Ask Kieran McKenna what style he wants his Ipswich team to play this season and he might surprise you.
McKenna has built a high-pressing, goalscoring machine, racking up 194 points and 193 goals across back-to-back promotions to take a floundering League One side back to the Premier League in less than three years.
Many of the players who started out on that journey remain at the club. Seven started against Liverpool on the opening day, but a ceiling has been hit.
Their territorially dominant, high-pressing game cannot continue in a squad including so many who remain from the League One days. Even employing it after the step up to the Championship last season was courageous, especially when the rate Ipswich conceded goals in the second tier nearly doubled.
But McKenna believed in his philosophy and was emphatically proved right after leading them to an unthinkable 96-point haul and another promotion.
McKenna’s success has made him synonymous with that all-action style but he always knew it would have to change with the pace of Ipswich’s rise. But he is no stranger to pragmatism in his time at Portman Road.
When he first arrived in late 2021 with the club languishing in mid-table in League One, his first priority was to shore up Ipswich’s defence. They kept seven clean sheets in his opening 10 games; the goals began to flow later.
Hard work and aggression, hallmarks of the McKenna philosophy since day one, remain non-negotiables. But he is unusually amenable about how that manifests in the Premier League – especially given the £100m of carefully selected new arrivals who have joined the club this summer.
“At this stage and for a while yet, it’s just about us as a group adapting to the level,” he tells Sky Sports. “It’s trying to be competitive in each game, trying to improve and develop our style and find out what that is going to be for us at this level, what that’s going to look like home and away – and trying to win every game while we’re at it.
“The start of the season was always going to be a big challenge for so many reasons. There was such a big turnover in the summer, for the right reasons, we’re trying to get so many new bodies integrated into the group, so many who haven’t played in the Premier League before, or playing regularly in the Premier League lately.
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“We’re open and honest about these things. We have never lost two games in a row and then when you have Liverpool and Man City in your first two games, there’s a chance that might happen. You might as well get it out in the open, and discuss what your reaction’s going to be like.”
He continues: “We want to be brave, dominant and aggressive with and without the ball. But we also know the demands of the level, the step up we’re taking as a group, that it’s not going to be the case in every game.
“In the Championship, if it opened up we were always comfortable because we knew our fitness levels, the patterns of our play were there to exploit big spaces, and we’d fancy we would come out on top. We can’t allow the game to become open and stretched against every opponent now.”
In many ways, McKenna’s Ipswich have gone full circle. Away from ‘we’ll score one more than you’ and back to the principles which began the journey to League One and then Championship promotion. Building from the back. Being hard to beat.
There will be no repeat of Burnley’s ill-fated commitment to their playing style a year ago. They will still press when they can, as in the first half against Liverpool. But they will shut up shop too, as in the hard-earned point at Brighton.
“When you step up a division, knowing you can be hard to beat, get a clean sheet, defend when you need to – that’s important,” says McKenna. “It’s about deciding each game and each week how aggressive we can be to give ourselves the best chance we have to be competitive.
“We’re going to have to find other ways to be competitive and compete for points. We know we’re not going to get the result we want every week, it’s about controlling what we can control and we’ve been very much oriented in that way for the last few years anyway.
“We’ve never spoken about promotions, we’ve never spoken about setting out points totals, we never spoke about other teams or looked at league tables, it was about us, our team, our development.”
Ipswich are still looking for their first victory, but McKenna points out he would take the three draws which have followed a chastening opening salvo against Liverpool and Man City over a win and two defeats.
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Watch Sam Morsy score a 95th-minute equaliser against Southampton to extend Ipswich’s unbeaten Premier League run
Of those, only a point at Southampton feels a missed opportunity. Even that showed signs they have carried over their resolve to the Premier League after Sam Morsy’s 95th-minute equaliser. Last season, Ipswich scored 25 goals in the final 15 minutes of games, the highest in the Championship.
The downside is that it was only their third goal in five games. Ipswich have had fewer shots and a lower xG than anyone, making digging out results even more of a priority.
Attacking depth has been a concern all summer and even up to Deadline Day, there was hope of sealing deals for Armando Broja and Reiss Nelson until both fell through at the 11th hour. “It would’ve added a little bit more experience and quality to that department but I’m happy with where we’re at,” McKenna insists.
Their absence could end up being the difference between survival and relegation. But there is hope elsewhere in the £20m purchase of Chelsea’s Omari Hutchinson following a successful loan spell last year.
He has no Premier League experience to offer but the 20-year-old knows Ipswich and McKenna inside out. He is yet to add to the 11 goals he scored last season but his manager knows exactly what he brings.
McKenna highlights first-half performances against Fulham and Liverpool as his side’s best pressing examples. Hutchinson completed the most pressures in the former, and only Liam Delap forced more turnovers in the latter. Across the season, Hutchinson has registered the most pressures in the Premier League.
Omari Hutchinson has registered the most pressures in the Premier League
“It was a big priority to keep him,” says McKenna. “He found a really good football home here, an environment, team-mates and group of staff who really supported him and helped him to perform how he did last season.
“In a summer where there was going to be a lot of turnover, bringing him in gives you a player who already understands how we work, how we train, the values we hold.
“It gives them a better chance of hitting the ground running, and you can see that in Omari’s performances.”
McKenna hopes goals will follow as his side’s style matures just as they did in his early days at Portman Road. But against some of the world’s best defences, there is no guarantee of a repeat performance.
As long as Ipswich can remain in touch with the chasing pack, there will be no panic. It helps when five other teams are still without a win after as many games, an all-time high.
Ipswich play two of those, Everton and Leicester, as well as troubled West Ham in their next four matches but will have faced three of last season’s top four by the end of Super Sunday when Aston Villa come to town.
But if McKenna is relaxed about his own team’s style of play in a survival season, don’t expect a Champions League opponent to bother him.
“It’s a positive,” he says with a smile. “We knew the start of the season was going to be a big adaptation process. There’s no better way to do that than play the teams at the top.”
Watch Ipswich vs Aston Villa live on Sky Sports Premier League from 1pm on Sunday, kick-off at 2pm
