Town manager Kieran McKenna has spoken about the additions of new first-team coach Junior Stanislas and set-piece analyst Michele Aragona.

Stanislas, 35, has joined the Blues from AFC Bournemouth, where he had been coaching their U18s, effectively replacing Lee Grant, who moved to Huddersfield Town as manager in June.

“Junior’s come in, he’s someone who comes highly recommended by someone whose judgement I trust a lot, so I’ve met him a few times over the summer,” McKenna said.

“A fantastic guy, he’s been coaching now for a couple of years after retiring a little bit earlier. A really positive guy, lots of experience right in and around the sweet spot where the club and the players are at the moment, trying to get promoted from the Championship, trying to sustain a career in the Premier League.

“So alongside [set-play and first-team coach] Mark Hudson and [first-team coach] Sone Aluko, we’ve probably got the most Championship promotions and Premier League relegations on a coaching staff!

“He brings some really relevant experiences, he’s a talented coach and he’s going to add to the group that we’ve got, the very good coaching staff that we’ve got.”

Regarding Italian Aragona, 26, who was working with Danish side FC Midtjylland for most of last season.

In the year before that, he was at Sampdoria as first-team performance analyst and prior to that was first-team head of analysis and assistant coach for a season at Vis Pesaro, his first job in football.

“Micky, as we’re calling him, has come in from FC Midjylland,” McKenna added. “He will add to our set-piece work and our set-piece coaching.

“I think it’s clear it’s an area now [if we’re] to make the climb that we want to as a club, it’s one of the most important areas, in this division and the division above.

“It’s something that we need to invest in more in staffing and in time and infrastructure and focus in every way. We have done over the last few years but we want to bring all that and push all that to another level.

“He’s a young guy, an experienced guy with good qualities and he’ll really help us, he’ll help the players, he’ll help Mark with his work and he’s settled in really well.”

Photo: ITFC

runningout added 23:44 - Jul 25 plenty of room for improvement on set plays - Got to aim high then higher
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FromReuserWithLove added 01:13 - Jul 26 Not too high though runningout, Hirsty our tallest player.
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Saxonblue74 added 06:36 - Jul 26 Aragona can start with corners, they were appalling against Aberdeen last night!
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Steve_ITFC_Sweden added 06:42 - Jul 26 Agree, Saxonblue: corners were not great last night, but most of the rest was positive
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cressi added 07:34 - Jul 26 Corners were poor, just put in a area the keeper could pluck from the sky. At the level the boys are playing should be so much better at dead ball situations.
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darkhorse28 added 09:44 - Jul 26 We’ve only been ok at set pieces when Kieffer was here, I can only remember Greaves scoring once in what feels like forever, so the only way is up. Our coaching group have maybe 5 years first team coaching experience between them…, we seemed desperate for experience off the pitch last season, I guess time will tell, but if we can only bring in coaches younger than our very young manager, that’s a red flag. Hopefully he’s brilliant, but not so brilliant he’s off in 12 months. An experienced head, that knows he’ll always be a coach, and wants a long term position to build strategically would make sense.., it’s probably instructive of where we are with the ownership. We need some strategy, it’s like the Evans years, but getting lucky with a talented young coach.

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Bert added 10:10 - Jul 26 People come and go. It’s the nature of a competitive industry. Excellent people move on so whether any back room recruits are younger than KMcK is not a worry……… in my opinion.
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SickParrot added 11:41 - Jul 26 Cressi, I agree with your post. My down arrow was a mistake, sorry.
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