Former Manchester United coach ‘exactly the same’ as Marcelo Bielsa

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Former Manchester United coach Kieran McKenna has been making an impression at League One side Ipswich Town.

Kieran McKenna‘s coaching career is going from strength to strength since leaving Manchester United.

McKenna was promoted by Jose Mourinho and then retained by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, but in some quarters his lack of experience working with top players was questioned, with The Telegraph describing him in 2021 as a ‘rookie’.

He has left United, to go and prove his coaching credentials lower down the league, and it has been a big success.

Kieran McKenna a success with Ipswich Town

Kieran McKenna took over at Ipswich in early 2022 and took former United coach Martyn Pert with him. Together they have been helped transform the club.

Ipswich won promotion from League One this season, scoring a league high 101 goals, and conceding the lowest total of 35.

37-year-old McKenna has made a big impact and has been compared to former Leeds coach Marcelo Bielsa, by a player who has played for both, young left-back Leif Davis.

He told The Athletic: “A lot of people have asked me what he is like compared to Marcelo Bielsa. He’s exactly the same. His demands in training, his intensity of training, the way he wants to make everyone better.

“He wants the players to be really fit. ‘If you don’t want to run,’ he says, ‘you might as well not be here.’ That suits me because I love running. He’s developed me in so many other ways – my heading, my one-v-one defending. Everything has worked out just as I hoped.”

McKenna was also talked up recently by his former boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who spoke highly of him, explaining that he learned a lot from the younger coach.

Solskjaer told The Athletic: “He makes it so easy for the players to see and understand what we wanted from them. He’d do that the day before a game and his memory was also fantastic, his eye for detail too.

“One of his strong points was defensive organisation and I let him be in charge of that in training. I learned from him about defensive shape and how not to concede.

It is great to see McKenna making a name for himself beyond United, along with Michael Carrick too, who is attempting to steer Middlebrough to Championship play-off success.