Ashton plotting Ipswich move for “kamikaze” manager

Ipswich Town were rocked by the news that Kieran McKenna had left his role as the club’s head coach before the start of pre-season ahead of a return to the Premier League.

The Northern Irish manager led the Tractor Boys to automatic promotion to the top-flight for the second time, finishing second once again, but he will not lead the team into the 2026/27 campaign.

He has decided to take some time away from the game to be with his family and will not be making an immediate return to management, despite some initial reactions from supporters suggesting that he would end up at Fulham.

McKenna won 139 of his 276 matches in charge of Ipswich across League One, the Championship, and the Premier League, and deserves huge credit for the job that he did.

Ultimately, the 4-2-3-1 tactician joined the club in League One and leaves them as a Premier League team, which illustrates the massive impact that he had in Suffolk.

Ipswich considering move for Champions League manager

One of the managers who has already been linked with the vacant post is Strasbourg boss Gary O’Neil, who previously managed in the Premier League with Bournemouth and Wolves.

However, he was ultimately sacked by both of those English teams for poor runs of form and they both improved, albeit Wolves did not in the long-run, after he left.

According to the Daily Mail, O’Neil is one of the leading candidates for the job and is being looked at by Ipswich Town as a possible replacement for McKenna.

However, the report also claims that the Tractor Boys are considering a move to tempt Bodo/Glimt head coach Kjetil Knutsen to Portman Road this summer.

Mark Ashton will have to convince the Norwegian boss to give up the chance to manage in the Champions League again next term, after he led the Eliteserien side to the knockouts this season.

The Ipswich chairman recently spoke about being “proud” of giving British managers their first opportunities in the game, though, so it remains to be seen if he is willing to make a move for Knutsen instead of O’Neil.

Why Ipswich should hire Kjetil Knutsen instead of Gary O’Neil

Ashton should push to appoint the Bodo/Glimt tactician ahead of the English boss because he could be a far better appointment for the club in the short and the long-term.

At face value, O’Neil kept Bournemouth and Wolves in the Premier League. However, his Cherries side were bottom of the xG table, suggesting that they were fortunate to stay up, and he was sacked by Wolves after losing 29 of his 54 league games in charge.

The Strasbourg boss has never finished higher than eight in a season and never finished higher than 14th in a full season as a manager, and is yet to win a trophy in his career, whilst Knutsen is a proven winner.

The Bodo/Glimt boss has won four of the last six Eliteserien titles. That may not seem like an achievement, but it is when you consider that Bodo/Glimt had never won the top-flight until he led them to the title in the 2020 campaign.

Knutsen, whose former captain Bodo/Glimt Ulrik Saltnes described his playing style as “kamikaze”, has a high ceiling as a manager because he knows how to set a team up to be dominant and to compete at the top end of the table.

You only have to look at what Sunderland achieved this season, finishing seventh, to see what a newly-promoted club can achieve when they set their sights beyond just scrapping to stay up.

Knutsen is not a one-dimensional coach who can only manage a dominant team, though, as he also led Bodo/Glimt to wins over Manchester City, Atletico Madrid, Inter, and Sporting in the Champions League.

The 4-3-3 boss has won 44 of his 87 games in charge of Bodo/Glimt in European competitions over the years, leading them to the round of 16 in the Champions League, the semi-finals of the Europa League, and the quarter-finals of the Conference League.

His achievements in Europe show that he can get results against superior opponents, which is exactly what Ipswich will need to do in the Premier League as a newly-promoted team.

Therefore, Knutsen would be a far better appointment for the Tractor Boys than O’Neil because he has shown quality and adaptability as a coach, rather than being a relegation specialist relying on scrapping it out for points.