Boss Paul Cook says he couldn’t be happier with the staff he has assembled this summer.
The Blues manager brought former Town winger Gary Roberts in with him in March as a first-team coach and over the summer added former loan striker Franny Jeffers under the same title, Ian Craney, a member of Cook’s Wigan staff, as another coach and John Keeley, who was on the Town boss’s staff at Portsmouth, as keeper-coach.
"For outsiders, they probably look at it and think it’s a ‘friends benefits’,” Cook reflected. "You look at Gary Roberts being the first one as a lad who has played for me. I think Gary’s CV, and I might get it wrong, in the last 10 years he’s been in four or five promotions and three or four play-offs.
"Gary is a good lad who loves football and has had success throughout his career, and hopefully that can translate off the pitch.
"Francis Jeffers was a young coach that I followed from Liverpool. I’ve watched his career develop and watched him grow as a man and grow as a person off the pitch now, where he’s a lot more educated and thoughtful about football and his tactical awareness is great.
"He’s on the pitch every day with the strikers and the rest of the players, and they’re in there now doing set pieces.
"And Ian Craney, we brought a lad in who has a real infectious love for football. He’ll be a really good buffer on and off the pitch for both myself, the staff and the players.
"He’ll be someone who is around the players all the time when they’re feeling a bit down to give them the confidence to keep going. He’s worked for me at Wigan and knows how I work.
"And obviously, you’ve got John Keeley coming in, who has great experience as a goalkeeping coach.
"So from the football aspect of it I couldn’t be happier with my staff, they are lads that I trust, I really like, and I respect them.
"And if you can speak to anyone around the training ground or any of the people that watch these lads work, they come in of a morning very, very early and they leave every day very, very late, and they give this club everything they’ve got, and that will continue until the day we leave.”