McKenna impressed Jose and Ole, but will they get him the top job at Chelsea?

When a chronic hip problem forced Kieran McKenna into retirement as a professional footballer at the age of just 22, the easiest thing for him to have done would have been to go back home and join the family business.

The Manor House Country Hotel, situated in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, was bought by his car mechanic dad Liam and nurse mum Mary in 1989. Scaled from a quaint eight-room offering to a high-end establishment with 80 rooms, the hotel, which can cost punters as much as £280 a night, is a result of years of hard work.

McKenna remembers fondly how his dad would all-but live in the hotel when getting it off the ground - two extensions were just the start of it - and how his grandad would use time off from work to travel over from London to help fix cracked roof tiles or give the place a new coat of paint.

But, just as his parents did 35 years ago, McKenna bet on himself. If he wasn’t achieving his dream of becoming a top level player then a top level coach was the next best thing.

‘A player and person that you know, every single day, whether training or playing, was 100 per cent committed about everything he did,’ Clive Allen, then coaching at Tottenham with a young McKenna in the ranks, said previously.

‘[He is] a determined and committed character, who is also intelligent and articulate – don’t be surprised if Kieran rises to the top of the game as a coach.’

Meticulous is a word that has followed McKenna around, at Tottenham, where he coached in the academy, at Manchester United where he worked as assistant to Jose Mourinho and then Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, and now at Ipswich Town having guided the Tractor Boys to back-to-back promotions.

There is an emotional intelligence to McKenna that sets him apart from