Kieran McKenna has gone from a manager given a lot of praise to one given a lot of choices. The Ipswich Town manager has concrete interest from all of Manchester United , Chelsea and Brighton and Hove Albion . There is also the romantic option of just staying at Portman Road now he has returned Premier League football to the stadium, to mimic Xabi Alonso at Bayer Leverkusen .
Now, McKenna already has a lot to think about , before a firm offer even comes in. That’s as everyone else is doing a lot of talking about it, which has caused some agitation around Ipswich. Perhaps the most fervent source of discussion within the game, ironically, is how a coach with relatively limited career success is in line for some of the biggest jobs.
McKenna has performed sensationally to bring Ipswich back to the Premier League, but it usually takes much more than that to get Chelsea, let alone United. Such a move would be all the more surprising given the sudden availability of genuine big names like Mauricio Pochettino and Thomas Tuchel. One of the reasons this had been a chaotic summer managerial market was because football was essentially moving out of one era of super-managers.
It is no exaggeration to say the last decade at elite level was largely dictated by the minds and personalities of Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Antonio Conte, Carlo Ancelotti and then - maybe more on the fringes of that - Tuchel, Pochettino and Luis Enrique. A few other coaches of course had claims but these were g.
