McKenna faces his former club on Sunday for the first time since leaving to take the Ipswich job.
On working at Carrington, he said: “From an academy perspective, Scott McTominay and Axel (Tuanzebe), who is here, which is really, really nice.
“Both were at the top end of the academy at that point, but really nice to have seen their journey and hopefully played little parts in their journey along the way.
“I had a couple of really good youth team years there really, working with a lot who are now professionals, Angel Gomes, Tahith Chong, Jimmy Garner, Brandon Williams, Ethan Laird, Dylan Levitt. I shouldn’t name names because I’ll end up missing out quite a few names but a lot of guys, who have gone on to have good professional careers at different clubs across the level.
“Of course, there’s only so many who can make into Man United’s team and stay in Man United’s team, Marcus Rashford is one who has currently done that, Scott until recently when he left, Kobbie Mainoo, who I got to know a little bit before I left, was maybe a 16-year-old who had just started to train with the first team a little bit and started to come up with the first team.
“(Alejandro) Garnacho was starting to have his impact on the youth team. There have been some top players there. The academy there is fantastic, I have to say, my time in the first team there is probably more publicly looked at, of course, but my couple of years in the academy there were a massive privilege to be part of the lineage there that’s brought through so many homegrown players and something that was a real privilege to be part of the academy.
“It’s always great to see so many of those players doing well and we’ve met a few of them this year at different clubs and, of course, we’ve got Axel here at our club, which I guess shows the diversity of pathways that you can have.
“But helping players go on and have a career and do well in their career or lives is always something you take pride in.”
- Get breaking football news faster with the new Tribal Football app! Download now on iOS and Android to stay ahead of all the latest transfers and football updates. Download now: App Store, Google Play