IPSWICH have offered Kieran McKenna a blockbuster new contract to try and keep him at Portman Road.
Manchester United, Chelsea and Brighton have all made tentative enquiries over hot-property McKenna who has led Ipswich to back-to-back promotions.
The Suffolk club’s desperate board are fighting hard to keep the highly-rated Northern Ireland coach and are offering him a stunning new contract worth £5million-a-year over the next four seasons.
Ipswich have reacted as they expect an offer from Brighton in the next 24 hours as the south coast club look to replace Roberto De Zerbi.
McKenna’s current deal, although still an extremely good one for a Championship manager, is about £1.2million a year.
And whether this new offer from Ipswich is enough to tie him at the club remains to be seen.
Ipswich believe their best chance of staying in the top-flight next season is to keep hold of McKenna, 38, who was also in talks with Crystal Palace over taking over from Roy Hodgson during the last season.
And this current deal is the biggest contract Ipswich have offered since giving Italian keeper Matteo Sereni over £20,000-a-week when he joined from Sampdoria in a £4.5million deal in 2001.
Ipswich were relegated from the Premier League a year later and they have not been back until now, with McKenna leading the club to this stunning promotion.
Yet McKenna could end up with three huge offers.
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One big option could be Manchester United as he was previously an assistant coach at Old Trafford.
But United have also been linked with Mauricio Pochettino off the back of the Argentine’s departure from Chelsea.
Erik ten Hag is gripping onto his job in Manchester but SunSport understands Sir Jim Ratcliffe is a big admirer of Poch.
McKenna has been internally discussed by the Blues board with De Zerbi and Ruben Amorim also in the frame.
Chelsea are beyond a laughing stock
By Andy Dillon
CHELSEA’S longest serving manager under the club’s new owners has left by mutual consent.
The fact that Mauricio Pochettino lasted only 325 days underlines what a basket case of a club it has become.
You might expect a manager to lose his job after five games WITHOUT a win but only Chelsea could lose theirs after five wins on the spin.
When the supporters wrote an open letter to chairman Todd Boehly and his sidekick Behdad Eghbali in March, they expressed fears that their beloved Chelsea was becoming a ‘laughing stock on and off the pitch’.
It is way beyond that now with the departure of the manager who finally looked to be getting a tune out of a squad branded ‘£1billion bottle jobs’ just over two months ago as they crashed to defeat against Liverpool’s youth team in the Carabao Cup Final.
Read Andy Dillon’s full take on the sacking of Pochettino and what it means here.