Will Suffolk fall in love again?

Wanted: Man to take on a tricky task and a very hard one. The tricky task is to keep a newly-promoted team in the Premier League. The very hard one is to make a distraught fanbase fall in love again.

I have friends with young kids, and those kids think that most seasons at Portman Road end with a promotion pitch invasion because that is pretty much all they've known since Kieran McKenna took charge.

We knew it would end some day. Clubs of the stature of Manchester United and Chelsea had been sniffing around in the past, and other Premier League sides were also interested.

What we didn't expect was him to want a break so early in his career, but when you reflect on it, it makes sense. His success as a coach has been based on an almost obsessive attention to detail, to being the first one in the training ground car park and the last one to leave. That takes a toll.

Maybe there was a clue in the first interview McKenna gave as thousands invaded the pitch when promotion was secured back in May, when he said he wanted a break before thinking about the challenge ahead. The way his voice cracked with emotion at the end of his "goodbye" video to the fans suggests it was a harder decision than we might realise.

So the shoes Gary O'Neil needs to fill are not just big, they are the ones from the nursery rhyme large enough for a woman and her family to live in.

The reception from fans has been mixed, with words like "underwhelming" bandied around. But that's harsh in my view. O'Neil laid the foundations for Bournemouth's current success, and his recent season with Strasbourg was impressive.

A good start will be key, and a distinct style. We've grown used to the excitement of 'McKennaball', now O'Neil will have to get the fans off their seats while achieving the one thing McKenna could not – Premier League survival.

If he manages that, Suffolk may well fall in love again. We're sentimental like that.

Steve Mellen is an author, the former editor of ITFC magazine Meet Me At Sir Alf, and also represented fanzine Those Were The Days