Blueprint for Football Weekly Digest [Issue 13]

Every Monday evening, subscribers to Blueprint for Football Extra, this site's free newsletter, receive an e-mail with the best coaching related articles we've come across during the week.  These are the articles included in the e-mail sent on the 9th of March.  If you too want to receive the links straight in your in-box, all you have to do is subscribe to the newsletter.

Six strategies for improving learning insport

Coaches, especially those who deal with young players, are first and foremost teachers.  That is quite a frequently heard statement and one with a lot of truth in it.  The challenge for coaches, then, is to execute training sessions that allow those in their charge to learn.  This article will prove particularly helpful in that regard as at presents six practical ways through which coaches can achieve this.

Brentford’s brave new world is alreadyworking in Denmark

There has been a lot of criticism going Brentford’s way for the decision to part ways with Mark Warburton – the manager who got them promoted to the Championship last season and who could still guide them to the Premiership at the end of this – once June comes around.  The reason for this decision is that the club’s owner wants to adopt a more statistical approach which Warburton didn’t fully agree with.

Inevitably this has caused quite a stir but, as this article shows, there is already a club who is adopting a similar approach.  Whether this is the right way forward remains to be seen but for a club of Brentford’s resources it is sometime worth it to experiment in their approach because doing the same things that the others are doing certainly won’t result in sustained success.

The science behind Liverpool’s performancesexplained

Football often tends to be a closed box with clubs allowing those outside to see only what they want them to see.  At the highest level, even training sessions tend to be carried away from prying eyes so as to ensure that nothing of what they do manages to leak out.

Given this attitude, it is quite a refreshing change to see the sports science team at Liverpool FC publish a series of research papers based on work that they’ve carried out recently.  Rylands Morgan, who heads the team, said that “we believe science underpins football and we aim to generate research that develops our knowledge of the game and our players’ responses to training and match-play.” 

Whatever the reason for these publications, there should be plenty of reading material to interest any coaches out there who do not have access to such sports science teams.