Analyzing football tactics

Finding the next edge.

By Kyle Boas

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Teams need to see the risk before sending an injured player back

04 August 2026

A return forecast can look accurate overall and still miss the 8–14-day cases a training plan depends on. Clubs should ask which windows the model gets wrong, whether its risk numbers match real outcomes, and what an early return costs them.

Isometric holds improved 10-metre and 30-metre sprints but no trial finds the right angle

29 July 2026

Holds made Lum’s group faster over 30 metres and Dhull’s over 10. Use them across a range of knee positions, and keep lifting for jumping, shuttles and squat strength. No trial has found one correct starting angle.

Ten players played the same 5v5 twice: their player-load number was almost the same, but fast running was very different

27 July 2026

Repeated small-sided games may show similar total work, yet fast running, football actions and spacing differ. We should check fitness and football separately, check spacing if possible, and use study averages as guides, not goals for every team.

The same game setup does not always give the same amount of work. A target is a number or result chosen before play and checked after. Choose one fitness target and one football target.

Ten players under 19 played the same 5v5 game twice. The two sessions were 72 hours apart. The setup stayed the same. Their player-load number was almost the same both times. Their fast-running distance was not.¹

Two terms first. Player load is one number from a GPS device, which records where and how fast a player moves. It adds up movement and changes of speed. Coaches use it as an estimate of total physical work. High-speed running, or fast running, is the metres a player covers above a chosen speed. Each study chooses its own speed limit. In this study, the speed range was 14 to 20 km/h.

Scientists use the coefficient of variation, or CV, to show how much a number changes compared with its usual size. It is a percentage. A low CV means the number was more consistent. A high CV means the number changed more and was less consistent.

Player load had a CV of 4.9%. That was consistent. High-speed running had a CV of 83.0%. That changed a great deal.

Read that 83% with care. It does not mean the players ran 83% farther. It is not a distance. It says only that the fast-running number changed a lot from one session to the next.

Treat that gap as a warning, not as a number to use for your own team.

One more warning before we start. The two-target check in this report does not come from one study. It uses ideas from the studies listed at the end. Nobody has tested this check itself. The research shows that fitness, ball actions, and team shape can each change by different amounts. Team shape means how spread out and spaced the team is.

A pole drill for receivers who move too late

25 July 2026

Put a pole behind the receiver and pass just past it. A player who waits is blocked. One who moves early meets the ball. A late start is easy to see. But a pole cannot show if a player reads the game. Take it out, add passes, targets, and a defender.

Five youth coaches talked less by their third season of reviewing filmed sessions

24 July 2026

Five English youth coaches filmed and reviewed their training sessions over three seasons. By season three, they gave fewer instructions and less feedback, and they spent more time watching quietly. Four of the five asked more questions. Researchers compared video from seasons one and three and asked the coaches why they made each choice. ¹