Ipswich Town: Kieran Mckenna on facing old club Manchester United

Q: You described this as 'this biggest game in world football this weekend' at a fans' forum earlier this week. How are you feeling ahead of it? 

A: 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.

How difficult is it to prepare to face a team under a new manager?

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. 

Q: Do you think Ruben Amorim will go straight in with his preferred 3-4-3 formation from Sporting Lisbon? 

A: 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. 

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. 

What does it mean to you personally to lead Ipswich into this game given your previous association with Manchester United? 

I feel like I’ve done all the reminiscing before the Tottenham game – I can’t handle another press conference reminiscing about the good old days! 

This isn’t about me. It’s more about Ipswich Town, our journey, 22 years without being in the Premier League, climbing from League One to the Premier League and now hosting maybe the biggest football club in the world on the live Super Sunday match in front of a worldwide audience. And we do it coming off the back of a really good victory. 

That’s special to be part of. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to be here. This season is for days like this. 

Any sort of emotion behind this one comes from being Ipswich Town manager and the journey that we’ve been on. 

Having Man United come to our stadium is massive for all the supporters, all the players and all the staff. 

Q: You mentioned it being a Super Sunday match. How do you prepare the players mentally for a game like this?

A: Over the last couple of seasons we’ve had lots of big games, whether that be a League One promotion race or Championship promotion race. Our first game of this season was live on TV against Liverpool.

You know that there’s a little bit extra behind it in terms of media and the buzz around the town and that’s something to enjoy and embrace. The focus has to be the performance, the details, the execution, but the extra noise, the extra interest, that’s something that just adds to the excitement. I’m sure it won’t distract us too much from trying to deliver a performance. 

Q: How much progress do you think the team has made this season? 

A: We think we’ve been making steady progress. Progress isn’t always linear, you don’t see it every week, but in general we feel like the team’s improving, individuals are improving and we feel like we’re learning lessons and managing to put them into place. 

Of course it’s easy to say that after you’ve just won the last game. But I think I can look at the large majority of our squad and say that are in a better place now than they were in the middle of August, both those who are starting every week and the boys who aren't playing as much. I see it day-in, day-out in training. 

If you look at the last three games we could easily have won all three, to be fair. Certainly, if you take Leicester and Brentford, we feel like we should have had four points across those two games. 

The margins to us winning on a more regular basis are getting closer. But you can’t rest. It’s easy to be really positive now because we’ve just won, but we have to back that up. We have to go again and deliver another good performance. If that results in us getting another victory, fantastic, but if we go out and deliver another performance, showing the right identity, then that will add to the feeling of a right direction of travel.

Q: Does Manchester United’s position in the table baffle you given the squad they’ve got? 

A: They’ve got a very talented group, there’s no doubt about that. We know the calibre of individual player we’re going to face on Sunday is going to be really, really high. 

I've not followed them with any particular attention this year beyond what we do for any other team, but what I can say is it’s the toughest division in world football. You don’t need to get too many things wrong to lose a football match, whether you’re Ipswich Town or Manchester United. 

Q: You’ve talked about your coaching journey at Manchester United, but you grew up a Manchester United fan as well, with your dad bringing you over from Northern Ireland to watch games at Old Trafford. Who were your favourite players as a boy? 

A: The first game I went to was the last game of the season in 1994 when they won the league. I think that was against Coventry. I would have been 8/9. 

In the area of Ireland I grew up in it was kind of Man United and Liverpool, take a pick, and Celtic or Rangers, you’re given a pick!

In terms of favourite player, it was the back end of Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona probably came in the team after that, so I’d probably say... Mark Hughes. 

Q: Do you feel like you can take on anyone here at Portman Road with the crowd behind you? Off the back of the Tottenham win, this must be a game the team go into full of belief. Do you plan to really attack this match?

A: Yeah, we feel like if we impose our game at home we can be a tough opponent for anyone. We have to match that with a level of humility. We know that Man United can hurt us, there’s no doubt about that. If we don’t execute our details just right, if our intensity drops just a bit, they have the quality to hurt us or any other team in the league. It’s about having the right mix of humility and confidence.  

As I’ve said so many times, we’ve worked so hard to get games like this so there’s no point going out and playing with fear or restraint. We’ve earned the right to be here and we want to go out and showcase the best of ourselves. We know the crowd have a massive part to play in that. I’m sure everyone will turn up on Sunday and play their part. 

Q: Several managers have tried and failed at United. Their issues must run deeper than the head coach. What are your thoughts on that? 

A: Of course I’ve got lots of opinion and formed beliefs from my time at United on things that were done really, really well and things that were done not so well. I’ve got no desire to share those in the public realm though. Respectfully, my focus is on Ipswich.  

It’s a great club, one I've got a great affinity for, and one I’ll always hope to see do well, apart from when I compete against them. 

Q: You’ve worked with some of these United players before. Does that help at all going into this game? 

A: There are a lot of new players there, quite a few I didn’t work with. 

But even without my insight of having worked there, I think you can see that there's a new manager bounce evident in football and there have been examples of that there over quite a few years. You could probably go back as far as Ryan Giggs for that. 

It’s pretty clear that we’re going to face a Man United group that is full of motivation and energy, who are going to want to make an impression on a new manager. It’s fair to say that doesn’t make the game any easier, but at the same time we’re going to back ourselves.

Q: There was a famous game here against United in 2000 when Ipswich had just returned to the Premier League. It finished 1-1 and Sir Alex Ferguson said afterwards that Portman Road sounded like it had 40,000 in it. How important is it that Mr Amorim gets a Suffolk welcome? 

A: It’s very important. We’ve had five home games and across those matches the atmosphere has been really, really good. Everton has been the only disappointing home day for us. That game aside, I think every opposition team has felt the intensity on and off the pitch. That has to be the goal again on Sunday. We want to make ourselves really felt. 

Q: You got Ipswich going again in League One. How does a manager turn a big club around? 

A: There had been a lot of upheaval here, there were a lot of unhappy players in terms of their position in the squad and the team wasn’t anywhere near where it wanted to be and should have been. I think United will probably say some similar things at the moment. 

Everyone has their own approach. My approach was one day at a time developing the culture at the training ground – how we train, how we live, how we interact with each other, the infrastructure, the flow, developing a playing style, developing an identity from a tactical and mental perspective. It was always just about trying to be better in the next game. Step-by-step you start to move in a positive direction.