To The Promised Land 2.3

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Back in the spring I decided to renew the contract of Avi Nimni, the Head of Youth Development at Hapoel Ashkelon FC – the one remainder of the staff I inherited when I took. Well, I needn’t have bothered, since he’s been poached by Bnei Sakhnin.

When I got wind of the offer, I told Avi that I hoped he’d stay, though of course I recognised he’d need to make his own mind up. I didn’t try to hard: he’s a spirited kind of chap and I figured he’d leap at a fresh opportunity.

It’s always a compliment when a member of your staff gets poached.

I was interested to see who else we could bring in and what they could bring to the party. My initial search proved disappointing – how difficult is it to find someone with a determined attitude to the job and an ability to judge youngster’s potential and work with them. Though I also wanted someone with a bit of nous generally, so they could manage the U19s on match day OK. (We enter a team in the U19 league but don’t have an U19 squad.)

I resorted to advertising, but that didn’t produce any good candidates. It rarely does.

In the end it was one of our coaches, Oz Elia, who pitched in with a suggestion: Shachar Yelin, who’s done the job elsewhere and is good at managing people. He has a bit of a reputation for loyalty and I’ve pushed the boat out with a three-year contract, so perhaps we establish some continuity.

It looks to me as though Shachar’s blindspot is tactics, so I might suggest he adopts our first-team tactics for the U19s.

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Notts County supporter, at least nominally. Regularly watch Stevenage, Cambridge Utd, and Peterborough. On FM, favour teams from the eastern Med, especially on Greek islands. Addicted to searching for liberos and to signing Darren Lavery. According to Liam Billington, I'm 'the Iniesta of Higher Tempo Press' :)