Aston Villa hire three new academy coaches
Aston Villa have confirmed the arrival of three new coaches to their academy with Tony Carrs, Gerrard Nash and Adem Atay heading to Villa Park.
In a statement on the club’s official website on 15 June, Villa announced that Carrs has arrived from Blackburn as the Midlands club’s new Under-23 Senior Professional Development Phase Coach.
Nash, who’s previously worked with the Irish FA and Ipswich will join Villa as their new Lead Under-18 Professional Development Phase Coach.
Atey is moving from Ipswich to Villa, taking up the job as the Premier League club’s Under-18 Professional Development Coach.
Academy manager Mark Harrison is clearly thrilled with the triple appointment.
As quoted on Villa’s official website, he said: “We are delighted that Tony, Gerrard and Adem are joining us after a thorough recruitment process.
“They will bring with them a wealth of experience in player development and their appointments will also strengthen our player development coaching strategy.
“This will allow us to support individual player development further as we will now have three outfield coaches at both Under-23 and Under-18 level.”
Aston Villa have ramped up their academy recruitment in terms of both their staff and their players in recent years.
It has led to first-team breakthroughs for the likes of Carney Chukwuemeka, Tim Iroegbunam and Jacob Ramsey.
Other youngsters who’ve joined Villa’s youth set-up in from other clubs in recent years include Louie Barry, Ben Chrisene, Lamare Bogarde, Aaron O’Reilly, Finn Azaz, Finley Thorndike and Thierry Katsukunya.
Villa’s academy staff has also seen a bit of an overhaul with Harrison joining from West Brom to replace Sean Kimberley as the club’s academy manager in June 2019.
In other Aston Villa news, Cameron Archer is expected to be on the club’s pre-season tour of Australia.