How Blackburn Rovers use a portable videowall for live analysis
Written by
Ian Westbrook
November 5, 2025
As the Blackburn Rovers players line up for a corner routine the day before their upcoming match, a drone flies overhead and the footage is beamed live onto a big screen at the side of the pitch.
Towards the end of pre-season, Rovers brought in a portable videowall called CoachCart from SmartCart Technologies. It’s a 75-inch screen mounted on an electric buggy that can be driven anywhere around the club’s training ground.
Sessions are filmed by a camera on a drone, with the footage transferred to a laptop and then projected onto the big screen. The buggy is more portable than the huge videowalls that were first pioneered by Hoffenheim in Germany, and the high-quality touchscreen is unaffected by the glare of the sun.
Rather than coaches and analysts having to wait until the end of a session for players to watch clips in an analysis room, Manager Valerien Ismaël and his staff are able to show them footage immediately, without disrupting their session.
Ismaël, who joined Rovers in February, was the big driver behind the introduction of CoachCart at the club’s Brockhall training centre.
“The Manager had had screens at his other clubs,” Lead Performance Analyst Joe Robinson tells TGG. “He was a big factor in getting the Cart at this club.
Manager Valérien Ismaël gathers the players together to show them analysis footage at the side of the pitch. He is flanked by First Team Coach Damien Johnson on the right.
“What he had previously used was big screens on a stationary block by the side of the pitch. A big part of his coaching is using screens. He came in and said, ‘This is how I want to coach’ and we did our research and saw CoachCart as the best solution.
“He has seen it and gone, ‘Wow, this is the one.’ One, because the actual screen is made for outside, that was a big factor. Before we had this Cart, we had used a normal TV, but had so many issues, like the light or the reflection off the grass and you couldn’t really see things.
“No matter where we are, even if the sun’s beaming through, we can see the screen on the CoachCart. The other big factor was the mobility of the screen.
“The second big factor is that because CoachCart is so mobile, we can take it wherever we want. He (Ismaël) thinks it’s the best feature. Wherever we are, the Cart can go with us, it’s so convenient.
“You might be on one pitch for one session and then on another. Especially during set pieces, I just drive the Cart straight onto the pitch.
“Say for a set piece session on matchday minus one, I can drive in between the halfway line and the 18-yard line. The lads actually don’t need to move from their location. They’re set up and they can see the screen and see the clip and then I can just drive it off again.”
Robinson has worked for Rovers for the last two years, having previously been an Academy Performance Analyst at Manchester United. The CoachCart has now become a key component of his work at the Championship club.
“We always use it in the training sessions during the week on big-pitch session days,” he explains.
“Especially on matchday minus one, we’ll always have it on the pitch when we’re doing tactical work for the game. We’ll set up all the training with the drone, hook the drone up to the screen and make a live projection, so the Manager is seeing everything.
“As the drill is going on, I’m clipping things on SportCode and then the Manager can come over and say, ‘Show me that back.’ Then all I need to do is go on the clip, project it onto the screen and the drone’s still filming as a feed into SportsCode, so we can pause or rewind it.
Joe Robinson has worked for Rovers for two years
“There’s a two-screen features on there as well, so if the Manager wants to highlight something on the pitch himself he can use that. It’s really good in that sense.
“Sometimes it’s individual things, sometimes it’s from a small-sided session or maybe a transition session. He pulls lads out individually and says, ‘Your position here wasn’t particularly good’ or ‘You could have made this run’ and then we can show them on the screen. Seeing the footage is so powerful to reinforce a coaching point.
“Same for the goal kicks. The Manager might be looking at it as if he’s in the middle of the pitch. Have we got the press right? What are the back line doing? What are the centre-halves doing?
“So he’s coming over and looking at the big picture and he’s looking at distances, positions, and then, because we are filming the drill, we can see all of that.”
Rovers are not the first club to use a videowall for training sessions, of course.
In 2017, Bundesliga side Hoffenheim put a huge screen at the side of their training pitch. Head Coach Julian Nagelsmann was able to control the footage using an iPad and stop sessions to show clips to players. He also introduced a videowall for training when he was at Bayern Munich in 2022.
In 2019, Championship side Bristol City followed suit after manager Lee Johnson had visited Germany and seen how Hoffenheim and other clubs were using screens.
And in 2022, Norwich City started using a screen on a buggy – also with CoachCart. At the time, the club’s Set Piece Coach Alan Russell said: “What the Cart does is bring clarity to everything, because you can get your message across and reinforce it with the footage on the Cart.”
SmartCart Technologies was founded by Gilbert Cowie. a double Emmy Award-winning technologist and engineer who led the deployment of touchscreen systems for broadcasters such as Sky Sports and CBS. The company says that CoachCart is “designed for coaches who need instant visual feedback on the pitch.”
- You can see SmartCart’s TGG Company Page HERE
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