McKenna's Pioneers

I must confess, I'm finding it hard to write about Ipswich this Summer. Partially that's because my son Nathaniel was born on May 30th and sleep deprivation has left my brain feeling like mashed banana most of the time. Mainly though, I think it's because this whole £100m window thing is too far outside my known football supporting world.

For the last two decades Summer was usually a period of reckless hope. Before the takeover you knew we'd be cheapskates, but still wondered if the solution to all our problems might be out there and available for a song, if we had the foresight to go get them. Maybe I'm not built for the new world we're inhabiting, where the numbers thrown around feel so ... unseemly.

So, back I go to my comfort zone, thinking about the long and winding Ipswich careers of three who won’t be coming with us to the Premier League - Janoi Donacien, Kayden Jackson and Vaclav Hladky. Three whose contributions to the club I can easily get my head around before I attempt to comprehend the meaning of the circa £60m casually dropped on Hutchinson, Greaves, Delap and Muric.

Ultimately, this piece is about enjoying how all three came through a period of struggle to make important contributions, to set this club in the right direction. I'm glad they came on that journey and I still think there's things to learn from their time at the club.

Right from the start Janoi Donacien’s Ipswich career was peculiar. Work permit troubles meant a permanent transfer mutated into a loan. After migrating with his family as an 8-year-old from St. Lucia in 2001, a 2012 change in Home Office policy forced the Donaciens to spend more than six years clarifying their migration status, despite a decade of prior residence.

On loan he made 9 starts for Paul Hurst, then instantly disappeared from the first team squad with the arrival of Paul Lambert. Lambert had a weird habit of periodically telling the press that Donacien was a centre back before declining to play him there. His spot at right back was taken initially by the wretched Jordan Spence and then by loanee James Bree. To the dismay of Lambert (and I imagine Theresa May), Janoi’s immigration status cleared up and Ipswich were legally obliged to wire Accrington £750,000.  Almost as soon as their cantankerous chairman Andy Holt got his hands on the money, he also got his right back returned on loan. 

Donacien was never Lambert’s cup of tea. Replacing him with Kane Vincent-Young was his first big money transfer and when KVY’s injury troubles started Lambert tried ever more absurd stand-ins, including Gwion Edwards, Cole Skuse and Luke Woolfenden. Luke Chambers was eventually restored to right back for the following season as Donacien was temporarily sent to Fleetwood in the winter window.

It turned out to be an excellent time not to be at the club, with Paul Cook taking over and then developing a thoroughgoing contempt for everyone he saw. However, like so many it was only under McKenna that he really flourished. The shift to 3-4-3 (ish) gave him space to be what he really was – a hybrid centre back-full back. As Ipswich spent most of Spring 2022 barely conceding a goal, Lambert's previous preference for makeshift right backs looked ever sillier.

There was never much of a clamour to restore Donacien from exile, but once he was back, he swiftly won new appreciation. The peak came against MK Dons in August 2022. The second home game of the season, with everyone still trying to work out if we'd be good, bad or indifferent that year. The discussion for much of July had been about where the goals would come from and Donacien as key creative force was precisely no-one’s answer.

For the first Donacien drove past Dean Lewington and picked out Wes Burns to score past Jamie Cumming. For the second an overlapping run took him away from the comatose Louie Barry for a similar assist, for what was the first of what became the canonical "typical Chaplin goal". Janoi was there when the main lines of the McKenna bible were being laid down.

Each goal was celebrated with a charming silliness – a secret handshake with Wes Burns, followed by a “Spidermen meme” with Chaplin – something which embodied a lot of the warmth we’d come to feel towards all these players. Donacien, with his impeccably styled beard, made a natural cult hero.  

In truth the attacking thrust of that day wasn’t terribly characteristic of Donacien, whose play was more defined by dogged one-on-one defending. His final three starts for the club – keeping tabs on tricky wingers Jack Clarke, Andre Vidigal and Ilyas Chair – were more in keeping with his key attributes – exceptional ground defending, deceptive strength and pace, canny positional play.

Kayden Jackson arrived a week after Donacien. It was, in truth, the conclusion of a criminal period of squad building (aka squad destruction), as Ipswich allowed three proven Championship goalscorers to leave before dropping middling fees on two players with modest goalscoring records in the third and fourth tiers. If Janoi’s attributes were subtle, Jackson’s was obvious – lightning pace. Outstanding raw physical attributes can sometimes be as much of a curse as a blessing and at times it felt like his running speed was almost held against him. “If he wasn’t quick, he’d be playing non-league”, as if every failed professional sprinter could segue easily into professional football.

Jackson’s route into the EFL was weird, signing pro terms with Swindon Town at 19 after winning a Samsung-sponsored competition. Swindon farmed him out on loan for a couple of seasons before releasing him back into the Non-League wilds, where he pitched up at Tamworth, before moving to Wrexham and then back to the EFL. Fast strikers get noticed quickly and after a 16-goal season for Accrington Jackson was already on his way onwards and upwards, for £1.5m.

£1.5m on a raw League Two striker is a great punt if you’ve got the resources to make them a bit-part player for a season or so (like Al-Hamadi now). As the marquee signing in a big rebuild it was reckless. Marooned in an awful team, without having yet developed the experience, strength or technical ability to play up front solo, like so many young strikers he was bullied to the margins by the brawny centre halves that populate the Championship.

2019-20 was a better season for Jackson, with his 94th-minute blast through Wimbledon’s keeper on a warm August night the biggest highlight. Yet, the following season Lambert seemed to fall out of love with him, culminating in Jackson being sent to train with the reserves. The trigger for his exile to the “bomb squad” was a brainless early sending off against Sunderland, but really it felt more like further evidence of Lambert’s capriciousness. Players make bad decisions that cost you from time to time, these usually require management rather than banishment.   

Paul Cook recalled him but not for long. Jackson only reappeared for first team duty in Kieran McKenna’s first away game. McKenna was clear from the outset that he rated Jackson – starting him in 7 of his first 10. The key to his comeback was his off the ball work. No one racked up more sprints harrying opposition defenders and Jackson came to lead our increasingly sophisticated system for retrieving possession. Another lesser light laying key groundwork for the future Ipswich juggernaut.      

Jackson says he’d run through brick walls for McKenna. Ipswich’s manager has a knack for finding ways to emphasise his players’ abilities and hide their flaws. Without him, you imagine Jacko might have drifted towards the end of his contract in Summer 2022 with little to show for his past two seasons and few options in front of him. Instead, even last season he ended up leading the line in key games, running the hard yards that would help us open things up later on. Under McKenna, there were 9 goals and 9 assists across 2,745 minutes of football, a goal contribution once every 152.5 minutes. We worried less about what he couldn’t do and appreciated more what he could. 

Vaclav Hladky’s arrival was also dysfunctional. One of 19 players brought in during the demolition man window. He started the 2022-23 as number one but initially looked small in a big stadium, both in stature and personality. A few poor performances and Cook quickly gave up on him, as seemed to be his wont. We were assured by fans of St. Mirren and Salford that he was an incredible shot stopper and good with his feet, but thereafter Vas had to make do with the occasional cup tie appearance.

McKenna has a knack for making fringe players feel valued and he always insisted that Vas was a fine goalkeeper and an excellent personality, arranging a rousing ovation for him via a five-minute sympathy cameo as Ipswich got promoted in May 2023. I don’t think anyone other than Hladky himself would have guessed what was next for the Czech stopper.   

Injury to Christian Walton opened the door and McKenna showed faith in his backup. For much of his Championship debut at the Stadium of Light he looked nervous, just as he had two seasons previously. But as the game went on appeared to grow. Not just grow into the game but grow physically. By the time Dan Neil tried to beat him in the 114th minute of the game he was impassably massive. What unfolded after was the season of his life.

Hladky found the most profound self-belief, reflected not just in crucial saves and in the best ball-playing we have ever seen from an Ipswich Town goalkeeper, but also in his cool as a cucumber media personality. Vas’ ability with his feet has changed the nature of the goalkeeping position at Ipswich Town forever, another key contribution in developing The McKenna Way.  

Earlier I said there were lessons, so what were they? For supporters, as with Greg Leigh last year, it is lovely to be in the position to be sentimental about departing players. For so long all we had was bitterness and regret. All three players helped establish some of the main lines of McKenna’s New Ipswich and should be remembered as fondly as we remember the supporting cast from those Burley teams. Like a Richard Naylor or a Gary Croft, maybe. Next season there will almost certainly be afternoons where we take a kicking and lament that all we want is “for the players to give everything for the badge”. These boys always did.

Our continuing players will do well to note these three’s ability to thrive well above the level most thought possible. Few people probably thought Janoi Donacien would be a key part of a promotion-winning back line, fewer still thought Kayden Jackson would be one of the most useful squad players in the Championship, literally no-one imagined Vaclav Hladky would start every game as we returned to the Premier League. We will require some similarly unanticipated step ups this season.

Maybe there’s some lessons here too for our exciting new arrivals. McKenna and his methods can help you achieve more than you ever imagined. Channel the spirit of your predecessors. Whatever setbacks you face, if you keep cool and maintain your self-belief like Vas, if you put your head down and work hard regardless of any personal slights like Kayden, if you can combine doggedness and joyfulness like Janoi, it’ll work out in the end. If the class of 2024-25 can marry their ability to those values, they’ll all go far.