Soccer
Making the case for McKenna to be Man Utd's next manager
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The Ruben Amorim era at Manchester United has ended not with a bang but with a familiar thud. Hired to impose clarity and modernity, Amorim instead leaves behind a muddled campaign, a fractured squad and another reset button pressed on the cursed post-Ferguson era.
United have responded by turning inward, appointing Darren Fletcher as a short-term interim manager, with plans reportedly in place to either add another caretaker to limp through the remainder of the 2025 season or wait until summer before making a permanent appointment.
It is all very Manchester United in the 2020s: cautious, reactive and vaguely hopeful that something will eventually click.
If United are serious about breaking that cycle – whether now or in the summer – then Kieran McKenna should not just be on the shortlist. He should be at the top of it.
McKenna is not an unknown quantity at Old Trafford. Long before his managerial reputation was forged in East Anglia, he was a highly regarded first-team coach under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, widely respected for his tactical preparation, attention to detail and ability to communicate ideas clearly to players.
When United were searching for a new manager in 2024, McKenna’s name was reportedly discussed internally before the club opted for Amorim’s ideological purity instead. In hindsight, that decision looks less like bravery and more like stubbornness dressed up as vision.
What McKenna has done since only strengthens the argument. His work at Ipswich Town remains one of the most impressive managerial achievements in English football over the past five years.
Promotion to the Premier League two seasons ago was supposed to be the end of the fairytale – a charming overachievement before an inevitable collapse. Relegation followed, as expected, but crucially McKenna stayed.
He did not run from the rebuild or seek a quicker route back to the top. Instead, he reset the squad, recalibrated expectations and improved his players. As of 6 January 2026, Ipswich sit third in the Championship, firmly in the promotion hunt once again.
That ability to adapt is precisely what United have lacked. Amorim arrived with a 3-4-3 system and never meaningfully deviated from it, even as players struggled to understand roles or play to their strengths.Getty Images
There was little evidence of individual development, tactical flexibility or problem-solving – just a rigid insistence that the system would eventually win out. It didn’t. McKenna, by contrast, has consistently tailored his approach to the tools at his disposal, shifting shapes, adjusting pressing schemes and, crucially, making players better.
That matters at United, a club bursting with talent but starved of coherence. This squad does not need another ideologue. It needs a coach who can work with what he has, improve individuals on the training ground and create a collective identity without forcing square pegs into fashionable round holes. McKenna has shown he can do that under pressure, with limited resources and with expectations constantly changing.
There is also a cultural fit that should not be underestimated. McKenna understands United, not in the vague “gets the DNA” sense that is often mocked, but in a practical way. He knows the scrutiny, the politics and the scale of the job. He has lived it, without being consumed by it.
United can wait until summer if they want. They probably will. But whether they act now or later, the logic remains the same. If Manchester United want a modern coach who can actually coach – rather than just impose – then the case for Kieran McKenna is already made.
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