Kieran McKenna
A second successive automatic promotion with Ipswich, who were 12th in League One when McKenna took charge there in December 2021, has won him the League Managers’ Association manager of the year award and transformed the 38-year-old into a hot property. Though England’s biggest and wealthiest clubs have no recent history of appointing young homegrown managers with no top-flight experience, either as a player or a manager, McKenna has been linked with Chelsea and Manchester United, for whom he worked as an assistant under José Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjær and Ralf Rangnick before moving to Portman Road. Brighton, also in search of a new manager, seem more traditional suitors.
