Recent Blues signing Dom Ball says the chance to work with his former Tottenham academy coach Kieran McKenna was central to his decision to join Town this summer.

The 26-year-old joined the Blues earlier this month having been released by QPR at the end of 2021/22.

Speaking to QPR podcast R Generation on Air, Ball talked about his move as well as his recently published book From Winning Teams to Broken Dreams.

“The main thing for me was the opportunity and the manager, Kieran McKenna, who was actually my coach at Spurs when I was in the youth team and I always rated him very highly, he was a massive part of my development as a young player,” he said when asked about why he opted to join the Blues.

“He obviously went on to Man United, had the experience of being the first-team coach there and then got the role at Ipswich.

“I always thought when he went there that there was the opportunity that I could meet back up with him and go from there.

“When Kieran spoke to me pretty early on in the summer and spoke to my brother, who is my agent, and I always thought this was the right move for me.”

Quizzed on whether it was a tough decision to drop down a division, he added: “You always want to stay as high as possible for as long as possible, the dream of playing in the Premier League’s still not over, but I just thought it was going to a club that really wanted me.

“It was a tough last six months at QPR and I wanted to go in somewhere where I’m going to contributing every single week and the main focus at Ipswich this year is to get promoted.

“That was the same focus this year at QPR, which I really enjoyed. I know the second half of the season didn’t really go to plan, but it’s nice being part of something where you’re all striving, you’re all in it together and I’m looking forward to hopefully getting promoted next year and being back in the Championship.”

Photo: ITFC

cooper4england added 21:44 - Jun 16 "where I'm going to contributing every single week" Sounds like someone's made him a promise. So does it mean contributing from the bench, playing with Morsy or cover for morsy when he's off?
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Hamish1979 added 06:13 - Jun 17 I'm not sure it means anything about Morsy. Ball is a sitter / ball winner whereas Morsy is now the more advanced of the midfielders. I would imagine the plan is they play together.
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Hamish1979 added 06:13 - Jun 17 I'm not sure it means anything about Morsy. Ball is a sitter / ball winner whereas Morsy is now the more advanced of the midfielders. I would imagine the plan is they play together.
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Fat_Boy_Tim added 07:11 - Jun 17 You can kind of see us playing 3 at the back, 2 wing backs, the sitter, two pushing on from midfield and 2 strikers. That would make a kind of 3-3-2-2 formation. I'd imagine that the lines would be quite Blurred though, the sitter swapping with a marauding CB, sitter swapping with one of the AMC's and AMC swapping with a striker. There are still 2 parts of that to be filled at left wing back and striker.

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Orraman added 13:55 - Jun 17 Being a sitter/ball winner puts him in the Cole Skuse category. If he turns out to be half as good as Skuse was, I'll be more than happy. As we know Skuse was the target of many on this site who just did not fully appreciate the value of his contributions. Hope Dominic Ball gets treated a lot more fairly than his predecessor.
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