Misalignment to your club’s goals – every team wants the edge over their competition and wants to win games. Analysis possibilities have grown exponentially over the past few years and some teams track everything from metres run, maximum pace and direction changes to heart beats. The output your Video Analysis system produces has to ultimately match the culture and direction of the club. Is your intention to use this data to make team selections? Will your team be told their weekly average metres run figure is down? If your team has the resources to drop players and buy new players during a season then this data may be important. If you coach or manage a semi-professional or amateur team then your focus would be better pushed towards development of your current players by involving them and allowing them access to video. Winning vs. Development is constantly discussed in sporting circles but ensuring it matches the why and purpose of doing analysis is vital. If you need to develop players then skill and game sense development is more worthwhile than measuring quantitative data.

Tactics become overly driven by stats - you only have a pass completion rate of 57% so your coach makes Tuesday and Thursday training all about passing. Leicester City, currently winning the Premier League have the lowest pass completion rate of the entire Premier League. Would Claudio Ranieri have looked at this figure and designed training around passing drills post-match? Yes, if there wasn’t an understanding of the full picture. Leicester’s game relies around fast counter attacks with risky through balls and over the top passes. These may not come off every time and therefore skew pass completion statistics but Ranieri has that understanding that his game plan is not designed around having a high passing success rate. The FA coaching badges are built around developing the next crop of English footballers in the passing general mould and many coaches therefore focus their attentions on passing statistics. The creative or risk-taking pass is withheld in favour of a simpler pass that improves pass-completion to the detriment of the potential goal-scoring opportunity pass.

Your Video Analysis Company promised too much – as with any purchase the intended benefits can be oversold when the reality is that these promises won’t be matched. Two often misconstrued benefits are fancy, almost magical, like analysis that will expose team weaknesses that can be improved immediately. The second being video analysis saves your team time. You might have been sold on the back of promised stats like you see on Match of the Day or Monday Night Football, but the reality is these are done with the backing of several people in a big team. Opta construct match analysis that can have up to 1500 events, Man City have 11 full time Performance Analysts and Liverpool even have a Director of Research in their Performance Analysis department. The stark reality is that you get out what you put in. If you’re an amateur club or indeed a semi-professional club you may not have time to go through matches and fine-pick every little bit of detail. After the first Lions game in 2013, it took two of their analysts ten hours each overnight to go through the full match ready for Gatland’s post-game briefing session. Allowing players to be part of the process allows far greater opportunities for those without Man City’s resources.

Your club doesn’t have a learning culture – a player needs to feel involved in the analysis process and begin to see the triggers that lead to good and bad decisions on the park. Coaches and ex-players often say how they wished they knew what they know now and how much better a player they would have been if that was the case. People actively involved in football academies have admitted that footballers have it easy and lack maturity built up from ‘normal life’. Many leave school when they’re fifteen or sixteen and while there is no accusation they’re not as intelligent as the general population, they perhaps lack the learning ability and the realisation that learning comes from all parts of life and not necessarily solely the training field or team discussion room. At the end of the day, the player is the one making the decisions on the field and need to develop their problem solving ability. A growth mindset and having the ability to read, listen and learn from others in various environments needs to be in place to learn from any sporting analysis.

The Analysis process is too complicated – people involved in sport are sportsmen / sportswomen, first and foremost. They enjoy sport, they don’t necessarily enjoy trialling technology and composing reports. Harry Redknapp famously enjoyed great success with Tottenham, which has been furthered by Mauricio Pochettino. He admitted technology wasn’t his best friend and indeed said he couldn’t even send an email. The lack of help Video and Performance Analysis provided for him was epitomised by him saying “Next week, why don’t you get your computer to play against their computer and see who wins.” Different coaches thrive in differing environments. Some of the best coaches have their own methods and use these successfully. For them it’s as simple as “I’m a Head Coach – I coach and improve players”. For some, they prefer a Manager or Director of Football title that gives them a wider scope for club development. Players’ potential can be unleashed and thrive under one manager but stall under another, even with a similar approach. Some teams such as England Rugby and Cricket have thrived when their supposed ‘hands-on’ and data-driven coaches in Stuart Lancaster and Peter Moores moved on. A video analysis platform or company has to be relevant, accessible to all and be used in timely fashion to guarantee a buy-in from coach and importantly the players.

A Coach or Analyst moves on - the professional environment has always been about results but even when one starts to think that the average length of a coach or manager’s tenure can’t get any shorter it manages to surprise. A Premier League Manager’s average duration is now shorter than one calendar year and the days of a SAF or Arsene Wenger tenure seem long gone. One Coach may prefer his own type of video analysis software or platform and as soon as he is out the door, the next coach hasn’t used it before or indeed uses another one. This results at all-costs mentality has slipped down to the amateur game as well. Even when the person at the top has moved on the majority of the same players will be around and so having a continuity with one system or platform is important.

Your Coach does all the analysis and plans according to their strengths - it is part and parcel of life that individuals prefer working on their strengths than improving weaknesses. Is your coach a breakdown specialist in rugby? Was your coach a former central defender? Training forms a structure around their knowledge areas. Even more in the semi-professional or amateur environment when there isn’t the barrage of specialist coaches, a coach will set up a team according to their own philosophies and beliefs. If they’ve set up the team to defend strongly, press quickly and be structured around set piece, the coach’s analysis will be formed around these areas. If they sneak a tight win after a great defensive performance, a coach can segment analysis around this to highlight their exceptional game plan, devised by themselves. Coaches have egos and like authority like many in lofty positions. We of course know most clubs don’t have this mentality but pressure, a lack of resources and a constant urge to demonstrate adequacy can lead to analysis focusing on ‘coach strength’ points and not the teams’ best interests.

‍The thoughts above are purely my own. It's worth noting, I am not an analyst or a coach at a high level so there'll be elements individuals disagree with. Analysis within sport, whether it be performance analysis, video analysis or another form is so fast moving it would be good to get others' opinions.

Kenneth plays Cricket for Watsonian CC and enjoys Crossfit as well. When not collapsing under Handstands he likes reading about all things sport.

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