Bodø/Glimt head coach Kjetil Knutsen has emerged as the bookies’ new favourite for the vacant Town manager’s job, Kieran McKenna having stepped down on Wednesday.

The Norwegian’s name began to appear among the frontrunners for the job yesterday afternoon, but this morning BetVictor price the 57-year-old at evens, moving ahead of early favourite Gary O’Neil, who is down to 6/4.

Behind them, another Norwegian, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, is at 5/1, Brian Barry-Murphy at 6/1 and Rob Edwards, who departed Wolves yesterday and was among the bosses the Blues were eyeing two years ago when McKenna was tipped to move on, is at 10/1 alongside and former Blues loanee Liam Rosenior.

Born in Bergen, Knutsen was a youth player with local club Brann but had no senior football career.

Having trained as a teacher, his first managerial job was at fourth-tier side TIL Hovding, another Bergen-based club, in 1995, taking them up two divisions in a nine-year spell before moving back to Brann as head of first-team development.

He took charge at second tier Fyllingsdalen in 2012, finishing second and fourth before being sacked at the end of the 2013 campaign.

Ahead of the 2014 season, Knutsen was appointed at another second division club, Åsane, but despite finishes in 11th and then 10th was controversially axed after two years.

In January 2017, he was appointed assistant manager at Bodø/Glimt and after promotion to the top flight in his first season at the club, he was promoted to head coach after previous boss Aasmund Bjørkan was elevated to sporting director.

Since then he has led Glimt to their first ever league title in 2020, the first of four, and was named the Eliteserien Coach of the Year three years in a row.

But it is his success in Europe which has caught most attention outside Norway, reaching the group stage of the 2021/22 Europa Conference League, then the semi-finals of the Europa League in 2024/25, where they were beaten by Spurs, becoming the first Norwegian side to progress to that stage of a European competition.

In 2025/26, Knutsen’s reputation was further enhanced when Glimt made it as far as the last 16 of the Champions League, having knocked out Inter Milan via a 5-2 aggregate victory.

He was recently linked with the Celtic manager’s job but played down the chances of leaving Glimt, whose domestic season runs through the summer.

“When a team does well, there will always be interest around it,” he told Norwegian channel TV2. “You have to learn to handle and live with that.

“At the same time, it emphasises how good we are at Glimt. It is inspiring to see that we can be competitive when we are at our best against a team that maintains a very high level.”

He added: “For me, it will be very easy. I have committed to Bodø/Glimt and then I am 100 per cent in Glimt. All other interests are completely uninteresting to me.

“We are in the middle of a season and everything other than Glimt that I spend time on takes away concentration and focus.

"There are also an incredible number of exciting and interesting jobs outside Bodø. Just not to glorify Glimt too much – there are interesting opportunities elsewhere too. But right now, my focus is very much on Glimt and nothing else.”

Town chairman and CEO Mark Ashton says the Blues will move quickly to try to appoint their new boss with the incoming manager expected to be in place within a fortnight, perhaps even as soon as next week.

Photo: BILDBYRÅN via Reuters Connect