O'Shea is loving the battles at the Republic of Ipswich

As a player who was clocked as the fourth fastest in the Premier League last season, Dara O'Shea relishes it "when I'm up against a striker and it's me and him".

- MIGUEL DELANEY

The Ipswich Town defender doesn’t, however, necessarily love what the races mean. “Obviously, I am quick, but I don’t really want to use my pace because I’m using it in a way where, nine times out of 10, I’ve been in the wrong position.”

It’s a modern spin on an enjoyably old-fashioned sentiment. O’Shea laughs when the vintage Paolo Maldini line is put to him, that if you have to make a tackle you’ve already made a mistake. “Yeah, if you come off and your shorts are dirty, you’ve made a few mistakes!”

That fine line between relish and tactical responsibility is all the tighter in a system as proactive as Ipswich’s, and under a manager as perceptive as Kieran McKenna. “The gaffer will point out, if you were like a yard there or two yards there, the whole passage of play is different,” O’Shea enthuses. “To have someone like that, it keeps us all on the same page.”

O’Shea uses the last four words a lot when discussing Ipswich, but it’s made good reading for him. The 25-year-old quickly got both the club and the team’s idea on moving from Burnley in the summer, to the point he was already putting in eye-catching displays after just a few games. O’Shea has been commanding at the back while helping Ipswich launch so many of those lively attacks with his searching passes. He is one of a few signings to have made the team admirably competitive, when many expected McKenna’s side to drop straight back down.

Some of that shouldn’t be a surprise, given the consideration that O’Shea put into his future. The Dubliner had approaches from Wolves and Brentford in the summer but chose Ipswich due to the excitement around the club from rising out of League One, as well as the man most responsible: McKenna.