Reids Coaching/Management thread

Maybe it's the way you dress or your appearance have you tried a natty hat? Grow a beard. Stroking that when answering a question makes you look intelligent in interviews.

In all seriousness good luck.

 

It must be an incredibly competitive career to get into.
The only thing I would say when pitching is think what the audience want to hear, who the decision maker is, and the basis on which they will be persuaded. It must be a difficult balancing act as you must come close to suggesting that the coaching staff aren't doing their job properly. You are telling them their dead ball routines could be better but you want them onside. You need to convince the coaching set up that you are complimentary to what they do and not a threat. Owners must wonder when they already pay for a coaching team, probably already quite large and expensive, why do they have to pay another consultant too ?

I understand why you provide a free report but is there a danger that they think once they have your report, that's it, they have your input, f.o.c, why do they now need to hire you ?

 

I think that's excellent advice. When you're pitching to analysts, I suppose you're speaking the same language @reids. But I wonder if when you're then doing the same to the owners you're just doubling down, rather than tailoring your message in a way which reflects their needs? They've presumably already had the blurb from their own analysts and so if they're not convinced by that, you turning up and saying similar things might not have the desired effect. What terms are you asking in the sense of contract length? Are you telling them you need a season/12 months for them to see proper result or can you offer them a much lesser term (say 3 months or just cup games or something) while still protecting your IP?

 

I already have a fantastic beard that I stroke far too much - maybe that's the issue.

That's interesting and an angle I hadn't quite thought of, I try to avoid telling people what they're currently doing (whether it be good or bad) and instead focus on what I can provide and the way that my process and analysis works, that way I avoid (as you correctly say) saying that what they're doing is wrong and instead leaves it up to them to decide if what I offer is better than what they're currently doing.
As for the last bit, quite possibly but my input and what I provide is only for a single game, the routines and everything I recommended is tailored specifically for that opponent, it most likely wouldn't work if they were to do that!

Potentially, this club is quite far down the pyramid so only has one analyst (who I was told looks at 4 or 5 of the oppositions corners, basically may as well not bother with that level of analysis!) so I'd imagine he'd be on board with having that taken away from him and instead the issue lies with coaches not wanting to be told what to do - but if it ends up winning them matches and keeping their jobs I'd be all over it if I were in their position.

 

If you're having trouble getting clubs to take the plunge then you might want consider an "internship" (assuming you haven't tried it already).

Find a club that's receptive (could be worth hitting us up - being a Watford fan you have vested interest!) to letting you do your thing for them for free for e.g. a season.

While it won't bring any money in, it'll get you proven applied experience and you can get testimonials/references from the club you're at. If you do a blinding job, once the free service is removed they might want to hire you themselves.

Most industries are fairly conservative about using new things. A great example is club nutritionists; Wenger was pretty much the only manager monitoring player diet when he first came to the UK. Now everyone does it.

 

How do you approach clubs? Speculatively or wait until they're advertising a position? It must be incredibly hard to break into cold, you'd probably be a lot better with a recommendation.

If I was you, I'd try to identify a few set piece specialists you think are doing a good job, drop them an email with some flattery in about how you admire their work and ask them how they got into the industry. You'll probably get quite a low hit rate but if you can strike up a bit of a dialogue with one, you might be able to tempt them to give you a nod when they know of a job is coming up in the industry.

Out of interest, who do you think are good at set pieces? Without looking at any stats, I've always thought Bournemouth were pretty good, always seem to create a lot of chances.

 

I've already done the internship thing for free twice now (at Leyton Orient and Millwall). The guys at Millwall said they were really impressed and said he'd ask Neil Harris if they could hire me, the reply was "most likely, provided we stay up" which I thought was fair enough. They stayed up then ignored all my emails following up, classy. My methods and track record are now at the point where I believe I'm deserving of getting paid (and getting to the last 6 of a job Man City posted also indicates that!)

 

Social media mostly, basically got everyone working at any club in England on LinkedIn and have a whole bunch of various football people who follow me on Twitter, that's basically landed me every job so far!

I know basically all the set-piece analysts and coaches around already and have met up with a bunch of them at various different points!

Liverpool are by far the best in the PL, they put so much time, effort and resources into it and set-pieces are a key reason as to how they ran City so close last season (which is 2hu City advertised for a set-piece coach and a set-piece analyst over the summer). You're right in identifying Bournemouth though, their routines are usually pretty great - their corner against Palace a few years ago is one of my favourite routines ever. Brighton last season were great at them and well, although that's no longer the case with Potter at the helm (which was a major flaw with him at Swansea as well)

 

I mean, Millwall being c*nts shouldn't be a shocker...

 

Cheeky f******s used another of my recommended routines at the weekend and got a goal from it (alright not direct from my corner, but the original routine was mine). Absolutely fuming, their reason for not hiring me was "Our challenge at the moment is getting our coaching staff to completely buy in to using external advisors, and sadly I don't think we're at the stage where they feel comfortable doing so at the moment."

I mean they've bought into it enough to keep on using my routines though haven't they?

Routine + goal below.

 

Presume you will be replying to whoever sent that rejection that "It seems I have managed to cure the coaching team's fear of using external advisors for you, given they used an external advisor (me !) for their first goal at the weekend ?

 

Hi xx,

No problem, I fully understand - I noticed the coaches used another one of my recommended routines at the weekend (which lead to Brindleys goal). If this is an area in which they are willing to take advice, I'd be more than happy to only provide the offensive analysis if this is something the club would be interested in pursuing (complete with routines that will be tailored towards the opponent's weaknesses - the routines I recommended for the Dagenham game most likely won't work against most opponents and teams will cotton on quickly!)


Many thanks,




Was the reply that I just sent.

 

Set piece consultancy business, the world has gone mad. Good luck to you though.

 

I mean it's an area of the game where there really isn't much knowledge. A decent set-piece program is potentially the difference between winning a title or finishing 2nd or the difference between getting relegated and staying up. It's a vital aspect of the game and in a world where a Premier League goal is worth £2.5m (in financial terms) it's an area where there's potentially the scope for a lot of money to be made.

 

It's a clear vindication of your technique, which doesn't pay the bills but at least confirms you're on the right track.

Once the tailored routine fails against other opponents, they might come crawling back. I think that reply you send reinforcing that it was your routine was spot on - you've ensured they connected that goal with you, and reminded them it was tailored for a specific opponent.

Interesting thing is that if you hear back from them now, you know you're in the driving seat.

Out of interest, have you reached out to the club? Our set piece routines are dire, you'd think we'd be fertile ground for an expert (and now you have an example of a football club scoring from one of your routines)!

 

I've struggled to find a decent contact at the club - I normally trawl through either Twitter or LinkedIn for a manager/assistant coach/director of football or use an email crawling service to find the email format (like name.name@watfordfc.com for instance) that the club use, then find the right names and send a blind message. You'd be surprised the level of replies that you can get from that (including the Head of Analysis at Man Utd, the Technical Director at Liverpool etc). But Watford are a complete blank to them all, emails bounced, no first team coaches etc on LinkedIn or Twitter that I can message. That being said I did meet the Watford U18 a couple of months ago as he was interested in what I was doing and he said he'd talk to the academy manager about me but I haven't heard anything since (tbf what I'm offering isn't really suited to youth football), I might ask if he could pass my details further up the chain.

 

Pretty sure a few people on here have said they've been emailed by Duxbury. Might be worth asking for some help.

Roy Moore certainly has their contact info. I haven't seen him on these boards in quite a while, but perhaps you could hit him up? I bet he could connect the dots for you. Might go nowhere but has to be worth a shot.

 

Interesting, will see if I can get it that way (also forgot to mention I posted an analysis and bit about what I do to Duxbury at the training ground before the FA Cup final)

 

Duxbury might have the cup in his office now if only he'd taken up your offer.

 

Message Harry The Hornet on here.

 

Dave Messenger? You're a supporter. Just because you're looking for a job doesn't detract from that. He's a very helpful bloke and although it's obviously not his area of responsibility he should know exactly who to forward your request to. And if he didn't he could find out.

As a lifelong supporter he'll also know that, right now, we could do with all the help we can get! How many matches is it in the PL since we last scored a goal directly from a corner (OK, Welbeck got a header against Swansea in the CC) and, across the same piece, how many have we conceded directly from corners? You'll probably have that statistic at your fingertips! Our principal problem with attacking set pieces though may be that Holebas, as our principal dead-ball kicker, isn't really all that good at it.

Have you got as far as discussing your potential fees? Do you have a set rate in mind or would it vary according to club? i.e. would you intend to charge Notts County less than Man. City? Maybe Notts County genuinely haven't got much cash but don't want to tell you that so give you another reason for saying no instead?

Do you know where you came on the Man. City shortlist? 2nd or 6th or somewhere inbetween? Have you had any feedback from them on why the other bloke got the job and you didn't?

 

Good point, will drop him an email today.

Yeah, I have one paying client already and discussed fees with County, I have a host of differing packages that can fit pretty much any budget. Perhaps but so far clubs haven't been afraid of telling me they don't have the money and asking if there was any room for negotiating

Don't know exactly, but I know nearly 400 applied, 18 got through to the next stage (a sample analysis), 6 got Skype interviews, with 2 being picked for face to face interviews with one getting the job. I had the Skype interview so all I know was I was at least top 6. I asked for feedback when they said I wasn't selected for the face to face interviews and the feedback I got was "was absolutely nothing to do with the work you've done or you as a person and I'm sure that you'll have a great career in football, but the 2 candidates we're taking into the face to face interviews both have 3 years full-time experience at clubs (all my work has been done remotely) and have the telestration experience (part of the job was filming training and being familiar with the programs needed for that, which I have no experience of)

 

It must be incredibly tough to get into, very very competitive and the fact 400 applied for the city job says it all. Of course you will be more likely to get in at a smaller club but as was noted at Notts Co, they may not have the cash if you go too far down the pyramid. Be innovative in your approaches, maybe a free week's trial rather than just a free case study, if they commit that they will take you on at an agreed rate if they like you. Make sure you get really strong references from projects you've done before where you can show you added value (but need to explain why they didn't turn into permanent roles if you were that good...eg one off exercise, covering for someone, change in ownership, relegation etc). Obviously ultimately you need to be able to pay bills, rent/mortgage so give it your best shot but do have a back up plan B of what you will do if you don't get meaningful paid work over the next 2-3-5-10 years depending on your financial situation. In a perfect world I would have been a professional wildlife photographer/cameraman but i quickly realised I couldn't make a career out of it as it was so competitive so ended up an accountant but knowing i would channel the money I earnt from a good career into spending as much time as I could on my hobby outside work, other than the wfc hobby of course. I regret never really having a go at making a career of the photography thing though....

 

Yeah that's the challenge really - trying to price it well enough that I can get clubs interested (but at the same time the number of clubs I can work with at one time is obviously limited due to conflicts of interest) whilst still valuing the bonuses I can bring.

Luckily I have over 10 years experience working in IT so that's my back-up plan - in fact, I'm still doing that as my day job at the moment whilst I try to get enough teams signed up to move over to football full-time (3 teams is the magic number - although money will be tight with 3 teams. I've timed how long it takes me to do each analysis and I have enough time to work with up to 4 teams at a time which will be a bit more comfortable financially).

Yeah, enjoyable jobs are always highly competitive, that's the reason why I chose to specialise in set-pieces as "normal" analyst jobs in football are so sought after and not having any qualifications in sports etc the odds would be highly stacked against me, yet there really isn't many specialists or knowledge in this area so it's been relatively easy (well, not easy but if you told me I'd be regularly speaking to clubs and having interviews at Man City a few years ago I would've laughed at you) to make a name for myself as it's so niche (yet also with a demand)

 

Well you could have tried international birding tour leading and ornithological survey and consultancy work instead! Admittedly though, I only got into that big time after two previous 'careers' and had a lot of contacts in the hierarchy of the tour companies (largely deriving from the 'twitching gang' of the 70's) and one very important one in environmental consultancy. My experience with the EU Habitats Directive and a relevant degree helped me with the latter.

Once I got into the latter I found that as long as I did a good job more work would flow in without me having to go looking for it. Particularly as my initial contact had loads of others in what was a rather 'small world'. Everyone in the field in Scotland knew everyone else.

Some years I had so much work April to July that I was doing three jobs in one day. Dawn (03.30 a.m.) Black Grouse survey, two x threw hour vantage points, dash to another adjacent site (maybe) and do another two x three hour vantage points for another consultancy. Snatch a bit of sleep (often in the car). Repeat. Absolutely exhausting though seeing as much of it was pretty physical clambering about in rank heather and sphagnum bogs up a hill. This routine interspersed by a fortnight leading a tour in Costa Rica maybe where 'dawn to dusk birding' was something of a light relief! There was plenty of work in the other months too. But not at the same intensity.

You chose to take a different route and have enough cash to pay to go on the tours as a client. I have to say there was something very satisfying in being in charge of events, pointing things out to people and seeing the excitement on their faces and getting paid for it as well though! So a bit like being involved in football as opposed to just watching it then. Who did you travel with b.t.w.? I was always a Limosa man as I think I've said before.

Anyway, your general advice to reids to 'follow your heart while still putting milk in the fridge' is well made. He seems to have that covered anyway.

I hope that reids has found this diversion from his 'quest for world football dominance' mildly interesting if nothing else. The relevance is I think that once you're in the door you then have the opportunity to achieve 'critical mass' when much of the bother of going looking for more work will take care of itself. Have you found that with your IT work reids? A WFC mate is an IT freelancer and work seems to come looking for him whenever he wants it.

Incidentally the football/birding combo isn't that rare amongst birders. Four I worked with were avid Leeds, Burnley, Glasgow Rangers and Dundee Utd.

However, I have no wish to 'hijack' reids' thread here. So maybe we should move this discussion to PM or Wildlife & Gardens?

 

Luckily my IT work has always been solid, I work in a school so have had the same job in the same place for the entirety of my IT career!

 

OK. But my mate, as a freelancer, can pick and choose and gets a very good day rate (he told me his last one) when he 'chooses' to work. Which could dovetail with your football work in the future. He does some sort of web-design work I think. Past my pay grade! Of course, you're probably best to have a steady income plus add-ons currently though.

He currently uses his spare time to 'be in a travelling phase'. A recent client was Chelsea F.C.

I could easily put you in touch with him if you think that might help. He's of WFC and as helpful as D. Messenger.

 

I've spoken to my mate. Email pm'd to you.

As said, he's a of WFC, is a freelance IT consultant and recently had a contract for some months with Chelsea.

I've no idea whether he could help you or not but he was interested in the subject and happy to receive any incoming from you and respond to it. He also has at least one 'agent' who works on his behalf which may be an issue too.

 

Awesome, cheers!

 

Gonna hold off messaging new clubs for a couple of weeks as I've just started work on a massive research project that will hopefully catch clubs eyes so will wait until that's finished to hopefully wow them. Over the summer I did some research into the different defensive set-ups that club used when defending corners (some of which are shown here: https://imgur.com/a/qve0i4y), I then went through and watched every corner goal scored in the Championship, noted the defensive style used and looked to see what insights could be gained.

So, for instance, here we have the "1 front" set-up (1 zonal marker around the front post area)





And here's where the goals + assists (if not direct) came from - the numbers are the assist ID, they tally with the goal (so the Millwall assist labeled 2 near the edge of the area was scored by goal 2 - at the backpost by a header). So you can see from this that a lot of goals were scored directly from the corner (aka no assist location) all grouped in the same location - unsurprisingly in the most dangerous area in the middle of the 6-yard area as there's no cover there. I've now taken this idea and taken it to the extreme and have gained the videos to every corner goal scored in the top 5 leagues (+ championship) from last season.

Using my IT wizardry, I have compiled this into what is basically an interactive database of every corner goal scored from the top 5 leagues (almost 600 goals), you can filter by the defensive set-up, league, team, whether it was direct from the corner etc which will hopefully show correlation for weak spots for each defensive setup, also clicking on each mark on the map will play a video clip of the relevant corner. Should provide a lot of insight when finished (so far only 5 teams done out of the 98 teams) and I'm planning to update it yearly during the off-season (as well as adding more leagues data when I have it) so it'll steadily provide a solid base of ideas - both in areas to try to target and also a nice bank of routines to call upon.

 

@reids as this is more your 'area' I've been thinking about last night's gooner result and want to ask you an 'out there' question: is it feasible that a significant factor that Mousett, on his debut, scored was that the gooners had no/very little data in how Mousett would/could/had perform(ed) in a blades' side?

 

Possibly but seems unlikely, his goal was from a corner so normally his role in that would've been filled by whoever he replaced in the starting lineup. PL clubs all have enough data on players to know their strengths and the role they'll likely play in each team (and it's not as if Mousett has been plucked from nowhere, he's made 50 apps for Muff - albeit very few starts) so they would've had plenty of data on him

 

Update for those that are interested:

Used the lockdown period to speak to clubs and update my corner database above (now up to nearly 1700 corner goals in it!). Spoke to lots of clubs: 3 Championship clubs, 1 PL club, 1 Swedish club, 3 American clubs, 1 Scottish club, 1 Canadian club, 1 Dutch team and 1 national team

Now got paid contracts for a Championship team until the end of the season and for the forthcoming Canadian season (with the worst performing team from set-pieces last season so will be an interesting case-study to see how effective my work can be!), hoping to land a contract with an MLS team in the next couple of weeks as well \o/

 

Congratulations and the best of luck to you.

 

Good luck Reids. Are you sure you're not giving WFC a few freebies too, as we scored from a set piece tonight