Ipswich Town: Kieran McKenna on lessons learned and leads lost
Kieran McKenna will wait until the end of the season before assessing Ipswich Town’s Premier League campaign.
The Blues will be relegated on Saturday afternoon unless they win at Newcastle United and Brighton beat West Ham. Regardless, a return to the Championship is inevitable, and it will probably be confirmed at St. James’ Park this weekend.
There are positives to take from the season, but a campaign that ends in relegation will need a lengthy post-mortem. McKenna revealed that he and his staff have reflected on performances and results throughout the last few months, but they will wait until the end of May before properly looking back at what went well and what went wrong.
“There’s a whole list of things,” he said when asked about the lessons he’s learned. “But there’s plenty of time for that in the summer, the season is still strong.
“Of course, we’ve been reflecting and having discussions as we’ve gone along. Most of those reflections will stay in-house, to be honest, because I think it’s the right way, but I think it’s fair to say that most of them are regarding the unique challenge that we came into this year.
“They are not necessarily the finer details of football, they are more about the scale and the challenge of bringing up a football club so quickly from where it was to compete in the best league in the world – in this, a very, very difficult season in that league.
“As a football club, from the manager to every staff member to the board here, we will all have learned an awful lot about that scenario. I still have a lot of pride and belief in how we’ve tried to tackle that challenge.
“Of course, there are different ways to try and tackle it. There’s no guarantee that any way you try and tackle that challenge will lead to a positive outcome.
“I think that we’ve tried to tackle it in the right way and, if we fall short, which it looks like we will, then we will have learned a lot and taken a lot. As I’ve said before, the club will be in a really strong position, I believe, going into next season.
“Of course, we reflect as we go along and there will be a bigger piece in the summer. We want to use everything that we’ve taken from this season to make sure that we are stronger going forward.”
One clear issue has been failing to win games after taking the lead. Ipswich have dropped 27 points from winning positions, more than Fulham, Southampton (both 25), Brentford and Tottenham (both 21).
Asked why it keeps happening, McKenna replied: “If there was one easy reason to say, it would have been solved already if it was solvable.
“If you look at first-half records in games, we’re nowhere near the relegation zone. We’re ahead of some pretty big football clubs.
“That isn’t something that I’m going to enjoy too much in the summer as an afterthought, but it confirms, I believe, what I already know. There’s a lot of good work going on here in terms of how we train, how we prepare for games, how the players have approached the games, how we’ve performed in some of the games and for spells of some of the games.
“It’s also a fact that we’ve not been able to capitalise in second halves when we’ve been in good positions to go on and pick up the points that we would have done. For that, there’s a whole load of reasons from different capacities.
“The biggest one, again, is the scale of the challenge of the jump we’ve had. That ties to a whole load of different smaller areas.
“I think that the fact we’ve competed so much, the fact that we’ve taken the lead very often and been in great positions in games reflects a lot of good work. The fact that we haven’t been able to hold on is a source of great disappointment.
“With some things, I don’t think there’s anything we could have done differently. With some things, we’ll try to learn and improve from.”
