Kieran McKenna’s Remarkable Three Years at Ipswich Prove He Can Win Latest Battle
After back-to-back promotions, Ipswich Town now have a battle on their hands to stay in the Premier League. Three years on from his appointment as manager, Kieran McKenna has proven he’s the man to win that fight.
Monday marked the three-year anniversary of Kieran McKenna’s appointment as Ipswich Town manager. It’s safe to say it’s been a successful three years at the Suffolk club.
Since he took charge for the first time on 29 December 2021, Ipswich have been one of the best clubs in the English professional leagues. They are in the top five for matches won (69), points per game (1.89) and goals scored per game (1.82), while they rank sixth for win ratio (52.7%) and fewest goals conceded per game (1.01) among the 98 clubs to have played in the EFL over that timeframe.
Ipswich Town Under McKenna
Ipswich Town Under McKenna
McKenna’s appointment as boss on 16 December 2021 came with Ipswich languishing in mid-table, 14 points off League One’s automatic promotion spots a game before the halfway mark of 2021-22. But then, in his 23 games as manager across the second half of 2021-22, his side won the sixth-most points and began to show improvement that they could build on the following season.
They did just that. Automatic promotion to the Championship was secured with a second-place finish and 98 points on the board, but most impressive was their attacking ethos under McKenna. They scored 101 goals that season, hitting a century in a league campaign for just the fourth time in their history after 1955-56 (106), 1956-57 (101) and 1960-61 (100).
The step up to the Championship was made to look easy, with another second-place finish and just two points fewer than in League One the season before (96). They lost only six of their 46 games – the only team to avoid losing at least 10 games in the competition in 2023-24.
Winning successive promotions from the third tier to the top flight is a difficult task, with only 10 previous instances of this happening before Ipswich managed it last May.
Just four of those double promotions have happened in the Premier League era, with Watford the first to do so in 1997-98 and 1998-99, before Manchester City did it in 1998-99 and 1999-2000. Ipswich’s rivals Norwich City also did so 2009-10 and 2010-11, before Southampton were the last team to do it before Ipswich, winning back-to-back promotions from League One to the Premier League over 2010-11 and 2011-12.
While Watford and Man City both suffered top-flight relegation in their first season, Norwich (12th) and Southampton (14th) survived, providing a template for Ipswich to follow.
Life Back in the Premier League
After 22 successive seasons as an EFL club, it’s been a tough reintroduction to life in the Premier League, but last weekend’s away win at relegation rivals Wolverhampton Wanderers gave the Tractor Boys a much-needed boost. They currently sit in 18th, two points from safety, but Saturday’s meeting with Newcastle United offers them an opportunity to end an awful home run.
They remain the only team yet to win a Premier League home game this season, going winless in their opening eight league games of a season at Portman Road (D4 L4) for only the second time in their history, after 2018-19 in the Championship (first 10).
It is quite the difference to last season when Ipswich had the best home record in the Championship, winning 16, drawing six and losing just one of their 23 home league games en route to promotion.
In Premier League history, only nine teams have won fewer than 20 points at home in a season and avoided relegation, the last being Leeds United in 2021-22 (17th). The fewest home points won by a team to stay up in a Premier League campaign was 14 by Hull City in 2008-09 – they avoided the drop by a single point. Ipswich have 11 games left to play at Portman Road and still need 10 points to match that Hull total.
It’s still early days, but with eight of their 12 points won away from home this season, Ipswich are on track to equal the seasonal record for proportion of points won in away games. That record is currently held by Crystal Palace from 1997-98 (66.7% – 22 of 33).
Highest Proportion of Away Wins in a Premier League Season
Highest Proportion of Away Wins in a Premier League Season
Consistency is Key
McKenna has taken Ipswich up through the leagues with a fairly consistent squad of players. Of the 28 players who featured in their promotion-winning season in League One in 2022-23, 13 have appeared for them in the Premier League this term.
Ipswich have naturally had to get used to having less of the ball in the Premier League than they did in the EFL.
Going from League One to the Championship, their completed passes per game increased in the second tier (391) compared to League One in 2022-23 (380). They are now averaging 301 per game this season in the top flight, while their average possession figure has dropped to 42.7% compared to 53.0% last season in the Championship and 59.8% in League One.
None of that will be too surprising to the majority, but McKenna and Ipswich will quickly need to find new ways to become more of an attacking threat as a Premier League club.
They are averaging five fewer non-penalty shots per game in the league this season (10.2) than they did in the Championship last term (15.6), and nine fewer touches in the opposition’s box, too (19 vs 28). This has also led to their non-penalty expected goals per-game average dropping to 0.96 – the second-lowest in the league above only Leicester City (0.94).
At the other end of the pitch, Ipswich are giving away more and better chances than they are attempting themselves. Their average xG against from non-penalty shots is currently 1.93 per game, only better than Leicester (2.08) and Southampton (2.28). Ipswich give away fewer shots than those two sides, but the average xG of those chances stands at 0.13, the second highest in the competition behind only out-of-sorts Man City (0.15).
Although their overall level of control in games in terms of possession and passing isn’t what it was in the EFL, it can hardly be surprising due to the difference in quality between opponents across the divisions. It has to be said, however, that McKenna and his side should be commended for keeping their overall playing style very similar across the three leagues and last three seasons despite their sudden rise, as the below graphic shows.
Ipswich Playing Style under McKenna
Ipswich Playing Style under McKenna
What Lies Ahead?
Three years in charge of a single club in the modern game is longer than most managers are afforded, but the success McKenna has brought to Ipswich has kept away the normal threat of dismissal and only increased that of bigger clubs coming in for their Northern Irish manager.
He is already Ipswich’s longest-serving manager since Mick McCarthy’s reign between 2012 and 2018, and should he keep the club in the Premier League this season, it could be a harder task to keep him in Suffolk.
McKenna’s name was recently thrown into the hat for the Manchester United job – where he was involved in a coaching capacity at academy and first-team level for five years before taking the Ipswich job – but the Red Devils moved swiftly to steal Ruben Amorim from Sporting CP. There’s little doubt his name will be touted for other roles in the Premier League in the future, though.
The progress made at the club since his arrival is astonishing. Using the Opta Power Rankings as a marker for how far Ipswich have come under McKenna’s stewardship, they were ranked 1,084th in the world when he took over – they are now 133rd, just three years later.
But right now, Ipswich have a relegation battle to fight. Of the previous 21 teams to be in their exact predicament at this stage of a 38-game Premier League season (12 points from 16 games), seven have avoided relegation (33.3%). Since 2015-16, though, four of the eight teams to take 12 points from their first 16 games of a Premier League season have stayed up (4/8).
As it stands, the Opta supercomputer still makes them second favourites for Premier League relegation at 72.7%, behind only bottom side Southampton (98.1%). But if there is a manager in the league who has the ability to prove the predictions wrong, it’s McKenna.
Opta Stats Hub Premier League
Opta Stats Hub Premier League
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