https://www.thetimes.com/sport
Ipswich’s Premier League promotion is a triumph of old-fashioned values
Sir Bobby Robson has long gone but in Kieran McKenna the Suffolk club have a visionary manager whose loyalty and self-restraint are a throwback to bygone era
One of the things I miss about no longer living in Ireland is the county loyalty that is the heart and soul of Gaelic games. You can only play for the county in which you were born and few who make it to the elite level would want it any other way. For fans, it is as it should be. You support your own county. That’s it. No choice and definitely no bandwagoning.
After 28 years of exile it turns out I’ve taken that mentality with me. The two football games that I most cared about on the final day of the regular season in the English Football League were Cambridge United’s automatic promotion match away to Crewe Alexandra in League Two and Ipswich Town’s promotion-clinching victory over Queens Park Rangers at Portman Road.
Cambridge’s Abbey Stadium is 15 miles from our home and I’ve been there more than a few times. As for Ipswich, Suffolk is now my adopted county and that’s enough for me to be on their side. There is also a lingering affection for Sir Bobby Robson’s side of the 1970s and early 1980s. The football was great and the club, under their Old Etonian owners John and Patrick Cobbold, stood for values that even in the 1970s were a throwback.
Ipswich Town v Queens Park Rangers - Sky Bet Championship - Portman Road
Captain Dara O’Shea and his side sealed their top-flight return in style with a 3-0 thrashing of QPR
PA
They appointed Robson at a time when he was on unemployment benefit. For a time results didn’t go the new manager’s way and some supporters wanted him out. “Our manager’s name is not written on a chalkboard with a wet sponge nailed next to it,” John Cobbold told the disgruntled. And this was a chairman who made a virtue out of not knowing very much about football.
After Robson signed Paul Mariner, Cobbold inquired, “Mariner, he’s not in the Navy, is he?”
A Geordie with a sense of place, Robson scoured the towns and villages of East Anglia for players and unearthed Trevor Whymark, Brian Talbot, Mick Lambert, Clive Woods, Laurie Sivell, Roger Osborne and Mick Mills. For something more exotic he went Dutch and came back with Frans Thijssen and Arnold Mühren. There was also Eric Gates, John Wark, Russell Osman, Terry Butcher and the truly great Kevin Beattie. What a collection.
There won’t be any Ipswich fans who’ve forgotten the 1981 Uefa Cup campaign and especially the 7-2 aggregate victory over the formidable St-Étienne in the quarter-final. During his extraordinary time at Portman Road, Robson was courted and indeed seduced by Everton, who were a bigger club. For agreeing to jump ship, Robson received a £50,000 gift from Sir John Moores, an influential figure at the Goodison Park club.
Ipswich Town manager Bobby Robson and assistant Bobby Ferguson on an open-top bus, holding the UEFA Cup trophy during a parade.
Robson, left, and his assistant, Bobby Ferguson, parade the Uefa Cup in 1981
Getty/Bob Thomas
That was seven times Robson’s salary at Ipswich and life-changing money at the time. Robson stipulated just one condition: he would get to tell John Cobbold before the news was made public. The next morning, a newspaper published the story under the headline “Robson For Everton”. Robson was mortified. He apologised to Cobbold for speaking to Everton without permission and said he would stay at the club if Ipswich still wanted him. Of course they did. Robson then tore up the £50,000 cheque.
Times are different now. The Cobbolds and Sir Bobby are gone. Ipswich are now owned by Gamechanger 20, a holding company through which a significant amount of US investment is funnelled. In Robson’s old place close to the dugout stands Kieran McKenna, a thoughtful young manager from Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, who will soon turn 40.
Championship - Ipswich Town v Queens Park Rangers
McKenna’s rare loyalty has been rewarded with an instant return to the Premier League
Reuters
McKenna became Ipswich manager in December 2021 when the team were no better than their League One mid-table placing. He spent that first half-season getting to know the team and the club. They finished 11th. From there they progressed rapidly, getting consecutive promotions that took them to the Premier League exactly two years ago.
Chelsea and Brighton & Hove Albion both approached McKenna, but he opted to continue what he’d started at Ipswich, a decision that at the time seemed admirably old-fashioned. I was at the 2-0 victory over Huddersfield Town that got them to the Premier League in 2024. There was so much joy that they could go from League One to the top tier in just two seasons. The players lifted McKenna into the air, 22 hands raising him like a god towards the heavens. Janet, a diehard fan of 35 years, told me about sitting in the seat that had once been her dad’s. Block G, row B, seat 28. They used to travel by car to away games. One midweek evening they drove to Crewe, where the fog was dense. The game went ahead but they never saw a thing.
That 2024 promotion to the Premier League came too quickly. The manager, the team and the club weren’t ready for it. Liam Delap and Omari Hutchinson were strong players but there was no depth to the squad and precious little Premier League experience. They sunk without trace. Delap and Hutchinson then went to Chelsea and Nottingham Forest respectively and there was the danger that Ipswich might go to the dogs.
An Ipswich Town fan on the pitch celebrates the team's promotion.
A fan rejoices on the Portman Road pitch after Ipswich claimed the Championship’s second automatic promotion spot
Sally Rawlins/Every Second Media/Shutterstock Editorial
It is, though, in times of trouble that you discover what you’ve got. The American owners invested in the team, spending more on a single player, the Norwegian Sindre Walle Egeli, than any club in the history of the Championship. Time will tell whether that £17million was wisely spent. The Dutch midfielder Azor Matusiwa is understood to have cost £7.8million and he has brought organisation and quality to the midfield.
Standing in his technical area during matches, his chin resting in the palm of his right hand, his left arm across his chest supporting the right, McKenna offers you a picture of his inner self. Calm, self-contained, thoughtful. He could be a young professor observing a group of undergraduates, whispering quiet advice during pauses in play. He doesn’t do the ridiculous protestations of overblown emotion that are now so boringly common in the technical area.
McKenna’s achievement in this latest promotion victory was to ensure that the team started fast. For about 15 minutes they were exhilarating: quick and razor-sharp passing brought two goals in nine minutes. QPR hardly knew what had hit them. The home crowd sang songs of celebration. Too soon, because Ipswich went down a gear and the visiting team got into the game.
If QPR had pulled one back, the Ipswich fans would have been worried but that goal never came. Dara O’Shea and Jacob Greaves give the team solidity at the back and O’Shea has played pretty much every minute of his team’s 46 games in this Championship season. That’s something. It was telling, too, that the loudest celebration came when Kasey McAteer got Ipswich’s third goal in the 85th minute. Only then did the fans know their club was back in the Premier League.
Not many are sure how this is now going to play out for Ipswich. This team don’t have the star quality that Hutchinson brought to the side two years ago, but there is now greater depth. Between now and August they are going to have to find more goal threat.
Of the three promotions in four seasons, McKenna says this one has been the most difficult. His greatest test is next season because that’s the unrelenting nature of football. In his poem Little Gidding, TS Eliot wrote a few lines that may be relevant to what happens next:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
My guess is that McKenna will return to the Premier League and do better. |  |
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