Part 3 - The Staff

I soon realised that the level of help I was going to receive was going to be severely limited, both by the financial restrictions at the club and by the level of football we were playing. Attracting decent staff to a Belgian Third Division club was going to be nigh-on impossible.

I gave myself a list of staff I would not be able to manage without and then set about trying to fill the vacancies in time for the new season, which was rapidly bearing down upon me. 

I managed to persuade the retired Nigerian International Sunday Oliseh to come in as my Director of Football. I figured he would take some of the stress of the day-to-day stuff off my back, and with his ability to judge player ability and potential, and his ability to work with youngsters he would be a decent addition.

I had no money to spend, and couldn't attract anyone to the club anyway. If I wasn't going to be able to spend money on transfers I wanted to focus on youth, so I persuaded Eric Reynders to be my Head of Youth Development. He had good skills at working with youngsters and judging player potential.

I also managed to sign three decent coaches, a physio and a scout. I decided to only employ one scout. As I wasn't planning on signing any new players, I would just use him to scout opposition. 

Now I just needed to decide on a formation. I was heavy on midfielders, although mainly wide ones, and I couldn't find a decent way of fitting all my best players into any formation that didn't look woefully lopsided. I was going to have to try and retrain a few players to play in new positions. But I didn't have long. The first friendly was only a week away, and the competitive fixtures weren't far behind...