NEAL ARDLEY has gone into further detail about the recent additions of Paul Harmston and Matt Lever to the York City backroom staff, helping to shape the future of the football club.

Harmston joined York to help aid with the club’s hefty injury list as the club’s new Head of Sports Science, whilst Lever is the man behind City’s recent transfer business, joining the club as Head of Recruitment Analysis.

Having accumulated over eight years of experience with Sheffield Wednesday, Harmston has helped to lighten the load of the injuries throughout the squad, whilst Lever has played a large part behind York’s short-term and long-term transfer strategy, already looking ahead to the summer.

“Paul’s more sports science, which is the fitness of the players and the conditioning of the players. We all know that we had an injury list of about 13 players, so we advertised for a physio to come in and support our medical team,” Ardley told The Press.

“There are things we’re trying to improve. Paul has already shown his qualities and we have kitted out the new gym at the training ground where he has put programmes in place for the players.

“The most important thing for me as a manager is the trust. We discuss training and loads and who should be doing what and Paul has an opinion.

“It’s an opinion that I value highly, which is what I need from my staff.

“Matt Lever is the data analyst when it comes to recruitment. He’s another person who is working incredibly hard behind the scenes.

“We’ve tried to push him to not rush a lot of stuff, but to speed things up so that we can do what we’ve been doing in the last couple of months.

“There’s a longer process going into the summer, to make sure that we’ve got the right list of players heading into the summer.”

Harmston has played a large role in York midfielder Dan Batty’s recent ongoing recovery from injury, setting out a new rehabilitation programme to help the 26-year-old recuperate from a long-term injury.

“We’ve helped along the way with him. We’ve sat and had meetings with him and have put programmes in place.

“The new sports scientist Paul Harmston has worked really hard with him, building him up, and now he’s training but in non-contact.

“He trained really well yesterday and we kept him as a spare player in yesterday’s session, so the other players knew that they couldn’t go and lump him during training.

“I’d like to think by the end of this week and the start of next week, he’ll be back into training fully and then it’s down to him to show how fit and strong he is, and how close he is to match sharpness.”