Well, it’s time for a break.

As many of you will have seen before clicking this, I’m putting the Potterlytics name, and social media, into an indeterminate-length hibernation as I move into a new and incredibly exciting role in football.

This blog and social media account was set up to help me document my silly little foray into football data and analysis. Having loved the work of ExpectedKilns back in the Nathan Jones days, I saw an opening in the link between my day job in astronomy and in the data that underpins football analysis.

Just over 2 years later, and I’ve had incredible opportunities I never could have dreamed of.

From writing in the Sentinel as a guest columnist, co-commentating on the very same radio station I used to listen to games on throughout my childhood, to working with an incredible club of people at Liverpool Feds, I’ve loved every second of it.

I could not be more grateful to the individuals that have helped me on the way, whether through opportunities they’ve given me, or through helping me develop and learn as I ventured into a sport in which I’d only ever been an outsider.

People like Pete Smith, Lucas Yeomans, Angela Smith, Matt Sandoz, Leanne Duffy and everyone involved with Liverpool Feds, among many others I’ll try to list on Twitter, have made my journey infinitely more enjoyable and helped me develop far more than I could have alone.

And the same is true of you, the reader/listener/consumer of content. I’ve loved the debates, comments, shares and the odd argument I’ve had with you all. It’s been a pleasure to produce these daft bits of content, and I’m delighted to have had even one person read it, never mind the number I’ve had over the years.

Stoke City may be a bit of a dumpster fire right now, but away from all that there’s a club backed by a city with good people, who just want to see their club succeed, and boy, do I hope they get that.

So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to have one little randomised ramble through the last few years, with some views on Stoke’s current plight, the relegation run-in, and probably a load of other miscellaneous rubbish.

Let’s start off with the positives before my customary rant, eh?

Mark Robins & The Normal Football Team

As last Saturday’s fantastic win lives brightly in the memory, it’s become more and more clear that the best XI Stoke City can pick, when all are fit, has some excellent footballers in amongst a solid spine.

Having a Ben Pearson figure – for all the faults I have with him as a player – next to Wouter Burger has released the Dutch maestro to be more aggressive, more influential, and less knackered as he can cover ground when it makes sense, rather than all the time for everyone else.

But, the most important of all the improvements, the most basic but crucial idea he’s brought into the team, is that sitting deep isn’t a good way for this squad to defend.

As you can see above, Stoke’s defensive actions in deeper areas of the pitch have drastically reduced under Mark Robins, compared with Narcís Pèlach’s side.

Interestingly, the front line of the press seems to be similar, with a significant number of defensive actions taking place just inside the opponent’s half under both bosses. This was the factor that led to, among other things, Pèlach’s Stoke side some of the highest values in attacking half tackles and interceptions.

But much more clearly-visible is the obvious decrease in how often Stoke’s defensive actions take place in their own penalty area.

To be clear, they’re not world-beaters, just about level with the league average for penalty area defensive actions under Robins, but under Pèlach they were forced into the highest number of defensive actions in their own box in the league, by some distance.

It’s also visible, albeit slightly less obviously, in the plots above. Stoke have conceded a lot of passes in the former Coventry boss’s reign, but far more of them are ending in the wide areas of the opposition half. i.e. Teams are much more likely to be playing in front of Stoke’s press, than in Stoke’s half.

Pèlach’s pressing plan was okay higher up the pitch, as seen by the way the ball is forced wide on the left-hand plot, but it was the sacrifice of space when defending deeper that led to those days of conceding 20+ shots and 2+ xG per game.

Now, crucially, far fewer passes are ending in dangerous areas inside and around Stoke’s penalty area, when compared with the previous head coach’s reign.

It’s far from perfect, Stoke still sit back and lose momentum often in games (see the 2nd half of Millwall away), but it’s a huge improvement, brought on largely by a willingness to affect the game higher up the pitch when out of possession.

The Effect Of Affecting The Game

This becomes even more clear when you look at the change in opposition shots from NP to MR.

There’s a slight discrepancy in the number of games each manager/head coach has had, but I’ll put some normalised stats below to make up for that.

Key in these plots is the number of shots within a 12 yard radius of the goal, which you can essentially see by the ‘density’ of shots in that area.

Even with the eye test, it’s pretty clear that Stoke have improved in this, and if we delve into the data it becomes almost ridiculous. (All of the following don’t include penalties)

In Mark Robins’ time as manager, he’s reduced the number of shots Stoke concede per game from 16.7 to 12.1. The xG conceded per game has reduced from 1.61 to 1.09. The number of ‘big chances’ (I’ve defined this as chances with >0.2xG) conceded per game has gone down from 1.94 to 1.26.

So, despite the number of non-penalty goals conceded per game very slightly increasing under Robins, from 1.17 to 1.2, it’s clear that the underlying processes for Stoke have significantly improved. And with this, as have their chances of winning points consistently.

Remember, it’s still possible to create loads of chances, barely concede any chances, and lose a game. But what these number do show, is that Stoke have a much higher chance of consistently picking up points with these improved defensive performances.

Finally, Some Blue For The Red And Whites

All of this, including an improvement in attacking output, (definitely there, although largely influenced by the penalty vs PNE and the Gallagher open net vs Coventry) has led to Stoke’s rolling xG plot looking much nicer.

In fact, if you take the rolling average over 10 games of xG created minus xG conceded, that number is now positive for the first time since Steven Schumacher was in charge.

This also shows through in the improvement in Stoke’s expected points.

Simulating all shots in Stoke games 100,000 times, we can build up a probability distribution of how many points Stoke are likely to get. Essentially, each simulation, we count how many points Stoke would have if the simulated number of goals were scored/conceded.

Comparing the whole season to just the season up to Pèlach’s sacking, we can see how much that’s improved.

As shown above, in Robins’ 15 games, he’s improved the peak of the distribution (i.e. the most likely number of points Stoke would have per game) by around 0.1 points per game.

When comparing this to the rest of the division, it looks like improvement is still visible.

Stoke have jumped over QPR, Oxford and Portsmouth (albeit not by much), as a result of that improvement in simulated points per game.

That said, had they remained at ~1.1 simulated PPG, they’d currently be the 3rd worst team in the league by that measure, so the improvement was very much necessary, thanks to improvements from Portsmouth, QPR and Cardiff.

Potter-mystics?

That title pun doesn’t really work, but the last bits of info move us on nicely to my view of the relegation battle between now and May, and the key optimism and pessimism we can look for with Stoke.

I think the improvements of teams around Stoke is very much the major reason to be less optimistic as we move towards this last few matches. Of the 4 teams with fewer points than Stoke currently, only Cardiff and Plymouth have a lower simulated points per game than Stoke.

Whether the next point is an optimistic or pessimistic fact depends on your own nature, but Stoke have still to play 3 of those 4 teams in the remaining 6 games, with Luton and Cardiff as the next 2 fixtures at time of writing.

It’s very clear that those two games in particular are huge for the season, and the club, and with both sides having taken points off Stoke this season in the Pèlach era, the improvements we’ve seen recently need to be backed up with performances and results in these games.

Date	Team (Venue)	Previous Result (xGF – xGA)
8/4/2025	Luton Town (Home)	2-1 Loss (1.3 – 2.1)
12/4/2025	Cardiff City (Away)	2-2 Draw (1.8 – 1.8)
18/4/2025	Sheffield Wednesday (Home)	2-0 Loss (2.1p – 1.5)
21/4/2025	Leeds United (Home)	2-0 Loss (0.3 – 2.2)
25/4/2025	Sheffield United (Home)	2-0 Loss (0.5 – 1.3)
3/5/2025	Derby County (Away)	2-1 Win (2.2p – 0.6)

As I mentioned above, football is a massively high variance sport, where a near-perfect performance and set of underlying numbers can lead to 0 points, and barely touching the ball all game can give you 3.

Well, that variance is usually likely to decrease over lots of games. Stoke have 6 games remaining, which leaves very little room for bad luck.

Including, in that, the unbelievably impressive Leeds away, and a promotion-chasing Sheffield United at home as two of the other remaining fixtures, within 5 days of one another, and it’s no wonder fans bums are very much in the midst of squeaking.

Personally, and feel free to tag me in this when it doesn’t happen, because I won’t see it, I think Stoke have enough to stay up. In recent times, the fantastic Ben Rowley likened Stoke to a pressure cooker that lets off steam at the right time, and I think that’s what we’ll see.

I think recent improvements, and the overall level of the squad in its more balanced state, mean that Stoke have the edge over the sides around them in this relegation run in. Vibes and momentum are huge, and I still believe there will be a win over Luton to give the club both of those.

Oh God, Another Long-Term Club Rant

But when this dust settles, and if Stoke celebrate their safety for a 2nd season in a row (I still remember worrying about it in Feb 2023 too!), there’ll be more hardship ahead in the transfer window.

As has been long-discussed, Stoke’s last 2 transfer windows of big spending, financed in equal measure by both the Souttar sale for £15m in January 2023 and by the club forgetting that it’s a rolling reporting window for the 2nd time since relegation, have led to a very empty pot of gold for the upcoming summer.

With no more loopholes in Covid and stadium/training ground sales, we’re once again at a point where the club has to look at its transfer policies of recent years, and pay the price for its love of wasteful spending and lack of efficiency in the market.

Having spent significant amounts in the last 2 seasons, ‘covered by the Souttar transfer’ which itself covered up losses of the previous windows, the breakdown of the players who have been signed does not show a club working well behind the scenes.

Nothing encapsulates these issues more for me than the striker situation this season.

Stoke ended 2023/24 with a front 3 of Manhoef, Campbell and Bae Junho, scoring 8 in their final 3 games (2 from Campbell, 3 from Manhoef). As other forward options, they had Niall Ennis (widely understood to be a bit below the required quality), Ryan Mmaee (a big money signing who’d had an uneventful, but not awful, first season in the country), and Nathan Lowe (a youth player in need of game time).

From the 4 central strikers detailed above, let’s see what the plan was and how it ended up:

• Campbell was released on a free, and is currently the top scorer for a team that are 2nd, and would be top without their 2-point deduction.
• Ennis made 9 appearances before being loaned out to Blackpool in January, having signed a 2 and a half year contract for a ~£500k transfer fee a year prior.
• Mmaee was loaned out to Rapid Wien, making zero appearances due to injury, before returning to Stoke in February and making the squad again in April.
• Lowe had an incredibly successful loan spell at Walsall, scoring 18 in 30 appearances, but was then recalled in January as Stoke had no strikers available besides Ennis. Since his recall, he’s started 5 games, playing a total of 5.2 90mins.

So, in summary, Stoke went into a summer with a £3m striker in Mmaee who had played 1 season in the UK, and an in-form striker in Campbell, alongside a player who likely needed to leave in Ennis, and a player who needed a loan in Lowe.

Oh God, He’s On About Campbell Again, Stop Him

Of course, the response was to do the sane thing, and so Stoke didn’t offer a contract to Campbell, losing him on a free, and loaned out their £3m signing for a minimal fee as the head coach, who would last 1 single further game in charge of the club, wasn’t a fan. Alongside that, they started the season with youngster Emre Tezgel as their main striker, having signed a £1.5 million injury-prone forward in Sam Gallagher, who was predictably injured in pre-season.

Since that opening day, in which Tezgel impressed, he’s played 298 minutes of senior league football.

Stoke then chased Tom Cannon, as their policy of ‘if we can just get him in, we’ll have solved it’ continued. Cannon impressed with his ability to be clinical on several occasions, but all-to-often contributed very little to the game outside of taking shots, and didn’t have the ability to create outside of his confidence in taking on the shot from any angle.

He was then recalled in January, a fair possibility given how many clubs had chased him in the summer, and how well he was doing on paper for Stoke.

Back came Nathan Lowe from Walsall to cover the gaping hole in the squad (not the only one, having got rid of two mobile midfielders near to deadline day for seemingly no reason), and in came Ali Al Hamadi on loan to replace Lowe and remove any idea of him getting the game time he needs to progress and improve.

I’m being very facetious, but that example is my best effort to show how Stoke’s transfer policy has been scattergun. For so long, signings appear to have been based on ‘he seems good!’ rather than specific, planned, long-term policy with desired profiles and a cohesive idea of how we want the squad to look.

Whether hated or loved, selling Josh Laurent and loaning out Lewis Baker, then signing a completely different profile of footballer in Tatsuki Seko showed a massive lack of planning. With only Wouter Burger as a mobile, ground-covering midfielder, Stoke were overrun for the vast majority of the season until Baker was recalled and Ben Pearson (!) was brought back into the side.

Ctrl + C/Ctrl + V from the last article

With 3 ‘Heads of Recruitment’ or similar having been in place in the last 12 months, alongside 4 managers and 2 sporting directors in 2 seasons, it’s clear that Stoke need to pick a direction and stick to it. The return to a manager-led model in Mark Robins may well produce some short and medium-term success, but boy, am I worried about what happens when he leaves.

As Jon Walters continues learning about his role and the 2025/26 season looms, there are a lot of questions over the trajectory of Stoke City as a club.

Deciding that the Sporting Director role is there to set the plans and structure of the entire club is a fair departure from the shorter-term methodology that other clubs utilise it for, in which the SD is measured against a set of performance indicators based on the philosophy of the club as a whole.

I’m not sure that Stoke City have this overall philosophy at a higher level, and so the buck falls to Walters. A club legend, but one with very little experience and two massively high-risk decisions that catastrophically blew up in his face already on his CV, his future will be very interesting in this next season or two.

Stoke absolutely have to make better use of the assets they have at the club this summer, they cannot be drawn into signing shiny players who do not fit the squad, but they also can’t afford to make no signings at all.

The performance of the starting XI of the last few weeks has been important and cause for optimism, but behind that lies a lack of depth that must be addressed if the goal is to be progress.

Whether that be the sale of a valuable player to finance others, or some clever free transfers and loan moves, I want to see an intelligent window from Stoke. Not a perfect one, but one in which the risk-reward balance is much less wild than recent years.

I don’t think that promotion is likely, or should really be the aim, but progress is the aim for me. I just want to see my club and think ‘yeah, we’re on the way up here, we’re doing the right things’.

I certainly don’t want to see any complaints about PSR either, the bed we lie in is absolutely of our own making, and the rules are there for everyone else too. As a top 10 wage-bill-payer, there’s no reason for us not to perform significantly better.

But one thing’s for sure, I hope to God we don’t see another revolution, I’m not sure my heart can take it.

Thanks to any and all readers, it’s been a hell of a few years. I’ll certainly miss this blog and all our discussions online, even the heated ones!

Best wishes to all of you, and goarrrrrrrn Stoke!

George

Welcome to Part 2 of the inaugural Potterlytics interview with Gareth Owen!

This is slightly longer piece, so do bear with it, but I hope you’ll find the depth of information worthwhile!

Without further adieu, let’s go straight into it.

‘That’s how we want to play the game. Purely because it’s got the individual at heart‘

George:

In your time, you’ve worked under Nathan [Jones] with a very aggressive, very wide in attack tactic, with a very specific way of playing, Michael [O’Neill] ,who was probably a bit more flexible, a bit slower and lower tempo in possession, and now Alex [Neil], who is again quite high tempo, very keen on transition, very keen on getting the ball forward as quickly as possible. Does that change the way that the Academy tries to mould players or the way that the Academy tries to play? 

Gareth:

No. Fundamentally, because our job is about developing the individual, we’ve stayed the same and that is to be aggressive in and out of possession, and to control the game. If it’s Pep, it’s Michael, it’s Nathan, it’s Alex, if there was a forward pass on and that’s 50 yards or it’s 5 yards, the managers generally want you to play it.

That should always be a player’s first thought, that you play in behind, you play to the furthest man forward, you break a line, you retain and recycle possession. Those thought processes that we have in our players have been the same [whoever is in charge].

The only thing that changes is the 21s will generally play a similar shape [to the first team]. But fundamentally, we want to be aggressive in our possession because that develops individuals and that develops decision making.

I don’t know of anybody that does it nowadays, but the only area where you might play devil’s advocate, [is to say] ‘what if you want to play a low block?’ It’s never happened since we’ve been here. If that came in and then we might have a decision to make there, certainly with the older ones.

But if you’ve got players who are physically capable and making good decisions, then you will be able to mould them to say ‘you don’t need to chase after that, you just need to stand still’, because the easiest thing for me is just standing. The hardest thing is to run and make a decision, and we need to make those good decisions to arrive when the ball arrives.

We’ve not changed, even over the course of the managers. The club philosophy, that’s how we want to play the game. Purely because it’s got the individual at heart and that will develop players psychologically and physically as well as technically and tactically.

George:

I suppose it’s much easier to go from higher-tempo and aggressive to lower-tempo and calm rather than the other way around for young players?

Gareth:

Yeah, it is. And we also understand it is only going to be one or two players that get through. It’s not going to be a full team, so we need to set them up with the best chance here, but then the best chance elsewhere as well.

At the end of the day, they walk through here and [they are] physically very good, they are tactically very good. They might have a deficiency, technically or psychologically, but with those two corners, hopefully, then they have a career in professional football as well.

So how we play is designed with the individual in mind. It’s not necessarily just because we’ll win more games playing that way. In fact, we’ll probably lose more games because you’re dealing with children. They’re going to make wrong decisions. They’re still developing physically, but we’re pushing them to the max to make those decisions quickly.

‘We’ll Talk to Players About What We Want to See’

George:

At what age group do you start to implement the more complex tactical ideas? For example, you might have an U12s player who is a full back, at what age would you start to implement things like overlapping, or getting himself further forward and getting crosses in?

Gareth:

There and then! We show what we want in our full backs [with] our position specific profiles. We’ll talk to players about what we want to see.

We’ll show best practice. Like Dujon Sterling, His individual clips for the weekend might just go on Hudl (an online sports analysis software). If there’s been analysis on Match of the Day, for example of full backs, we’ll put that on [Hudl] just to give the information of stuff that we want to see.

That’s driven by the club’s profiles and that is about overlaps, underlaps, getting crosses in, being solid 1v1 defensively. That is [also] about the types of passes you want from full back. That comes in from U12s once we start moving to 11-a-side.

At U9s-U11s, a coach might know what he wants to see in a full back, but not necessarily really pin down that a player is going to be a full back. We want them still to explore themselves, playing different positions. It’s probably more of a subconscious thing that he might be a full back as he gets older.

George:

Does that work in a similar sort of fashion with an entire team shape? I know we spoke earlier, informally about someone like Kahrel Reddin, who is more of an out and out winger. Does that inform the team shape in matches, or do you try and get Kahrel to do something slightly different, if that’s what you’re looking for from a winger?

Gareth:

With younger ages, we try to play generally 442 or 433/4231, because that develops players individually.

We want them to create and exploit space. If you’re putting a 3 man midfield against a midfield 2, sometimes you’re doing that artificially. You want them to make the correct decision to create that overload with movements, with decision making. You’re not necessarily going to put more players on the pitch [in one area] because you’re manufacturing that overload, you’re not developing the individual there.

A 442 forces you to do that, otherwise you’re not going to see the ball. You’re not creating the space, and then out of possession you’re not able to get it back, because you’ve been overloaded in midfield. We play that way knowing that we’ll get it wrong, but we’re trying to create the individuals to cover ground quicker and make those decisions in that format.

In Kahrel [Reddin]’s case, we have changed the shape for him. When he first came in, in pre-season, we could see the next step in his development was to work on his game out of possession. So we went to a 352 and played him as a wing back. Knowing that he would get isolated, he’s going to get 1v2s. He’s got to switch on quickly after giving it away because he’s got to recover back in.

So we changed shape for him to improve on that area, specifically out of possession. That did coincide with having Nathan and Emre as forwards so we can play 2 strikers, but it was done with him [Kahrel] in mind and he has done well in it.

Then we reverted back to a 433. It’s slightly different in the distances you’ve got to cover, but the decision making, arriving when the ball arrives, is exactly the same.

George:

So you’re almost changing that shape, rather than to try to exploit space and get your best players into the best position for their strengths, to force individuals to get experience and improve on their weaknesses? 

Gareth:

In a controlled game situation, rather than the [first team] manager chucking him in and him getting it wrong. Sometimes it’s a bit artificial just putting clips on there, because Kahrel can see it, but in the hustle and bustle of the game he might not.

We did it as a group decision, knowing that Kahrel wants to learn and he’s a good kid. He grabbed it with both hands, and his physical data went through the roof because he was having to cover more ground. He was having to recover more, he had to do more 1V1 duels out of possession.

But also because he was pressing higher, he got more opportunities to create as well. So that’s the philosophy of how we try and play, it’s designed with the individual in mind, but designed to attack more. It’s not a defensive shape, we want to attack, we want to create things, and if you’re winning the ball quicker, you’ll create more goals.

‘It’s Difficult, They Might Play a Certain Way’

George:

In Kahrel’s instance, he was a player who’s joined this year. How does the recruitment process work for a player who is between 15 and 18, where you don’t necessarily have that much information? It’s easy for a manager of the first team who has got thousands of minutes of clips, hundreds of data points, but for the youngsters maybe not so much, particularly those who are under 16.

Gareth:

Yeah, sharing footage is difficult as well, especially being minors. What we’re trying to do is build up as much information as we can around everything we can get hold of. If a player has been released generally there is a release profile from that club.

As part of the player care exit strategies, clubs do that, which provides a minimal amount of data, such as a lot of sport science testing; how quick they are, their jumps, distance covered, their top speed, their changes in direction, and there might be a bit of information around games played and things like that, maybe goals scored, chances created, each individual club’s slightly different.

Generally, our recruitment team want to watch all players aged 16-18 and have our own report on there. That’s word driven, not so many metrics. Then if a player has been released or we’re going for that player, we’ll build on that. That’s where we may try and get some footage and if we can and then clip out that footage.

[We look] over the certain metrics that we want to see in our wide players, examples of them doing it, examples of him not doing it. But it’s sometimes difficult, especially with the opposition they play may play a slightly different way. A team might release a winger because they don’t tuck infield, as an example, whereas we might not necessarily want our wingers to do that. So you have to take that with a pinch of salt sometimes and look at how they would suit our way of playing.

Now Kahrel in particular was because the first team scout had seen him play live and done the reports. We then put the meat on the bones, [such as] what’s his top speed? How does he compare to the other wingers that we’ve got here? What’s his 1v1 success rate? What’s his chances created? What’s he not so good at?

We can then put a programme in place and try to get him to work on it. It is a long process and a lot of information pours through. We then sit down as a group to decide what we’re going to do. Sports science have an input, saying ‘we can improve his speed with gym work’, other coaches can say ‘he can go 1v1 on the outside, it will suit your 433 shape’ as Michael [O’Neill, at the time] wanted to play.

It’s based on what we’re seeing, which is from experience, but also the data over those metrics that we want to see in our wingers.

George:

Coming back to a player like Emre [Tezgel] or perhaps Nathan [Lowe], what happens within the Academy when a player like that either trains or plays for the first team? Are using that information as well to inform where that player is moving on to next?

Gareth:

I have an end of cycle report on each player, that’ll include U21s games, U18 games, U9s games, but most importantly first team games. How they performed in the metrics we want to see from their position, and how have they improved.

So for Emre, knowing that he’s still 17, he’s still developing physically, we know he’s not going to be as quickest now. But over the course of the season, we should have seen some improvements in his top speed and things like that.

The individual report that we get, as staff tells us all those things. Then we use that then to drive his next six weeks or his next season, or, hypothetically, if he’s done everything in U21s football, but he’s struggling a little bit of first team football. How do we bridge that gap? Hypothetically, that might be giving him six months out on loan at a certain team that plays a certain way to help develop those areas.

A great example is Connor Taylor, for heading. The data told us that the next step was to improve his aerial dominance, and we couldn’t manufacture that. We could do it in training, but academy football is generally played on the floor, so he’s not going to get the aerial test.

That part of his loan programme was purely because it’s going to test him in the air. The data told us the next stage of his development was going out on loan.

Where then compare other age groups against Emre’s U12s data. It just provides more information to us as staff to make a decision. But you have to also drill down deeper, certainly at the younger ages, to eradicate the birth bias, the early maturers who just get a natural advantage. But knowing that someone at 12 has performed this way, knowing that with the same programme, he [Emre] got to be around the first team in five years time, he must be doing something right.

George:

In Connor’s example, heading is probably quite ubiquitous in League Two, but are you looking for a team that will specifically help to improve that? Or would you be looking just for the highest level possible to test him? 

Gareth:

We try to choose, but ultimately, we’re not the size of club where we can cherry pick who wants what.

So David Hibbert, our loans coordinator has a lot of contacts in the game and his own database of who’s looking for what in any transfer window, how they try and play, what they want their centre backs to look like, what shape they play. All those things so we knew through Clint Hill, too.

Connor had his non league loans, which were purely designed to get him playing in men’s football and toughen him up. We use those loans as a stepping stone, and to be fair to Connor, he took the opportunity with both hands and he was great.

We knew that Joey was looking for centre half at Bristol [Rovers] for the following season. So we put Will Forrester and him [Connor Taylor], at the time, to Clint, and he came to watch Connor for himself. Now they were the only club that came in for Connor, so we didn’t really choose there, but we knew Joey would be good for him and for his character.

It’s still a gamble because he’s got to get in the team. He wasn’t in the team at the start of the season. In preseason he had COVID too. But we knew that if he got it right, he’d improve. League 2 football is more direct, more opportunities to head the ball. I’m not doing League 2 a disservice there, but it is. We knew that if he got into the team, it would develop him.

We then had to make sure that he could cope off the pitch, [it was his] first time living away from home. We got the data every six weeks. What he’s done training wise, his loading, and then the metrics which we want to see, so we could track that.

George:

So you get his training data from Bristol Rovers as well, while he’s there?

Gareth:

Yeah. So we could monitor his loading, how he’s improving in the gym, how his counter-moving jump is improving, how his top speed is improving. If we needed to bring him back, if his load was low or he’s not improving the gym, we can maybe find a way that he misses Monday and Tuesday goes back there Thursday, Friday to get more gym work in, or whatever it needs to be.

We didn’t because the programme they put in place for him was fantastic. They’d send us through what they’ve done in that session. So, what extras had they done in the air, how much time he’s been defending, how much time he spent attacking.

We didn’t get their match data. We’d do our own. The guys, [and] Dave Pritchard, who’s in our match-analysis team, would clip out the metrics that we want to see for centre backs, just to track that he’s improving.

Coupled with that, we would try and watch him once every couple of weeks in person. So I went a couple of times. Kev went, Dave went, Rich Walker went. just different pairs of eyes checking in to make sure he’s OK.

George:

With talk around ‘no heading’ at academy level, is that becoming more of a deficiency for players? How do you feel that’s affecting them?

Gareth:

To be honest, I never worked on heading until I was 17 or 18 anyway, so we don’t put sessions on just for heading. There’s a mantra that there’s loads of heading in foundation phase, and that’s doing the coaches a disservice. They don’t practice it.

First team football is still played in the air, but you’re not going to need to experience that until then. Also, it’s an easy technique, in my opinion, to improve. If you’ve got desire to go and head the ball, that will counteract lack of technique to a point.

Long term, will it become more difficult? Possibly, but I don’t know many academies, even over the years, that have ever worked on it. Connor improved his in 12 months just by going to league two as a 20 year old. For me, that’s enough.

An under 16 who can’t head the ball [for example], we aren’t going to reject him because he can’t head it. That’s our job to make that better as he gets older. There’s more important things he needs to work on as a centre half.

‘What’s Not in There is Height’

George:

Centre half, specifically, is such a difficult position to pin down in terms of desirable metrics. You can say you’re looking for tackles, interceptions and blocks, but as an example, John Stones is in the bottom 10th or 15th percentile in league for those metrics. That’s solely because he’s playing for Manchester City, and no one would say he’s not a brilliant defender. How do you define what you’re looking for in a centre back in terms of statistics?

Gareth:

It’s a bit of everything. We sometimes struggle with trying to predict when the boys come out of City at 16. How good they are defensively? We’re not the club of the size of City that you can win games just by turning up. We understand our defenders have to have a certain level of competency out of possession.

But ultimately out of possession; it’s defensive duels, it’s successful tackles, it’s interceptions, aerial duels, blocks and then, most importantly, errors for goals. And then in possession; pass completion, line breaks, total receptions, attacking duels and then goals scored as well.

That should get an overall picture of our defenders. What’s not in there is height, because I think that is changing slightly. If you look at Ben Wilmot at 6 foot 1, he’s a completely different shape to Axel Tuanzebe, who is 6 foot 3 and built like a mountain, so I do think that is changing for certain teams.

Fundamentally those are the metrics that we want to see, alongside their physical data, if the counter movement jump is over 40 cm, that’s pretty good. If the top speed is pushing 10 m/s, that’s pretty good. Then changes in direction and things like that, knowing that if you’re a big lad, your changes in direction are going to be slightly worse compared to [a player who is] maybe 6 foot 1 or 6 foot.

The difficulty is then trying to predict the things that you’ve not seen. So for a defender coming out of City, how much opportunity as you had to improve on his defending side of the game? I don’t know, because they’ve dominated most games and and go on to win most things at that level. Likewise for an attacker from City, if he’s only played a certain way, scored a certain type of chance, how does he look in our system? It can be difficult to predict that from a recruitment perspective.

George:

Is height brought into the equation at all? If I’m thinking about, say, Martinez at Manchester United who is 5 foot 9, there can be high quality but short centre backs. Is that something you think about at all or is it completely off the table?

Gareth:

We do think about it, but not to the nth degree. You obviously can’t have a 5 foot 5 centre back, it just won’t work. So the outliers, the real extremes, we don’t consider. Growth is a bigger question. So is he 5 foot 9, but a late maturer? So you know he’s going to shoot up, which is the Tyrone Mings example.

The metrics are more important than his actual height. There’s Martinez, there’s Puyol, there’s Cannavaro, there’s always centre backs who don’t fit that mould, but if you look at Martinez, his ball recoveries, his successful tackles, his defensive duels are all pretty good, his top speed would be pretty good, his counter-movement jump would be pretty good.

All those things put into the melting pot for our players will then predict hopefully that a player has a career in the game.

George:

Finally from me, it appears that since you’ve come in, you’ve really driven an increase in the use of data in the academy. How would you summarise your use of analysis and data within the department?

Gareth:

Currently we use data to analyse team performance, measure ourselves against the philosophy, measure improvement across age groups. We’ve introduced it individually to see how a player’s been performing against the position specific profiles too.

We also see how they compare against previous age groups and ultimately, how they compare against first team players, technically, tactically, physically and psychologically. That then might drive development plans. It might drive recruitment if we know somebody’s struggling to achieve the metrics that we want. It drives all those things, so that’s where we currently are.

And there we have it, thank you for reading the first ever Potterlytics interview!

Again, I cannot thank Gareth enough for his time. I hope you’ll agree that the points above are incredibly interesting, and this kind of window into the minutiae of football academies is something I’ve never experienced before.

It’s incredibly heartening to see that the academy is in the hands of someone with such a clear drive to improve and implement whatever will help young players, and I can’t wait to see the next steps they take.

On the Potterlytics side of things, I’m very much hoping that these interviews offering a window into football analysis and data as an industry will continue, and I’m actively working to find more Stoke City interviewees soon, so watch this space!

If you have any bits of content or interviewees you’d like to see, please do let me know either here or over on Twitter.

Thanks to any and all readers, and please feel free to comment and follow on Twitter at @potterlytics.

Should you wish to donate to help with the running costs of the site, and the data subscriptions we use, please feel free to visit our donations page here. Any and all help is very much appreciated!

George

Well, here we are! I’m amazed to be saying this, but welcome to the first ever Potterlytics interview!

Let me introduce the inaugural guest on the blog, ex-Stoke, Port Vale, and Stockport player, among others, and having risen through the ranks of academy coaching, current Stoke City Academy Director, Gareth Owen.

As we sit down with a coffee in Gareth’s office, overlooking the pitches at the back of Clayton Wood training ground, the hustle and bustle of construction crews continue their work as we near the end of the first year of the five-year development plan.

After a good hour of conversation, delving into the work that the academy does with all age groups, it’s clear to see that Gareth has a true passion for the development of players.

We speak about the improvements in analytics and data collection over the past 3-4 years of his tenure, and he talks through the current implementation of this work with the players.

Each team has a post-match analysis document, all the way down through the groups to U12s, detailing some key metrics. There is a very clear focus on attacking intensity, with time in the attacking half and controlled entries into the final third determined.

Alongside this, as we saw in the Youth Cup YouTube video, there is a focus on winning the ball back high up the pitch, with the inclusion of regains and losses in each half.

It’s clear that there is an obvious goal for Stoke’s academy, and Gareth reiterates it several times. ‘Aggressive in and out of possession’ is the philosophy.

But enough setting the scene, let’s get into the meat of the interview. I present, Potterlytics meets… Gareth Owen.

The Conduit

George @potterlytics:

Thanks for speaking to me Gareth! Could you tell me a little bit about your role, in your own words, for the academy?

Gareth Owen:

I’m the Academy Director, and that means that I oversee the programme for the U7s to the U21s. With all the players, parents, and staff that associate with those age groups, and I link in the Academy players with the first team.

I see myself as a conduit between the two, trying to make sure that we have our own philosophy as an Academy, in how we want to play to develop players. But then [making sure that will] fit into the overall club philosophy and how the first team want to play.

My job is to work with heads of department, players, staff, the parents to educate them on that and then make sure the programme is delivered.

George:

You came out of your playing career in 2012/13, how did you find the transition into coaching? Was it an easy move?

Gareth:

Pretty easy! It was through choice. In my playing career, I was always making sure I had a number of avenues open, so that whenever the day to retire came, I had something to walk into.

I’d had enough at Port Vale at the time, a few injuries, frustration with professional football, the club had been through administration, and I felt I wanted to do something else. Something fresher and newer, to get my teeth into.

At the time I had a part time job with the PFA, working in the Education Department encouraging players to go and continue their studies, but then through contacts here, Stoke were advertising for a job as an U12s coach. I went through the interview process, and I was fortunate to get it as a part time coach leading U12s.

Coaching always fascinated me, and as a player I suppose I thought like a coach, because I wasn’t particularly quick. I was OK in possession. I was a competitor. I wanted to win. [But] because of the lack of pace sometimes, I’ve always had to try to find an advantage against my opponent. Likewise, managers that spoke tactically – Jim Gannon was one, Tony Pulis was another – I always listened to and managed to get on with really well.

Coaching was a natural direction. I didn’t know where it would go, I just cut my teeth in coaching. [I was] getting used to structuring sessions, how to work with individuals, and then the added difficulty at Under 12s is that you’re dealing with children, who are unpredictable. But it’s a decision that was easy and obviously one that’s been proven to be a good one!

‘That Competitive Edge is Still There’

George:

Did you find, possibly less so with U12s, but that there was a big shift in your tactical and technical thinking? Did you have to switch something in your brain to say ‘I’m now developing other people’ rather than focusing on your own game?

Gareth:

You try to, obviously! Certain games, [where] you get a last minute equaliser at Man United away, that competitive edge is still in there. But I saw the opportunity as a privilege because it was the first year of 11 v 11 football for them.

So you’re trying to introduce some basics to them of shape and structure, and build on the work that the FP (Foundation Phase) guys have done around skill development, and [working out] how that looks within the team. [Still] knowing that they’re children so they want to be entertained, they want the enjoyment.

Part of our role as Academy coaches is developing the individual more so than the team. However, you do need the team around you playing in a certain way that’s going to develop individuals.

That U12 year is tough, because they’ve got two more players on the pitch, they’re starting to find out about positions, but [the] most important [thing] is putting sessions on that they enjoy, but that also develop them individually.

‘They Want That Information, That Stat, That Tactic’

George:

Now it wasn’t that long ago that you were in youth football yourself. How has that changed since the late 90s, early 2000s?

Gareth:

It was still there. My youth team Coach was Dave Kevan, I had him for the first time at Stoke all the way through, bizarrely, even at the reserve team level with the first team. It’s probably just more formal now.

[Nowadays] they train with us more than they do in the playground, whereas ours was slightly different. We probably played more in the playground than we did train for the club.

But Dave still did the individual specific practices. He still pulled individuals to one side to work on their heading in my case. When I was down the ages he saw strength and weakness that I needed to get better at if I was to have a career. What he didn’t do is he probably didn’t document it as a session plan, with 15 minutes dedicated to this, telling the player so much that you’re doing that, et cetera.

I think players, society and children were different then than they are now. Now they want that information. That stat, that tactic, that individual development work, or those clips of that’s what we’ve seen in a game.

Whereas way back when, you just pulled somebody to one side and said ‘just give me 15 minutes on your heading’.

Now you need to evidence it to try and motivate them to do it. The good ones, the driven ones, will do it naturally, because they understand the game maybe a little bit more than others, but some might just need a target to aim for, to really go ‘right, you need to focus on this, your 1v1 duels need to be up around 50 to 75% if you’re gonna be successful at the next level’. And we do that with the young players now.

So that’s where there’s a slight change, but in fairness to Dave and youth team coaches, they were still doing individual specific coaching, just in a different way.

George:

To what level do you use those data and analytics, with younger players and through the age groups?

Gareth:

We drip feed it in straight away. Not so much at 9s and 10s, that’s about having fun, finding out about yourself, finding out about team football, and finding out about organised Academy football. [We tell them to] just go and try things, knowing that they’ll get it right, they’ll get it wrong and [we] respond the same.

At 11s or 12s we start putting those things in. A lot around the individual, like 1v1 duels, chances created, goals scored, 1v1 duels against, winning the ball back. Things like that.

We do that individually and we also do it as a team, because if our philosophy is about being aggressive and in out of possession, there are certain metrics that we want all our teams to be improving on as they go through the age groups.

The players might not necessarily get all that information, but the coach will. They need to be making sure that they’re putting sessions on that are developing those metrics that we want to see, like time in the attacking half, ball retention, time in the attacking third, time playing out, controlled final third entries, all those little things that tell us that the teams are playing how we want.

The Head of Coaching will track that over the course of the season, and I’ll probably track the individual development around the metrics we want to see.

‘Football Shouldn’t Define Them at That Age’

George:

So how do you develop that? If you have, for example, a player who comes in at 12 from the FP, how do you plan out their route to, if you’re being optimistic, the first team?

Gareth:

Each player has his own individual development plan, [showing] what he’s good at and what he’s not so good at, and then some position specific information in there. So if it’s a right back, it’s a right winger, if it’s centre midfield player, what key metric do we think is going to really make a difference in their development.

But then also we try to get them to focus, not just on that, but something off the pitch as well. So it might be to learn guitar, because we want to develop rounded individuals. We don’t want them constantly bogged down with stats and football, they’re still children. They have to develop and have other interests and be, not little Johnny the footballer, but little Johnny playing football for Stoke City [who is also] a mathematician or whatever else. Football shouldn’t define them at those ages, so we tried to get them to think of other things.

Then over the course of the season, they’ll have reviews every six weeks around the metrics for their chosen position, how the team’s done and then information we can then feed back targets to the parent and the player for that cycle.

We don’t necessarily map them to the first team, but what we try to do, from this year [onwards], is see how they compare to previous U12s. We’ve had some success recently in the Academy with Emre [Tezgel], Nathan [Lowe] and people like that, who’ve come through our age groups. We’ve got information on Emre at U12, e.g. goals scored, chances created, ball recoveries, hold up play, those types of things.

So with our under 12s currently, we can ask ‘where is he compared to that?’. That’s in his infancy because those players [Tezgel & Lowe] are just getting there [to the first team] now. So we do that on the pitch and then we also do it physically as well, so their top speed, their counter-movement jump, their change in direction.

It is still a little bit of guesswork because you might have an U12 who is a late maturer, Emre might have been an early maturer, so naturally had an advantage at 12 and 13. You try to build in the date of birth, training age, maturation, social development, psychological development, and home life. You provide loads of information about that individual to try to predict the future. It’s not easy.

‘You’re Never Going to Create the Perfect Player’

George:

I can imagine! You talked about using Emre’s or Nathan’s stats. I was going to ask what point do you choose a position for a player, but even within that, how do you kind of build in the fact that some strikers are Emre Tezgel, some strikers are Peter Crouch, some strikers are Jacob Brown? How do you build in that variation, both in position and in player roles as well?

Gareth:

If a scout’s going to send a player in, he must have seen him play in a certain position, or traits that suit a particular position.

We’ve had left wingers in who’ve struggled as a winger, but during the course of a trial period or an observation period, we’ve gone ‘his 1v1 out of possession is really good, so let’s try him as a full back’. But fundamentally a player must have been seen in a position and that’s the same at 9s as it is 18s and 21s.

We’re not too fixed at 9s to 12s, we want them to find the game out and things like that, but ultimately as staff [we] need to see them standing out in a certain area with a certain trait.

There’s no point really forcing [a player to play] right winger if we know his chances created is nothing. Now, it could be because he’s a late maturer, back to the conversation we just had, or it could just be that he’s not good enough. So we do try and have them in positions as soon as they can, knowing that at 9 to 12 you’re going to find loads of things out. But also if we’re trying to create top players, they’ve got to be good at both, because we’re not a team that’s always going to dominate possession. So we can’t just look at what players do in possession, but likewise, we want to be aggressive in our possession to control the games, so they can’t just be good out of possession either.

We try to have players that are comfortable in doing all those things, in and out of possession and the physical metrics they need to play at Championship and at the top level. We don’t just focus on one thing or the other.

We know that a player will have a particular strength, so Emre’s is around his hold up play, his chance conversion rate, and his tactical understanding, but we know physically he won’t be as quick as someone like Tyrese Campbell. What we need to do is to make him quicker so that he can bridge that gap, with other metrics that might be even better.

You’re not going to create the perfect player that is 100% in everything in possession, out of possession and also a sprinter, et cetera. It’s maximising their strengths, because our recruitment team and us as coach have seen something in him that we think suits professional football.

That is data-driven and also opinion driven. It’s ultimately up to us to put a programme in place that maximises their strengths. How can we make them stand out? How can we hide their weaknesses in a certain way? Not [in a way that] we’d cover over them, because they’d resurface again at some point.

We just need to make sure that they are improving in that area as well. We’ve had some success in that in recent years.

That’s it for Part 1! Follow and subscribe to be notified of our posts!

Part 2 is available here: Part 2

Huge thank you to Gareth Owen and the staff at Clayton Wood for the very warm welcome.

The conversations and interview above were of great help to me as someone just starting in football, and hopefully you, as readers, enjoy this insight as much as I did.

Please remember to check out Part 2, and my other work on the site!

Thanks to any and all readers, and please feel free to comment and follow on Twitter at @potterlytics.

Should you wish to donate to help with the running costs of the site, and the data subscriptions we use, please feel free to visit our donations page here. Any and all help is very much appreciated!

George