I Know Kung Fu

Shortly after half time in our January 2023 home game with Plymouth Argyle, Leif Davis, master of geometry, bisected two opposition defenders and found Marcus Harness clean through on goal. Harness leapt on to the ball and after he'd rather clumsily got it out of his feet, promptly hammered it as hard as he could onto the Plymouth cross-bar and out for a throw. Ten minutes later he'd been substituted and would spend much of the rest of the season on the bench.

Harness' Ipswich career started raucously, with 3 goals in August 2022, but inconsistency had already crept in by the time he went down clutching his knee in a November EFL Cup tie. That trajectory continued when he reappeared unexpectedly in January, producing performances with good moments, but with a fair few bad decisions, loose touches and wayward passes. This was the player Portsmouth fans had warned us about, a flighty winger, a moments player, who had one good game in four and at other times felt like a bit of a passenger. By the Summer, a lot of people had written Marcus Harness off. Sure there were good attributes, he was quick, his off the ball work was generally good, he could ghost past a defender, he had a goal in him. But the good things were too rare and there was no way McKenna would find use for him once we'd "attacked" the Summer window.

But to imagine we'd cast off Marcus Harness so easily was to forget one of Kieran McKenna's greatest skills: upcycling. Our manager has an uncanny knack of finding something in a player that we didn't know was there. Like an antique specialist, he heads to the back of the furniture shop, finds the old chair, redoes the upholstery, applies a bit of vanish and discovers it was a classic all along. Having brought in Harness just a year earlier, McKenna was always going to stick with it and find the player in there.

Rumours began to circulate about Harness 2.0 in pre-season. He'd come back absolutely flying, motored through pre-season in cracking form. He had a few good cameos from the bench, but it wasn't until the EFL Cup game with Wolves that we properly saw it. It was not exactly what we expected. It wasn't just that a good version of Original Harness reappeared. This wasn't the classic inconsistent winger suddenly increasing the frequency of their special moments. No, somehow we'd found this phenomenal trequartista, still with a lovely ability to drift into space, but now with composure, a calmness in possession, a probing perceptiveness and above all, a precision in his passing.

Against Wolves, he hovered into pockets behind first Hutchinson and then Ladapo, then poked exactly measured passes through fleeting gaps and into a team-mates' stride. For the winner, he took the ball back to goal, rolled his way out of a cluster of Golden shirts and placed the ball neatly into Jack Taylor path. The same show continued against Hull. Whilst the goal was clearly welcome (not least to Marcus, who hadn't scored a meaningful league goal for nearly a year), it was his contribution to the second that was all New Marcus.

Pick up space, attract a defender, lay it off, spin into another gap. Take a beat, execute a no-look, gorgeous reverse pass, instantly take out a clutch of defenders, right in stride, Davis is gone, Hull are gone. It wasn't the only time. Over and over again, Marcus played precise passes through momentary gaps, slicing between lines. Sometimes it felt like he'd been reprogrammed. Like Neo in the Matrix his brain had been plugged into a terminal and new abilities got uploaded. Several months into Morpheus McKenna's training programme, Marcus Harness selected the "Sone Aluko skillset" file, blinked open his eyes and declared "I know The Ten Role".

After Tuesday, it got to the point where I was sort of sad not to see him start (although you can never really be sad about seeing Nathan Broadhead), but even as a sub he had time to carve Preston open for our fourth, with another coaxing through ball that took out four players and sent Jack Taylor galloping away. The finishing touch to our killer goal was eventually applied by Kayden Jackson, the first player to download new programming under McKenna's tutelage (a special file marked Whitton.zip for strikers playing on the wing).

For me, it’s here that McKenna's work is most outstanding. Modern English football is not a reuse and recycle sort of business. We tend to buy new rather than mend and make do. Going up a division is often a moment for discarding and moving on. But with FFP constraints, McKenna's willingness to keep developing our players is what makes us competitive at this level. More than competitive, dominant! If it is in you, Kieran McKenna will find it. Nothing gets thrown away on a whim. The result is that we've already had 23 players contribute to league victories, including probably a whole eleven of players previously written off by many as not good for the Championship. We’ve gone from feeling like we had no depth beyond the first eleven, to a crew of reserves who would grace most other teams in the division.

Just as well. Unlike Leicester we’re just not in a position to spend a few million on a player who’s only going to “compete for places”, but we’re still going to have to cover a lot of gaps over 46 games. We’re also not going to be able to discard too many players we’ve signed on hefty long-term contracts for a substantial fee (Joe Pigott probably hurt us enough with the FFP gods). Believing in these players, developing their skills, having them be better than anyone thought possible, that’s going to be vital. Good thing we’ve got Morpheus McKenna and his crew in charge.

Marcus Harness vs. Hull

Minutes 81

Goals 1

Shots 4

Accurate passes 17/22 (77%)

Chances created 2

Shot accuracy 2/4 (50%)

Touches 39

Successful dribbles 1/4 (25%)

Passes into final third 4

Accurate long balls 2/3 (67%)

Dispossessed 0

Tackles won 1/2 (50%)

Defensive actions 6

Recoveries 2

Dribbled past 1

Ground duels won 4/12 (33%)

Aerial duels 1/1 (100%)

Was fouled 1

Fouls committed 4