So I’ve been in the industry for 30 years. I spent many years at Middlesbrough, over 20 years as a coach at Middlesbrough in the academy system, working from 1 to 12, all the way through to the First Team as First Team coach in the Premier League. And this great opportunity arose for me to come across to Burnley. And I’ve been at Burnley for two years now when I came in as a technical consultant for the new owners. And it was a really exciting project to be involved in. Data and technology are a really, really important part now of any industry, and none more so than professional football.

What it does is it allows us to measure performances, and how we see the future of the academy is really critical to that operation really. So recruitment, sports science, coaching, these are all part two and facets of the academy system and professional football that we think that an analytics will be really supportive of how we move forward in our football club at Burnley. Kitman Labs has been great; it’s been excellent for Burnley Football Club and certainly our academy. We’ve worked really closely over the last six to eight months to really enhance our operation. And how we do that is, you know, I’ve set up each department now that is working closely with Kitman Labs to make sure that we can really efficiently run each department.

The value of having all data in one place is paramount really because if we have one set of programs that will work, it’s really easy then for the multidisciplinary departments to work together when you’ve got a number of different programs each work in people working in silos in different things to become quite messy. So Kitman Labs for AMS is just the one-stop shop, and it’s really beneficial for us as an academy.