Greaves: Boss Has Improved Me Already Saturday, 28th Sep 2024 06:00 by Kallum Brisset Town defender Jacob Greaves has paid credit to the work of manager Kieran McKenna and believes he has already improved as a player in the two months since his summer arrival from Hull City. The centre-back joined the Blues for an initial £15 million in July and has become a mainstay in Town’s defensive unit, with Leif Davis the only other player to play every Premier League minute this season. Greaves says McKenna was one of the biggest factors in his decision to leave his boyhood club to move to Portman Road, and is enjoying every training session he has with the Town boss. “It’s been fantastic, really,” he said. “The way that we train every day is so good, I’m really loving it. At first it was a bit different for me to get used to but now I feel like I’ve done it a lot. “Now the games are coming you can see the build-up to big games – we look at the opposition, how we look at ourselves in terms of causing other teams threats. “He’s been fantastic with me in my role, how he’s talked to me about where I need to be and the little details of the game which he’s helped. “I’ve had individual meetings after most games on where I can improve, what I’ve done well and what I can do better, and I love that side because I love watching football as well. “I think it’s been perfect for me. The meetings that we have and the work we do on the training ground is so beneficial for me and I feel like I’ve improved with that in a short space of time.” Sam Morsy recently described McKenna as a ‘genius’, a comment which was put to Greaves, who could do little more than agree with his captain’s statement. “That’s obviously a massive compliment from the skip and I agree with him,” he said. “I would probably say he is but the skip has gone from League One to the Championship so he’s seen it a lot more, but I can definitely see where that comes from in terms of the way that we train, the way he sets his teams up and the way that he problem solves in games. “That’s brilliant for players because it gives us the best chance of performance on a Saturday, which I feel like he gives us that.” Greaves has clear ambitions to play for England one day and believes his move to Suffolk to play in the Premier League, along with working with McKenna, will give him the best opportunity to get his name in the international fold. He said: “I’ve got dreams to play for the national team and there’s no better place to showcase your talent than in the Premier League. I’ll be doing as much as possible to try and catch the eye, but I know that’s tough as there’s a lot of good defenders in and around it. “I’ll just try and keep doing what I’m doing, keep trying to impress and playing well and see where it takes me.” It can take time for new signings to settle into a football club, especially in the case of Greaves, who was moving away from his home area of East Yorkshire for the first time and saying goodbye to a club he calls his own. However, the 24-year-old has embraced the move and says he is loving the experience of working alongside the rest of the playing squad and playing in the top flight. “I’ve really enjoyed it,” he said. “At first it was a bit tough getting to know a full group of new guys, I was really comfortable at Hull being from the area as well. “I’m obviously miles away from home, a new team and you’ve got the step-up to try and play in the Premier League. It’s a big change, but now I feel like I’ve settled in and a part of the lads a little bit more so I’m really loving it.” Greaves was not short of suitors during the summer, with Wolverhampton Wanderers and Everton also reported to be interested in the Cottingham-born defender. But Ipswich was the chosen destination, which Greaves puts down to chats he had with McKenna and previous managers about the club’s stature and the size of the fanbase. He said: “Probably the conversations that I had with the manager. I had a lot of conversations with Liam Rosenior as well that knew Sone Aluko and the coaching staff here, and he said it would be a perfect place for me to go. “Then the conversations I had with the manager in terms of how he sees me playing was perfect for me and everything was just right. It was an easy decision. “I’d probably say the fanbase [is the most special aspect] and I’ve felt the love already. Everyone’s an Ipswich fan – you walk down the street for a coffee and you see an Ipswich shirt wherever you are, the fanbase is incredible. “The atmosphere they make, I felt it last year playing against them and now to play with them they’re kind of the 12th man. It’s a brilliant place to play my football.” Greaves experienced two of those atmospheres first-hand last season when Hull met the Blues in the Championship, where Town beat the Tigers 3-0 at Portman Road before a thrilling 3-3 draw on Humberside on the penultimate weekend of the campaign. “I had a lot of discussions with the manager before signing about the games,” Greaves revealed. “The game at Portman Road last year was a massive one for Hull’s season. We went man-for-man all over the pitch but we didn’t have much build-up to the game as it was a Tuesday night. “It was a little bit half and half in the way that we pressed, that was the biggest lesson for us last season. I remember going in with Chappers [Conor Chaplin] into the right-back area following him all the way and leaving massive gaps, then it would just turn and be able to dictate passes. “Going forward for Hull, we put more emphasis on the way we defended against teams and that was a wake-up call for us in the tactics we did throughout the week. “We went man-for-man with a lot of teams towards the end of the season and showed that we could do it, but we could only do it because we had that lesson against Ipswich. It was probably the toughest game I had in terms of getting popped off the park by Ipswich. “Then the game [at the MKM Stadium] was crazy, wasn’t it? I was passed out on my feet towards the end of the game, it was blow for blow. We both kind of needed to win, we were going for a winner towards the end of the game and I remember the blocks on the line – I think [Jeremy] Sarmiento missed a chance where it got blocked by me and Alfie [Jones]. “They were blockbusters to play in and I loved them. We’ve talked about it with the lads a lot of the time, I always joke about them because they scored two worldies in that game from the edge of the box [from Omari Hutchinson], then 2-0 down after 20 minutes at Portman Road is not a great place to be as an opposition player. “[Hutchinson] caused us a lot of problems, especially in the game at the MKM Stadium where he was very good. He was a standout to me and probably one of the best players I played against last season. “Now training with him every day, I’ve tried to do a lot more with him in terms of one-v-ones and stuff like that because I feel like that will improve me and improve him working on stuff after training. He likes that and I like the battle of defending against him.” Young Jacob is not the only footballer to come from the Greaves family, his dad Mark having featured for the likes of Hull and York City in the late 1990s and 2000s. Greaves admitted much of his time as a youngster was spent kicking a ball about, but says his whole life was not always revolved around football. “I’m not just football, football, football,” he said. “I think it’s nice to have that switch-off as well, I probably don’t get too much time to do it but when the opportunity comes like a day off you can go and do things outside of football. “Growing up it wasn’t really a football mad home, it wasn’t like football was on all the time. In terms of me playing, football was all the time with my dad. There was a drive where I used to live and we used to work out on the garden for hours smashing balls at each other, working on my first touch and things like that. “I could say I was football mad, but not in a sense where everything was football. A lot of stuff was still focused on my education, he was really big on that stuff so he liked me to revise a lot but I didn’t do as much as what I should have!” Greaves also revealed that his dad echoed his own thoughts about his move to Town in the summer, believing that the chance to play in the Premier League was one that he could not turn down. “He thought it was the perfect opportunity to make that next step in my career, as I thought as well,” Greaves said. “As soon as I called him and mentioned of the interest, he said that it would be perfect. “A massive club, an unbelievable fanbase, a great manager as well and they’ve done such good stuff to get to the Premier League and kept that core value at its base. “He thought that it would be a perfect club for me to come into, which was the right decision I think looking back on it. “I couldn’t have asked for a better group to come into and have an opportunity to play in the Premier League. “He’s watched a couple of the games live and then the others on the telly. He’ll give me a text after the game but nothing too deep in terms of little moments where I could gain half a yard, I get that with Perty [Martyn Pert] and the gaffer in my meetings. “He just asks me how the game goes, how I feel I did and what am I doing at the weekend.” Greaves sees similarities between Hull and the Blues in their sense of community, both clubs sitting in the centre of their localities and being the only professional football clubs in their respective counties. He said: “Definitely I would say so in terms of the work that we do with the schools, I’ve done two appearances already. It’s massive, they’re big family clubs and I try and play my role in that. “Growing up in Hull all my life and seeing what the community brings, the football club can give as much as they can to the community and we try and put as much stuff on to give them the best opportunity to enjoy life and give them a smile. “Definitely being a more remote place, we’re in an area where we can help as much as possible.” Finally, Greaves was asked what question he would ask McKenna that has not been asked already, and his response was an interesting and somewhat unexpected answer. “Is there more wheels or doors in the world?” he said. “It would be interesting to see his answer. It’s too tough, you just don’t know what goes on in the other countries. I’d say doors, but I don’t know if that’s the correct answer. “It was a big question a couple of months ago and a few of the lads were talking about it today over dinner and it stuck in my head. I thought it would be a perfect answer to ask.”
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