Boro appoint new Youth Coach

With a lot of talk over the last few weeks about what is happening with Stevenage Borough’s youth system and the EFCO, Phil Wallace has announced that Colin Read, formerly of Tottenham and West Ham has been appointed as Youth Manager. Read spent some time at the club last season as reserve team manager. The club have been looking for someone to manage the youth side since Darren Sarll left the club to join Brentford and with the appointment of Read, Boro look to have got a good experienced coach in to take the academy further. Steve Greaves, who was an academy assistant at Ipswich, can also help Boro as Phil Wallace plans for the future.

Wallace obviously wants to completely transform the youth system at the club as it is just not developing players good enough to play for the club.

“What I’d like to see is a select group of six players aged 18-19 years old that we give full contracts to each year, in addition to anyone that may excel in the EFCO scheme. These players will probably have been rejected by Football League and/or Championship clubs, just as George Boyd was, or come from our own School of Excellence and be the best talent that we can find. Possibly even from overseas. We will contract these six as full time pros, provide digs and see how they do with a year of intensive full-time training alongside the first team squad.”

It’s interesting how this summer seems to have seen a lot of change with regards to the coaching set up and youth academy. When Peter Taylor left he said he had given the chairman a few pointers where he felt the club could improve upon.

“As for the club itself, the support is good and the training facilities are okay. There were one or two things I said to Phil about which need improving.”

It certainly looks like Wallace has taken them points on board as he looks to try and get Stevenage into the football league. The coaching set up is arguably the strongest it has ever been. I can’t remember having 5 different coaches as well as a separate youth coach ever before. The playing squad is also, again, big compared to other clubs in the division. At the moment we have potentially 9 players who can play up front! It also makes you wonder if Westley has come in not just as manager, but also to help finance the club as well?