Coaching perspective to performance analysis, Derry City Football Manager Kenny Shiels

Manager Kenny Shiels and his team have taken Derry City FC back into European competition. Despite pessimistic pre-season odds forecasted by some outside the club, they are challenging for a top 3 finish in the League of Ireland Premier Division. The team have maintained a high level of consistency throughout the season and according to their Manager, "we have scored more goals pro-rata from open play than any other team in Ireland because this is something we focused on and from the analysis we do, the players can see how we achieve this. So that’s a big feel good for the players knowing how to do that and that it works."

We managed to catch up with Kenny prior to Derry City's home game against Bohemians on the 14th Oct. During the game we saw the team's performance analyst Seamus McCallion live tag the game using a custom set of KPIs on the Performa Sports iPad app and feed key objective data back to the management at halftime. Despite dominating the game the candystripes trailed 0-1 at the interval but ran out 2-1 winners on the night to clinch their place in Europe. Kenny shared some excellent insight into a coaching and learning perspective to performance analysis saying that

- Kenny Shiels, 1st Team Manager at Derry City FC

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