Town boss Kieran McKenna has been speaking about his friendship with Middlesbrough head coach Michael Carrick ahead of Saturday’s game between their two clubs at the Riverside Stadium.

McKenna, 37, insists he’s not spend too much time considering the prospect of facing his friend and former colleague for the first time at the weekend.
 
“It's not something I've thought about loads, to be honest,” he said. “Of course, the opposition manager is a good friend and someone I hold in the highest regard.
 
“But other than that, I haven't thought about what it would be like to face him because at the end of the day, it's Ipswich's players against Middlesbrough's players on the pitch.

“The full focus and respect has gone into preparing for a really good opponent. I think it's two teams that share a lot of the same principles, that share a lot of the same ethos, and two teams that look to attack the game; it makes for a really interesting and exciting game.
 
“My focus, our focus has been preparing as well as we can to face a strong team away from home. Apart from that, there's not really anything that comes into it.”
 
The two were together on the Manchester United staff under José Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjær prior to taking charge at their two clubs, but they first met one another as players at Tottenham.

“We played together,” the Northern Irishman recalled. “He was certainly higher up in the echelons than me, but when he first came into Tottenham, he actually spent some time in the reserves.
 
“It was probably under [then-manager] Jacques Santini, I think, so we spent some time in the reserves.

“Obviously, he got promoted pretty quickly to the first team and showed the quality that he had at Tottenham And, of course, he went on to have a fantastic career.

“I've known him for a long time and is someone I hold in the highest regard as a player as a coach and, more importantly, as a person.”
 
The two were then reunited at Old Trafford after McKenna took over as their U18s coach, while Carrick, 42, was nearing the end of his playing career.
 
“I think it was more when I came back to United as youth team coach because he was one of the top senior players in the building and I think as a youth team coach one of the important aspects of your job is to build a relationship with people like that to help yourself to understand the culture of the club and the requirements for the young players and what you could do to help them be ready.

“So, I had a good relationship with him even as a youth team coach and he had a couple of injuries, so he spent some time training with us. He was a fantastic role model even then.

“I think we have very similar views on things, very similar views on football, how we like the game to be played and quite a lot of things that we enjoy from a tactical point of view in terms of how we want our teams to go about things. 
 
“So I think we share quite a lot of viewpoints, and again, a relationship in football that I feel like I've learnt and benefited from a lot.”

He says the two haven’t spoken about the match: “No, it's not the week to speak too much. I spoke to him at the start of the week just to catch up on other things, but I don't think there will be a lot of contact before the game, really.

“Both of us will be focused on preparing for the game and it will be good to have a catch-up after.”

Given their similar footballing philosophies, have they found themselves chasing the same players?
  
“I don't know, actually,” McKenna said after consideration. “Honestly, I don't think there were any big clashes or contradictions in the summer, if I'm right.

“But I think naturally if two teams play a similar way, they're probably going to look for a similar profile of players.

“So I think that's naturally going to come with a few teams now in the Championship, especially going into this window with us being in a stronger position maybe than last summer as a newly-promoted team. 
 
“It's hard to be in the same market as really established Championship teams, but maybe going forward you're more likely to be competing with the teams who are in for a similar type of player as you.”

Photo: Action Images

OldFart71 added 16:56 - Dec 7 Carrick was a fabulous player and comes across as a nice guy, bit like McKenna. Hopefully he can put one over on his old pal. I feel we need to accumalate as many points as we can before Nodge, Leicester and Leeds.
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ArnieM added 17:05 - Dec 7 Just beat his team Kieran
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