Helping West Ham Utd Academy produce outstanding talent

The West Ham Utd Academy in English footballing circles has produced some of the best English footballing talent the nation has seen over the past twenty years.

The Academy is widely recognised as having a fantastic graduation rate for players who make it into the first team.

West Ham first approached Coach Logic in 2014. At the time, Adam Crossley was working as a Sport Scientist, in charge of physical performance at West Ham. He began having training sessions filmed to support his own work and “after months of research” he chose Coach Logic, impressed by its usability and ability to give immediate access to what he required.

Adam’s role involved regular chats with the players to ask and feedback physical aspects concerning their performance. As the chats became more engaging with video taking on more importance, the players began requesting access to the training videos themselves.

After a short while using Coach Logic, the Academy said to all U16’s-U23’s players that it would become compulsory they complete their match review. They told the U15’s that they would also get access to their own copy of the match and could use the filters and explained the benefits of self-analysis on their development.

Guess what happened? The U15’s were the top users!

This could have been down to the fact the U16 had not yet developed the habit of expecting the analysts and coaches to do the work for them and spoon feed them. It was also down to the way the platform was presented to them as an opportunity to improve rather than a compulsory bit of homework with consequences if they didn’t complete it.

West Ham certainly learned from this and explain the benefits of the system and no longer make it compulsory but make it very clear that if the player wants support from mentors/analysts/coaches, they need to clip the areas they want and present this, not the other way around. It is therefore very clear that the player needs to review their performance if they want to take full advantage of the football expertise within the Academy.

West Ham Utd have coaches and mentors at each stage of the Academy from U9’s right to the newly formed U23’s who compete in the Premier League 2 using Coach Logic. The Academy have been seen as a pioneer in Analysis having flipped the process on its head getting players to analyse and then present to staff. The Academy is overseen by Terry Westley and we have struck an excellent relationship with Terry and his fellow staff.

Coach Logic allows us to speed up the development programme, as players can take control of their learning. Through Coach Logic, the player can understand what they need to do to improve, connect with the coach to help improve, and to take responsibility for their own learning.

‍Terry Westley
Head of Academy, West Ham United