Dave Carolan: Five lessons for the final furlong

1. Data has changed decision-making – but it hasn’t replaced experience

When winning the old Division One (now The Championship) with Norwich City in 2004, the pressure during the run-in was immense, both internally and externally. The club had been out of the Premier League since 1996 and in the wake of the ITV/ On-Digital financial apocalypse, the very future of the club was on the line.

With West Brom chasing us down, we knew any slip could be costly – to the tune of £100m. We needed the strongest team out for every match and we needed everyone to be fit and fresh for the run-in. 

This is where experience can count for a lot. This is where you need good communication, good collaboration and a good understanding of the psychology of athletes, coaches and the environment you work in.

Back then, there were only four people in the room: Manager, Assistant, Head Physio and me as Head of Sports Science.

In many Head Coaches’ offices over the next few weeks there will be questions about the availability of key players who have been absent for periods of the season through injury and whether they will be able to contribute to the final push. 

The role of the multi-disciplinary performance and medical team is to provide the coaching staff and players with the best options for achieving the outcome required. 

In 2004, we had little data to go on. An MRI for an injury was a last resort. Most data back then was soft, subjective, experiential. In 2026, there is a sea of data that can be queried to aid decisions in all domains.

One of the greatest evolutions in football over the last 10 years has been the advances in the Athlete Management Systems that collate and represent all of this complex information into a single environment.

It’s made the job of the Performance Director both more difficult and easier at the same time. Harder, because you need to filter the signal from the noise. Easier, because everything can be in one place and easier to query and cross-reference.

Today, when it comes to making a decision on player availability, the first question is often, ‘What does the player’s data say?’

Rather than, ‘What does the player say?’

We are increasingly in the business of trying to predict objectively what a player is capable of producing or tolerating. Sometimes the player and their opinion is not even in the conversation, when it should be.

2. Managing three different player groups at the same time

The planning and execution of training over the next few weeks will be carefully calibrated. The content of each session will be meticulously poured over to ensure that the players are doing only what they need to and not much more.

The accrued fitness that has been built up over the season is in place and now is a time when fatigue is your biggest rival. Some players will have already played more than 50 games and thousands of minutes, so tired legs and minds need to be carefully managed.

We are left to manage three different player groups at the same time, which is a challenge:

• Keep fit ‘playing’ players fresh, both mentally and physically
• Have non-playing players ready if called upon
• Get currently unavailable players fit enough to contribute

3. Contract and motivation issues can be as damaging as physical fatigue

Then there is the population of players within each dressing room who have an altogether different modus operandi: their contracts are running out or they have been left out in the cold during the season, but may now need to be called upon.

They are looking to the future: a future that’s elsewhere and with different people.

An experienced Head Coach will know the door should not be closed on any player and that keeping everyone involved as much as possible is important. The best I’ve worked with have understand this.

I’ve seen many a player come in from obscurity to provide an important role in the last few games.

I’ve also seen players down tools in the worst of ways, standing on the side of drills or within practices, not engaging with their team-mates or the training. There’s no load if the GPS doesn’t move!

But when a player feels undervalued at the club (perhaps through lack of engagement in contract talks) it is a tough situation to manage.

If the situation at the club is on a knife-edge, sometimes it’s best to move on from these problematic situations. An extra few weeks of close-season for a problem player is better than keeping them around to fulfil some other contractual obligation or punishing them by making them train with the youth team.

4. Changing the environment

As the end of another season approaches, everyone is fatigued by the environment as much as by the process. Coming into work six days a week for 40 weeks with little holiday is mentally tiring. Footballers and football staff normally get a big block of holidays at the end of the season and that’s it for the year.

This is why having a short training camp in a different space and place can pay dividends. A four-day break to the sun (with some golf), a couple of nights

away at a hotel with families invited, or even bringing an entertainer to the hotel the night before a game are all things I’ve experienced.

At Norwich City, Delia Smith and Sandra Worthington (Manager Nigel Worthington’s wife) took all of the staff and players’ partners to the races at Newmarket in April, three weeks before the end of the season.

Somehow Delia even got Frankie Dettori in on the act!

At Derby, Jen Rowett (Gary Rowett’s wife) and the players’ partners headed to Bicester Village for a shopping experience as we were pushing for the play-offs.

It’s something different, it changes the mood, it breathes new life and stories into a dressing room.

5. Invisible load often decides the outcome

From using GPS and optical tracking systems to heart rate monitors, blood markers and video analysis, no stone is left unturned in trying to understand the physical, physiological technical and tactical exposure of the players to loads

But it may be that invisible load is mounting too, for players, staff and coaches – and this could make the biggest difference of all in the final furlong. 

The cognitive load accumulated during must-win games, in high-pressure situations – carrying the weight of expectation of so many people – can cause player performance to tank. 

For some players, this will manifest itself physically. For others, it will manifest mentally and emotionally, with psychosomatic factors coming into play and causing some players to run towards the fight but others to choose flight and remove themselves from the situation.

Again, this is where experience will come into play for the practitioner, in understanding which players and staff are best equipped to be in and around the team, adding positivity. 

After all, you don’t want energy-sappers or mood-hoovers to distract – or even sabotage – the last push towards the finish line.

• COLUMN ONE: The five F’s that make (or break) a training camp