Watford boss Cleverley eager to face another young coach

It’s the battle of the ‘youngsters’ as 37-year-old Ipswich manager Kieran McKenna hosts a Watford side led by 34-year-old Tom Cleverley – and he is very eager to put his wits against another coach with experience gained at Manchester United.

A former United Under-18’s manager, McKenna went on to be assistant coach to Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Ralf Rangnick.

“I’m really looking forward to the fixture, as are the squad, because I think it’s an exciting game and another chance for us to be a part of the promotion run-in,” said Cleverley.

“Having a big say in that keeps us motivated and personally I’m looking forward to challenging myself against a top young coach like Kieran McKenna.

“He had a very good background at Manchester United and then has done fantastically well with Ipswich to get promoted to the Championship.

“They’ve really put their stamp on the league, they’ve got good rotations among the team, they’re well organised with exciting players and they’ll be a difficult test.”

The Tractor Boys sit second in the table, but lost their big derby game with Norwich at the weekend.

“I haven’t thought too much about that, other than analysing their performance,” Cleverley admitted.

“I’m more concentrated on how we can have an impact on the game than on how they might be feeling.

“We’re confident we’ve got the game plan and players to do that.”

Cleverley has the same squad to pick from as he had for Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Preston as both Ken Sema and Jeremy Ngakia are unlikely to be back this week.

“The pair of them are really close to being back and they’ll rejoin the main group on Thursday when we get back from Ipswich,” he said.

“Saturday probably comes too soon for both of them, but they should be in contention for the week after against Hull.”

Four games into his spell as interim head coach and Cleverley is still unbeaten, though he admits the points haul should probably be more than the six the Hornets have collected.

“It’s always a solid base when you’re not losing football matches, but we feel the West Brom game should have been a win, the Leeds game was a strong performance and then on Saturday we didn’t do enough in the final third to warrant winning,” he said.

“We plan on putting things right tomorrow night, and being a little bit more productive in the final third.

“It’s a mentality thing, being really ruthless when we do arrive in those positions, with the mindset that there will be a final product and there’s a purpose behind everything we do.”