With a 6-0 victory today, former Manchester United coach Kieran McKenna's team earned promotion to the Championship.
McKenna was a member of the coaching staffs under Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. He was a former coach of the United youth teams and came from there.
After Solskjaer was fired, McKenna left and took the open position at Ipswich Town. Due to signing in December, he finished in 11th position in his debut season.
His club has, however, lost the fewest games and scored the most goals this season. In fact, they doubled the side above them in goal differential.
With an emphatic 6-0 victory over Exeter earlier today, the promotion was assured. Even though they were promoted, the season is still not finished; if Plymouth loses their final game, they still have a chance to win the league.
McKenna was once a promising young player for Tottenham but was forced to retire at the age of 22. He never played for the senior team because of a hip injury he acquired.
McKenna started mentoring his way through the Spurs academy after retiring. He moved to the north after becoming the under-18s manager in 2015.
He left Spurs in 2016 to become the manager of Manchester United's under-18 team. After that, he was given a promotion to the senior team in 2018 as a member of Mourinho's staff.
McKenna plays with an aggressive style that emphasizes constant waves of attack. The sheer number of goals Ipswich has scored this season demonstrates this.
McKenna now has the highest victory % of any Ipswich manager in history thanks to the prolific year.
"The scenes outside the ground (prior to kick off) were incredible," McKenna stated at fulltime.
"To see the passion from those fans and this club is just going from strength-to-strength and today was a good example of that."
"It was a great performance, the whole 90 minutes. From when we got the first goal we were everything I wanted us to be."
"We try to go out to perform and make the next performance our best of the season and we said it yesterday, 'why can't this be the best performance of the year and let's go out and not be tense, let's go out and enjoy it and try and play really, really well' and we managed to do that."
"Today is about the club, the community all coming together to have a successful season and we want more of that now."
"The big goal was to get this club back to the Championship. It's been an incredible season… at the moment we just want to enjoy today and think about the last game and what we are going to try and do."
Ipswich defeated Exeter 6-0 to clinch their re-entry into the Championship following a four-year sabbatical.
Massimo Luongo, George Hirst, Nathan Broadhead, and two strikes from Conor Chaplin scored five goals in a thrilling 24-minute first-half span. After the break, Wes Burns added the sixth.
In the eighth minute, Chaplin gave Town the lead with a pinpoint shot from just outside the penalty area.
Ipswich's Christian Walton had to dive low to block Demetri Mitchell's shot from Exeter, but Ipswich immediately increased their lead to five. In the 16th minute, Luongo fired an angled shot high into the goal, and six minutes later, Hirst added a third goal by headbutting in a cross from Broadhead.
After Alex Hartridge fouled Burns in the penalty area in the 28th minute, the score reached four. The fifth goal was scored in the 32nd minute on a shot by Chaplin after Broadhead converted the penalty kick.
In front of a record 29,334 spectators, Burns made it 6-0 three minutes into the second half by lobbing the ball over the charging Exeter goalkeeper Gary Woods.
With 97 points, Kieran McKenna's team is just one point behind fellow promoted Plymouth and will compete for the League One championship in the final round of games.
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