Wright Set to Return as U21s Assistant Wednesday, 28th Dec 2022 10:25 Former Blues defender David Wright is set to rejoin the club as assistant U21s manager. Wright, whose appointment is not yet confirmed, recently left the MK Dons, where he had been assistant first-team coach, following manager Liam Manning’s sacking. The 42-year-old was a player with the Blues between 2006 and 2010 before being released by Roy Keane, having previously been with Crewe and Wigan. He returned to the club as an academy coach in the summer of 2013 while playing for Colchester United, working with the U14s, U15s and U16s, following spells at Crystal Palace and on loan at Gillingham. Wright ended his playing career with the U’s to concentrate on his coaching career in November 2014 but in June 2015 he returned to the North Essex club to join their staff as U21s coach and also to become manager of non-league Maldon & Tiptree as part of a link-up between the clubs. In December 2015 he was named assistant to manager Kevin Keen and was caretaker-manager for one match following the former West Ham man’s departure in April 2016. John McGreal, who Wright will be working alongside with Town’s U21s, was subsequently named Colchester’s new manager and the former full-back became U18s coach. Wright moved on to Norwich City in November 2016, initially coaching the Canaries' U18s before taking charge of their U23s in 2019, replacing Matt Gill, who had joined the Blues as a member of Paul Lambert’s staff. He left Norwich to join Manning and fellow former Blues Chris Hogg and Lewis Price at MK in August 2021. While at Carrow Road, Wright worked alongside the Blues’ new academy manager Dean Wright, who joined Town from Norwich in the summer along with other former academy employees at the Norfolk club including new head of recruitment Alex Kaufman. Speaking to TWTD earlier this month, Dean Wright said Town have been going through a recruitment process looking for staff to work alongside McGreal - Kieron Dyer having stood down in March and Terry Butcher having departed the previous summer - and also U18s coach Sam Darlow among other positions. “We’re going through a recruitment process at the moment. We've had a number of jobs advertised over the last few weeks and we’re just going through the recruitment process now,” he said. “We want another 18s coach, another 21s coach just to be able to contribute to the type of programme that we want to deliver. “I’m not a massive one for leads and assistants and all that sort of stuff, what I want is a team of people that just work together, that are passionate about the players and developing players, not so much teams. “I think if you end up with leads and assistants or managers and assistants, you end up with people that get fixated on teams. I don’t want that, what I want is a smaller group of people where we all just work together, we help out with whatever’s going on.”
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