Sunderland Hope Science Offers Progress

Sam Allardyce is beginning to put his own stamp on Sunderland’s back room set up in an attempt to turn the team around. However, it has nothing to do with bringing in new coaching personnel, which Big Sam was expected to do following his appointment last month. We’ve learned this week that instead he created an area at the Academy of Light where his current back room staff can get together and view detailed data driven information on players.

It’s not a particularly new approach as it’s something that Big Sam adopted way back at former club Bolton. While it was known as the ‘war room’ at that time it’s unclear whether it will get the same siege like sounding moniker on Wearside. Nonetheless, it will hopefully prove to be a success. Anything that is able to eek out every last drop of ability in the squad at this stage of proceedings will be welcome. Speaking about the scientific methodology recently Allardyce told reporters:

“At a club like this, time can be wasted through distractions and we have to make sure that doesn’t happen. One of our first ‘brief’ discussions lasted for over an hour, where we debated a lot of subject matter, and I think it is very important to take the time to do that. Discussion in a room like that, with all the phones off, and taking as long as it takes, means you can formulate the right decisions to guide the players to victories. Our challenge is to extract more out of the backroom staff than anybody else has done. That was always my goal at Bolton where it all first started, and it’s always been my goal from there on at every club I have managed.”

Of course while the approach may not be exactly ground breaking it’s likely that the technology has evolved somewhat since Allardyce’s time at Bolton. It’s exciting to think what tools are now at his disposal in 2015 and what can be achieved with them. Newly appointed performance director Mark Taylor will be key in this regard as it is very much his area of expertise. Taylor attends every game, and although his role is wide and varied one responsibility is to collate as much data on player’s performance as possible. This, we’re led to believe, is all fed it into some hi-tech equipment in real time and will allow a greater level of detail and analysis to be achieved.

Allardyce commented further:

“I’ve always said that a team is successful because of the team behind it. That team provides the support needed and covers every angle it needs to cover so that there are no excuses for the players to make, and we certainly have the facilities here and the staff here to try and achieve more.”

It sounds like the facilities at Sunderland’s training ground are beginning to take shape and become more like an Allardyce set up i.e state of the art. However it’s unclear just how quickly the benefits of this new data led approach will take effect and ultimately irrespective of information collated, it comes down to players performing on the pitch. This has always been the case and will, of course, never change. Sunderland cannot keep pulling off miracles every season and their allocated number of ‘great escapes’ is now surely running low. Even if some supporters look upon this data driven agenda with cynicism, if this ‘war room’ helps the cause in even the smallest way possible it should be considered a valuable asset.