Former Sunderland star Martin Scott has become the new U18 coach at Middlesbrough's Academy.
He told the Evening Gazette: "I'm really excited about the chance to work with Boro's excellent young players.
"I love working with young players and when the chance came to work with Dave at Boro, I jumped at it.
"The quality of players here is excellent and hopefully I can use my experience to help them.
"It was a blow when injury forced me to stop playing, but I learned from that and I will be telling the players here how important it is to remain mentally strong and focused for whatever happens in their careers.
"The North-east is a passionate place to play football and passion is another quality I will be asking my players to show."
Boro academy chief Dave Parnaby is pleased to have the new man on board.
He said: "We are delighted to have brought in a very experienced coach such as Martin.
"He has already been successful as a youth coach at Hartlepool and he is very familiar with the working of Under-18 football.
"He has managerial experience from his time with Hartlepool and, more recently, Bury. It's great that we have been able to bring in someone of Martin's knowledge into our environment."
