Former Preston North End Captain Chris Lucketti has rejoined the Club as Youth Team Coach.
Lucketti, who skippered North End to the Championship play-off final in 2004-05, returns to Deepdale to work under former team-mate Graham Alexander who now heads up the Club’s youth department.
“I’ve known Chris for over ten years now, since he first came to the Club under David Moyes and when I got this role I needed an assistant to come in and help me with the job,” Alexander told North End’s match-day programme, ‘The One and Only’.
“Chris had been doing the U16s for the past two years part-time so it was a natural thing for his career and to help me, for him to step up to the youth-team.”
Lucketti himself admits that it didn’t take him long to say yes once he’d been asked to rejoin the Club he served with distinction as a player.
“It is good to come back to a Club I’ve always kept my loyalty to,” said Lucketti. “I retired two years ago and since then I’ve worked with the U16s. The beauty of it is that the lads we’ve got now are the lads I’ve coached and recruited as well so I know them inside out.”
Lucketti isn’t the only new face in Alexander’s youth department. Nicky Reid a graduate of The PFA’s Physiotherapy Degree course run at Salford University has joined the Lilywhites after a fellow graduate of the course Matt Barrass left over the summer to take up a position as Bradford City’s Head Physiotherapist.
The former Manchester City and Blackburn defender had been working at Macclesfield Town and Alexander is pleased with the quality of hi newest recruit.
“He’s fantastic for us because he’s a qualified physio who is an ex-player and has had a career in the game. He’s been a physio for a long while at first-team level and he is also qualified in the strength and conditioning side of things, so he is really doing two jobs for us which is a big bonus.”
