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Ipswich Town boss Kieran McKenna has suggested that he expects his Manchester United counterpart Ruben Amorim to stick with what has made him so successful so far, as the two sides prepare to clash on Sunday.
The match will be Amorim’s first as United gaffer since his appointment as Erik ten Hag’s replacement.
Ahead of the clash, anticipation is building, with both the fans and the media eager to see what kind of formation and structure Amorim selects when he names his maiden starting XI.
The game is also important for McKenna, who will be facing a club he supported since childhood and worked at for a number of years in the capacity of an assistant coach.
McKenna departed Old Trafford in 2021 to take over the reins at Ipswich Town, guiding them from League One to the Premier League in a short time.
Earlier on Friday, McKenna spoke to reporters [as quoted by East Anglian Daily Times] and said about the occasion, “Really excited. Having Man United come to your stadium is always a massive game and with the position that we’re in it is, of course, one of the games that you’re looking forward to most in the season.”
“When Man United are in the situation that they’re in, with the change of manager, it’s always going to be big news on a global scale. It’s about us trying to go out and test ourselves against another very, very good side and a massive club. We’ll try and build on recent performances and pick up another result.”
On how difficult it is to prepare to face a team with a new manager, McKenna answered, “Always when a team changes manager before you play them it creates a different sort of challenge. It’s not the first time I’ve had that as a manager though, of course. Having the two-week international break has probably helped, to be honest, because we’ve had a little bit more preparation time.”
“We’ve watched a lot of the manager’s previous teams and identified the trends that we think are going to be very likely to travel across. It’s a mixture between that and studying the current players at the club, the things that they’ve been doing well and any weaknesses we think we can exploit.”
“We’ve been limited, as they will have been, by having lots of players away on international duty. But 48 hours from kick-off I think we’re in a pretty good place.”
On whether he expects Amorim to immediately deploy his favoured 3-4-3 formation, McKenna remarked, “I’ve said this many times, but I think formations in football get played up a lot, lot more in the media. The manager has been successful with what is maybe a more standardised 3-4-3 at Sporting Lisbon. That’s not alien to us though.”
“In our last home game, Leicester played a 3-2-5 in possession with (Ricardo) Pereira coming into the double pivot. The game before that we played against Brentford, they played a version of 3-2-5 with (Sepp) van den Berg inverting from left-back into a back line of three. In our home game against Aston Villa they were 3-2-5 with Lucas Digne high on the left-hand side.”
“Certainly, in possession especially, there are so many teams now that build-up with a back three, a double pivot and front line of five. Very often (Erik) ten Hag had done similar things as well at United in recent games, so we can still use them as a reference as well. There are certain things that won’t be very unfamiliar. That attacking structure is pretty common across the league. ”
He continued, “The manager will put his own slant and own perspective on that and will be working on certain things on the training ground. Some of those things we can speculate on and some of them we won’t be able to speculate on.”
“Predominantly we have to prepare to put in our best performance and focus on our principles, our structures, our intensity, our spirit. It’s about making sure we stick really clearly to our identity and trust that, especially at home, with maximum intensity, we can give anyone a really difficult game.”
United are currently in 13th position in the Premier League. McKenna refused to confirm whether this is surprising, only stating that the Red Devils still have many talented players and so, competition will be stiff.
McKenna was asked to give his opinion on why so many managers have failed and proven unable to replicate the kind of success Sir Alex Ferguson oversaw in the United dugout.
The 38-year-old said that he has his own opinions on why this has been the case, but he insisted he won’t publicly share these beliefs as a show of respect to United.
Proceedings at Portman Road kick off at 16:30 BST.
