Kieran McKenna is to leave his role as Ipswich Town manager.McKenna made the decision to leave, despite guiding Ipswich to Premier League promotion with a second-place Championship finish last month. The 40-year-old is taking a break and not going to another job, while Ipswich are protected for his exit and have contingency plans in place, as is policy under chief executive Mark Ashton. Those plans will now be accelerated.McKenna had two years left to run on the four-year deal in May 2024, which he signed following Ipswich’s promotion to the Premier League.“It is with a mixture of gratitude, pride, sadness and contentment that I have decided to step down from the honour of managing this historic football club,” McKenna said in a release on the club’s website. “When you have the connection that we have built at this club there is never a good time to say goodbye.“However, having achieved a second promotion to the Premier League last season, with another memorable final day in our stadium, and after reflection over the last couple of weeks, I feel this is the right time for me to step aside. I do so with great pride at the incredible progress we have made and with huge hope and optimism for the future of the club.”McKenna took over as Ipswich manager in December 2021, when they were in League One. In his first full season in charge, the 2022-23 campaign, he guided them to promotion and then replicated that feat a year later, finishing second in the Championship to return Ipswich to the top flight for the first time since 2001.“When I first spoke to Kieran prior to appointing him, I knew we would be getting an extremely bright, hugely driven coach who craved the opportunity to make his own mark on a football club as a manager. To say he has done that is an understatement,” Ashton added.“Achieving three promotions in four seasons, in what is your first role as a manager, is an achievement which means Kieran is now rightly discussed in the same breath as the legends of this club. The mark he, his staff and his players have made on Ipswich Town and its community will live forever. It has captured a generation.”McKenna previously worked as a youth-team coach at Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United, taking up a first-team role at the latter side under Michael Carrick and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, before leaving in 2021.