Blog 6- Performance analysis and me

When I first started coaching I tried to analyse every aspect of the game for the team I was coaching but it turns out what I thought was analysing to help the team was actually just making statements. "Get the ball wide", "move out as a defensive line", or "don't back off him" were common things that were communicated to my team. At half time I would remind the players that they all had their own individual jobs to do as well as working as a team but the information I wasn't giving them, it turns out, was the important part and would have been a great help to them. If I could go back now, these statements would probably sound more like:-

• Get the ball wide because their fullbacks are playing very narrow and are also not very fast.
• Move out as a defensive line because their striker likes to stay in line with the last man and is exploiting the gaps left when we aren't in line.
• Don't back off him and give him time to find a pass, he doesn't like to be rushed.

Half time team talks, pointing out ,for example, that the opposition like to play a ball over the top, so we could maybe defend a little deeper to limit the space they can play into and the midfield can close down quicker to rush their pass etc.

It was during my second year of university that I actually got a real understanding of what performance analysis was as well as just how important it can actually be. During this time I tried doing some notational analysis, basic stuff with a pencil and paper, and looked at what areas we attacked from (wide left, wide right, down the middle) and did the same for our opposition. I noticed that we were attacking a lot down our left wing but hardly ever from our right and we were getting attacked a lot through the middle of the pitch. If I hadn't of noted that there is a very good chance I wouldn't have remembered when it came to our next training session. Laird and Waters 2008 study suggests experience coaches have a recall of 59.2% accuracy when it comes to critical events in a match with this going down to 42% when it comes to novice coaches (Franks and Miller, 1986). These stats therefore show just how important and significant analysis can be and its safe to say that I now always have some paper and a pencil with me!!

References

• Franks, I. and Miller, G., 1986. Eyewitness Testimony in Sport. Journal of Sport Behaviour, 9(1), pp.38-45.
• Laird, P. and Waters, L., 2008. Eyewitness Recollection of Sport Coaches. International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, 8(1), pp.76-84.