Former Blues midfielder and coach Kieron Dyer has lifted the lid on how hurt and disappointed he was not to be offered the caretaker-manager’s job at Portman Road following Paul Cook’s sacking a year ago, and says he now believes he is “too emotionally connected” to the club to ever realise his long-term ambition of becoming the Town boss.
Dyer was U23s coach during Cook’s time at Portman Road as he continued gaining coaching experience as he looked to fulfil his ultimate aim of managing and eventually taking charge of the Blues.
Cook was sacked following the 0-0 FA Cup draw with Barrow a year ago this Sunday and John McGreal, who had been brought in to work alongside Dyer only a couple of days beforehand, was made the interim-manager.
"I remember doing the article about the Rooney Rule [in 2014]. I didn’t really understand the Rooney Rule, so I just gave a great headline ‘I don’t want a job because of the colour of my skin’. That was the headline,” he told the True Geordie podcast.
"And then I had so many black players, like the older players, who had finished their careers and had been trying to get jobs and couldn’t and they were like, ‘What are you doing? You're killing us’.
"I was like, ‘I’m just being honest’. And they said, ‘It’s not about that, the Rooney Rule is that black people have to be interviewed. There has to be evidence shown that they have been interviewed… you don’t understand, you’ll realise’. And I was like, ‘Will I f–!’.
"And then here we are, I’m doing the U18s and U23s and I’m doing a good job. I’m doing a good job at Ipswich U23s and then they signed an assistant manager [John McGreal] on the Thursday to come and work with me.
"And then the manager of the first team [Paul Cook] got the sack on the Saturday. I’m the manager of the U23s. They signed someone to be my assistant on the Thursday, so he’s working under me.
"The manager of the first team gets sacked on the Saturday and I get a text from a mate saying ‘The guy they’ve brought in as your assistant is now caretaker-manager!’. I said ‘What!’. And I’m an Ipswich boy, bred, love the club. It is what it is.”
Asked whether he told anyone at the club how it made him feel, he continued: "I got a text from my assistant and he was saying that he wanted me to assist him and we’d got to do a game. I was like, ‘I’m not assisting you, I’m done, no chance’.
"I spoke to the people above and I basically expressed how hurt and disappointed I was. They just explained that they’ve employed this guy because he’s had actual experience of being a manager in the lower leagues.
"So I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this’ and then they pulled at the old heart strings and said, ‘If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for us, do it for the club because the club need you’.
"So I assisted him for a few games and I was a shell of myself. I was just going through the motions, really. Just mentally I was just… they broke me, mentally broke me.
"I was just thinking, ‘If you can’t get a chance for a couple of games…’. My end goal was always to be Ipswich Town manager, that’s what I want to be, but after that I [realised], I’m too emotionally connected to the club. I don’t want to ever be manager of the football club. It’s hard to say.”
Kieran McKenna was appointed later that month and Dyer eventually resigned from his role in March, citing his frustrations at the lack of a pathway for young players and himself as a coach.
Last month, Dyer issued a health update, having been diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare disease which attacks the bile ducts and which will require him to undergo a liver transplant, just over a year ago.