HOW I BECAME A FOOTBALL ANALYST

FROM GUERNSEY TO PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL

Like many other people around the world, I have been obsessed with football from a young age, attending my first Leeds United game at the age of 2 years old to then playing the sport from 4 years old to collecting Shootout/Match Attax cards and bringing your albums into school to trade in the playground with your friends, building football stadiums out of LEGO, and playing every single football and football management video game to ever exist.

 

During my upbringing not a lot of people from Guernsey made it into professional football  - Matthew Le Tissier being the standout and now more recently Alex Scott of AFC Bournemouth & Maya Le Tissier of Manchester United & England. But working in professional sport was never seen as a viable option and since there is a real lack of full-time jobs within football in Guernsey leaving the island was the only option I had if I wanted to work in professional football. I did IT in college and then went to work a number of jobs in Guernsey up until I was 21 whilst playing and coaching football locally. This is when I made the decision to attend university and stop playing football to focus on working within the sport and I had a real passion for coaching thinking that was the route I was going to take at university.

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In my second year at University of Bedfordshire where I was studying Football Studies (BA Hons), MK Dons came in to do a talk about football analysis and I was hooked instantly, it put my love for football and coaching together with technology and it just seemed like the right fit for me and something I could make a difference doing. However, I did not go to MK Dons straight away I went looking for other opportunities as the interest was high in my class and messaged the first team analyst at Stevenage at the time on LinkedIn and luckily they were looking to bring in a volunteer academy analyst where I put together a video presentation on the task that they had set then presented this task to them in person. After doing 8 months at Stevenage I moved onto MK Dons to challenge myself in a different environment and since I had already built that relationship with the academy analyst at the time I was able to just drop him a message to see if they were looking to bring in any volunteers. 

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Following my undergraduate degree, I went to University of Worcester to study Sport Applied Performance Analysis (MSc). As part of this degree you had to work in a practical setting at a club and I applied for a number of roles and had interviews with Birmingham & Wolves academy, for which I was not successful and then was successful with Kidderminster Harriers who were looking to bring in a first team analyst intern who was doing this specific degree with University of Worcester. Having exposure to first team football so early in my career was 100% the right thing to do for me, this is where my interest was, first team football. 

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Towards the end of this season, COVID hit - I was living in a house share away from family and friends and ended up going back to Guernsey in June, the season was cancelled in April due to covid. Having just finished my masters degree clubs were not advertising for roles due to covid so my timing could not have been any worse to get my first full time role in football, or so I thought. Through my connection with University of Worcester I had the opportunity to apply for a data collection role with FIFA as they were putting together a high performance team to analyse football matches using their new FIFA Football Language. I was working remotely for 11 months at FIFA and then I was having issues with a back injury and I really wanted to get back into first team football, I spent from September-May out of work until I got the job at Scunthorpe United Football Club as Head of Football Analysis.

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Scunthorpe United has just been relegated from League Two, not in a great place financially but I took the role to get back into football. After 5 months at Scunthorpe and uncertainty about the clubs future, Lincoln had just put up a job role looking for a First Team Analyst, I had applied and interviewed at Lincoln City previously after my masters degree to which I was unsuccessful but as I had applied for the role previously then they were aware of my name already once I submitted an application. I ended up getting the role at Lincoln City and achieving one of my biggest goals I had ever set myself to being an analyst in the EFL. Having spent 8 months at Lincoln I then moved on to Exeter City and worked as a first team analyst for the 2023/24 season and now moved into a new role as a Recruitment Analyst. 

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So when people ask me the question - "How do I become a football analyst?" - I can not give you one definitive answer and people come from all sorts of different backgrounds, I can only give you my story which may be different to every other analyst that works in football around the world. 

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