Ipswich Town legend Mick Mills has admitted that Kieran McKenna deserves massive accolades for the way he has managed the squad and kept the players happy and content.
A 2-1 win over Coventry City on Tuesday night put Ipswich in pole position to earn automatic promotion from the Championship on the final day of the season.
They only need to avoid defeat at home to already relegated Huddersfield Town on Saturday to book their ticket for next season’s Premier League.
McKenna’s side are set to become the first team in more than a decade to earn back-to-back automatic promotions from League One to the Premier League.
Mills admitted that the Ipswich manager’s handling of the squad and the way he has managed to keep most of the players happy has been nothing short of outstanding.
The Ipswich legend pointed at the way George Edmondson was thrown into the mix in the big game against Coventry despite him not being a regular this season as a sign of McKenna’s management acumen.
Mills said on BBC Radio Suffolk: “This is his first management job but he is doing something that’s the hardest in football – keeping a large group of players happy and content.
“That’s the message we sort of get from the training ground that everybody is with it, they don’t mind and they know that they are going to get an opportunity.
“It’s a bit like George Edmondson – he has not been used in a number of games and then he was selected to play in this one.
“This one was a massive fixture and it was going to change the whole dimension of whether we go into the playoffs or we go up automatically.”
Ipswich have not managed to reach the Premier League since getting relegated from the top flight in the 2001/02 season.
