldn’t get it together. In the meantime let’s blame a coach.

The players are wrong but the manager and the board are the ones who brought them in and pampered them. Rashford didn't have this attitude coming up and wouldn't have done to LVG what he did to Ole and Rangnick. That's why players need a manager, to foster and maintain elite sports mentality.

Right now our problems go far deeper than the manager and require an in depth analysis and root and branch cleansing. All the Divas polluting our dressing room have to be rooted out. We need a clear out, get everyone who hasn't been committed out, replace them with youths and a few shrewd signings and accept the poor results for a couple of seasons until a proper team emerges.

No more signings above £50m because they do no good to us when we practically need about 5 to 8 new players. This is what we should have done in 2019 after Mourinho but we kept a few rotten apples and proceeded to make a couple of expensive mistakes in the market - there is no way a team with Maguire, Shaw, AWB, Fred and Scot makes it to the elite level. Accept that the team was built with the wrong profile, we designed and built a team for the fecking 90s in 2020, and move on.

 

[Adnan]

Broadly I'd agree with your points, but Bruno has done so much more for this club (on the pitch at least) than Pogba. Signing him, and at a very reasonable price, was one of the best decisions Ole (or whoever made the final decision) made

It's not about comparing Pogba and Bruno, mate, this is about what Solskjaer was attempting to accomplish by wanting to shoehorn both Pogba and Bruno into the team. It would've been better for us to sign a CM/DM for team balance purposes and gone with a 433 formation. I rate Sancho highly, but I wouldn't prioritise signing a wide attacker over a midfielder, when the midfield needed prioritising. But Solskjaer went ahead and signed Sancho who preferred playing from the left.

 

[Mickeza]

It wasn't guilt by association it was a collective failure from a team of poor coaches. Very easy for someone to be shite at coaching Premier League prima donnas but amazing at managing a team of lower league players.

Except he wasn’t shite here was he? We finished 3rd then 2nd under his coaching - unless you think this group of players should have been achieving more?

 

[AltiUn]

And a United fan too

we should have been keeping him

I think he needed to go to rebuild his reputation, people had already made their minds up on him after Solskjaer's reign. May not be the end of his story at United.

 

[Paxi]

And a United fan too

we should have been keeping him

Happy to see fellow Northern Irishman doing well.

 

[hobbers]

Except he wasn’t shite here was he? We finished 3rd then 2nd under his coaching - unless you think this group of players should have been achieving more?

Of course they were all shite.

Spent £250m to take team even further away from the top. Look at the catastrophe left behind. Most of the players are horribly unfit, undercoached, no tactical awareness and have shit attitudes.

Not very interested in rehashing old arguments. But 3rd on the last day of the season could easily have been 5th. 2nd by virtue of Liverpool's injuries and Chelsea's dismal season, look what happens when they have fit squads and competent managers. 66 and 74 points are worse returns than Jose.

 

[Awwal Lawal]

It's not about comparing Pogba and Bruno, mate, this is about what Solskjaer was attempting to accomplish by wanting to shoehorn both Pogba and Bruno into the team. It would've been better for us to sign a CM/DM for team balance purposes and gone with a 433 formation. I rate Sancho highly, but I wouldn't prioritise signing a wide attacker over a midfielder, when the midfield needed prioritising. But Solskjaer went ahead and signed Sancho who preferred playing from the left.

From evidence available based on how Ole's tenure panned out, Ole was not trying to shoehorn both Bruno and Pogba into the team.

As a matter of fact, he was at a point trying to redesign Pogba's role after the shenanigans of Raiola and taking him out of the club by putting him in the team as a wide left forward.

Ole tried his best with the framework of the club and putting the blame on him as a subpar coach/manager would not be an accurate representation of his abilities.

I still maintain that his albatross in United was the close season where the management brought in Cavani, Telles, de Beek and the other players.

Due to the Mourinho problem with players purchase the club created a committee to deal with transfers. The coach has to find a way to create a consensus on purchase as members on the committee due to them having the power to eachother.

The same close season meant Sancho wasn't purchased and we bought players who would not necessarily progress the club. Quantity over quality in simple terms.

Left or right Sancho would prove to be quality addition to the team either by being a starter through displacing, quality sub or rotational option.

The totalitarian regimes of LVG and Mourinho meant the club would not give a Manager or Coach considerable power but need them to work with a set of rules. Ability to adapt to those rule would be paramount for any incoming Manager/Coach.

 

[Adnan]

From evidence available based on how Ole's tenure panned out, Ole was not trying to shoehorn both Bruno and Pogba into the team.

As a matter of fact, he was at a point trying to redesign Pogba's role after the shenanigans of Raiola and taking him out of the club by putting him in the team as a wide left forward.

Ole tried his best with the framework of the club and putting the blame on him as a subpar coach/manager would not be an accurate representation of his abilities.

I still maintain that his albatross in United was the close season where the management brought in Cavani, Telles, de Beek and the other players.

Due to the Mourinho problem with players purchase the club created a committee to deal with transfers. The coach has to find a way to create a consensus on purchase as members on the committee due to them having the power to eachother.

The same close season meant Sancho wasn't purchased and we bought players who would not necessarily progress the club. Quantity over quality in simple terms.

Left or right Sancho would prove to be quality addition to the team either by being a starter through displacing, quality sub or rotational option.

The totalitarian regimes of LVG and Mourinho meant the club would not give a Manager or Coach considerable power but need them to work with a set of rules. Ability to adapt to those rule would be paramount for any incoming Manager/Coach.

Having to 'redesign' Pogba's role is another way of saying Ole was attempting to shoehorn both players into the team.

The transfer committee consisted of Bout, Lawlor and Court who is the Head of data analysis. And these are the same three guys who Daniel Taylor in 2018, said had vetoed Mourinho when he wanted to sign Maguire, Alderwereild, Boateng, Willian etc. Taylor finished of by saying that Maguire and Alderwereild were deemed not good enough to take United to a higher level by the people working on the football department. Woodward a year later went ahead and delivered Maguire for Ole, Phelan and their personal scout Simon Wells.

Ole's problem was that he couldn't really see past the most obvious signings imo. And according to reports, Ole kept telling Woodward to keep trying for Sancho until the end of the window. But it was Joel Glazer who brought the failed pursuit to a end, 3 weeks before the close of the window according to The Athletic. And with time running out in the window, you can only make panic signings or youth signings at that stage, so quantity over quality was the reality, because no club is going to want to sell their best players at short notice. Ole put all his eggs into the Sancho basket and it back fired.

 

[roseguy64]

Having to 'redesign' Pogba's role is another way of saying Ole was attempting to shoehorn both players into the team.

The transfer committee consisted of Bout, Lawlor and Court who is the Head of data analysis. And these are the same three guys who Daniel Taylor in 2018, said had vetoed Mourinho when he wanted to sign Maguire, Alderwereild, Boateng, Willian etc. Taylor finished of by saying that Maguire and Alderwereild were deemed not good enough to take United to a higher level by the people working on the football department. Woodward a year later went ahead and delivered Maguire for Ole, Phelan and their personal scout Simon Wells.

Ole's problem was that he couldn't really see past the most obvious signings imo. And according to reports, Ole kept telling Woodward to keep trying for Sancho until the end of the window. But it was Joel Glazer who brought the failed pursuit to a end, 3 weeks before the close of the window according to The Athletic. And with time running out in the window, you can only make panic signings or youth signings at that stage, so quantity over quality was the reality, because no club is going to want to sell their best players at short notice. Ole put all his eggs into the Sancho basket and it back fired.

Why are you so certain about the Maguire thing? I'm pretty sure we also saw reports of Phelan and Wells scouting Sancho, Bellingham and Bruno. Are two of those bad signings? Would Bellingham have been a bad signing?

 

[dubplate warrior]

United were very poorly coached under Ole and his backroom staff. A good run at Ipswich won't change that, criticism was well deserved and accurate.