Reids Coaching/Management thread

Right, proper update time as mentioned above - it was a bit of an up and down season. Since I started working in football it had been a goal of mine to help a team win something. A cup, a title or a promotion - that was my main aim. I almost achieved that with Forest Green last season but they blew it, but I achieved that with Casa Pia this season, with set-pieces proving hugely important in our promotion. They were also big for SonderjyskE, although we had a horrible defensive set-piece record (through no fault of my own!) although sadly we couldn't stay up and ended up relegated.

Below is a graph of all 3 leagues I was working in combined - displaying the Goals/Corner (goals per corner taken) and the xG/Corner (expected goals per corner taken) for each team. The top right quadrant is where you want to be as it shows the teams that were above the average in both number of corner goals scored and xG created from corners, only 3 teams (Rio Ave, Viborg + Inter Milan) outperformed Casa Pia + SonderjyskE.

Spezia also achieved above the average for Goals/Corner (but below average for xG/Corner) but I can't claim any credit there as I've not been able to get myself heard by the coaching staff at all. Hopefully that'll change for next season.



Really goes to show what can be done in the set-piece space though - in Portugal 17 out of the 18 teams defend in a near full zonal marking set-up (often with 7 zonal markers defending the 6-yard area) - my research showed that against zonal marking, most corner goals aren't scored with a direct header and are often the result of 2nd balls. It also showed an interesting trend - below is the location of assists (from corners taken from the side with the arrow) from corners against zonal marking setups - as you can see there's a high amount of assists that come from the near corner of the 6-yard area.



Once I delved into watching the video footage of these goals, they mostly seemed to share the same characteristics - take a look at the video below and I'm sure you'll be able to spot the same patterns



So I came up with a similar routine that we tried most games - and we ended up scoring 4 goals from that 1 routine, including the winner in 2 different 1-0 victories - earning us 6 points, we won automatic promotion by 4 points so without that we might not have won automatic promotion - set-pieces are important!

 

Do the right thing @Rob Edwards

 

Makes a lot of sense, beat the zonal marking by hitting it to the first man, then the second ball in means the zonal marking goes out of the window as they’re all out of sorts and not prepared for the second ball.

 

Spezia get their transfer ban lifted

Great news for the forthcoming season!

 

Looks like you’ll be working alongside the former Udinese head coach too!

 

Can neither confirm or deny haha

 

Was that you on H&J?

 

It was!

 

I don't normally listen, but WFH today so had it on in the background. I hope it is good exposure for you.

 

H&J ?

 

Talksport - Hawksbee & Jacobs show.

 

It's a show on TalkSport that I was just on talking about Spurs new set-piece coach!

 

A good listen. More successful than @NathWFC 's venture into radio stardom

 

I was half tempted to shout "pozzos out" at the end.

 

Managed to slip one less/fewer forum in joke in there at least!

On a serious note - well done, crazy to think where you've got to from the first post on this thread.

 

Interesting stuff, you are now the forum celebrity.

Just one more thing, being a bald man myself, if I was able to grow such a nice beard I would seriously think about putting my head on upside down.

 

I wanna shave my hair all off, I can grow a great beard but I'm seriously thinning on top now, so I wanna go full Pep. The GF won't let me though!

 

Great to see Udinese doing a fabulous job from set pieces. Us on the other hand simply celebrate when we don’t hit the first man.

 

https://twitter.com/StatsBomb/status/1549386757183049729 - will be speaking at Wembley Stadium at the Statsbomb Conference in a couple of months in front of 400/500 people working in football

 

Just imagine them naked and you'll do fine.

 

Lots of women in football now so that could go horribly wrong. I am assuming Reids is straight as he mentioned a gf earlier.

 

Unless it's BFS in which case you may well be sick

 

With appropriately placed imaginary butterflies, obviously.

 

Casa Pia vs Benfica is on BT Sport 3 tonight at 6PM for those wanting to watch a set-piece masterclass!

 

The more I read, the more I doubt that “Supercoach” Peter Reid has anything to do with this thread at all. Not enough ****ing swearing.

 

Went well I think and my talk got a little mention on 5live last night

 

Congrats, @reids !

 

Time to dust down that CV @reids ?
Per BBC website "Brentford first-team analyst and set-piece specialist Jack Wilson is leaving the Bees to join Premier League champions Manchester City. (Athletic - subscription required)

 

I applied for the City role funnily enough, althoughly oddly didn't make it past the initial CV stage. Bizarre as last time City posted this role I made it down to the last 5 candidates and I've definitely improved since then!

 

Always a bit of a lottery at Cv stage but maybe the pool of specialists is also expanding quickly ?

 

Yeah it's quite possible as it has grown quickly, but there's still very few people in the field that have as much experience as me so still a bit of a shock (although I'm very aware any job at City is likely to be very competitive!), but could've just been something innocuous like my notice period is too long or they didn't think I'd take it due to the salary offered (as it was likely to mean a 50%+ pay-cut from my current role)

 

Few updates!

First one, think I forgot to post this at the time but I did an article with the New York Times during the World Cup that you might like to give a read (although there's a fair few embellishments by the author that aren't true!) that was pretty cool to do and was pretty surreal to get my name tweeted out by an account with 55 million followers



Give it a read here: https://archive.ph/q83v3

Was also in a good article in The Athletic recently - https://theathletic.com/4358447/2023/03/30/set-piece-specialists-transforming-football/

Second update - been offered a new contract at my current group but have turned it down. No idea what's next - in talks with some other multi-club groups which would be my preference, but have also had a bunch of interest about freelance work so may go back to being freelance again.

 

Pah. The NYT has nothing on the WO. Small fry.

Seriously though, crazy times for you mate. Well deserved.

 

Doesn't look like the multi-club groups are keen, had a meeting with one (a certain energy drink supplier) but felt like a hard sell and they haven't been very forthcoming with feedback which I'm taking as a bad sign considering that was over a month ago! So back to freelance it is.

Have room for 3 teams + 1 national team, had a meeting with a (very good!) PL team today which will hopefully be one, think Blackburn are keen to continue which will be another then just need to find a team on the continent or in the USA to finish off the roster.