John Iga: Innovation scheme lets clubs think outside the box

But how does this relate to football?

Iga has worked in the game for many years. He was Head of Academy Science and Medicine and Lead Sport Scientist for Wolves, where he worked for four-and-a-half years, Head of Sport Science for the Football Association for three-and-a-half years and most recently Head of Strategy and Innovation at Norwich City for just over three years.

He told TGG: “Where we’ve been really successful in the past with this, in the context of football, is really understanding what clubs want to do, working with them to define their performance plans, understanding where the gaps are that almost hamper their ability to work at a strategic level, and move things forward.

“Also to put together programmes that allow them to bridge these gaps. Some of that might be some internal restructuring, and some other activity might be bona fide research to plug those knowledge gaps, and to undertake it, find out the best ways to implement it, bring that knowledge back into the club and the organisation, plug that gap and allow things to evolve.”

Iga joined Norwich in June 2021 and said: “When I first arrived, I was working with the Sporting Director Stuart Webber wanting to understand what was going on across all facets of the football club.

“So we spent a period of time undertaking a review, understanding what was being undertaken, benchmarking that against standards or industry best standards, standards of best practice, defining the gaps and looking to plug those gaps with applied research.

“There were some projects around recovery, and now we can optimise recovery. There were some projects around perceptual cognitive skill development – so how players perceive stimuli around them and react to that stimuli.”

“The money and the tax credits are really the icing on the cake. The most important thing is clubs having a more systematic approach in terms of how they go about their work, having a clear idea as to how they want to support their performance plan and what that performance plan is and then evaluating it.

“The core work is about driving the football club forward.”

Brentford, for example, take on about half a dozen PhD students every year to conduct research into areas like cognitive assessment, ball strike load monitoring and injury risk as well as data science. It is part of a pioneering partnership which the club has set up with Cardiff Metropolitan University.

“In essence the model is broadly similar in the sense of how they’re applying it,” said Iga. “It’s really thinking about plugging knowledge gaps but also developing practitioners, so the way they’re applying this, we were applying it previously.

“From the outside looking in, they seem to have a very clear idea as to how they want to play. They’ve spent time unpacking that and researching that and that’s informed where they’ve got to.

“They say ‘we might have to play with this formation, with these tactics or this age profile of player to be effective now. We might have to then recruit from these markets because these markets are I guess efficient financially but they translate quite effectively into UK football more precisely the Premier League’.

“And if there’s gaps in knowledge that they don’t quite necessarily understand around their plan, they’re trying to plug those gaps with really strong robust research and then really feeding back into their coaching process. So to me that seems a very smart logical way to go about it for a club that was 10 years ago nowhere near the Premier League, but now is comfortably residing there and maybe pushing for a European spot.”

Brentford are not the only club to have worked with Universities in a scheme like this.

Iga said: “When I was at Wolves, we had these models whereby we’re partnering up with universities, having embedded researchers, who were doing some excellent work.

“Kevin Enright, Lead Strength and Conditioning Coach at the club, did some brilliant work and concurrent training. Things like how to position your strength work and endurance work, which one should go first and how you can support that with nutrition.

“So some of the work that came out from that was fundamental in terms of driving how we operated as a football club.

“We structured our strength training activity inside the football club, how we supported the gym work with nutrition, and really strong robust intervention that helped that out, or helped drive those adaptations you’re trying to chase. That work’s published, it’s out there in the literature, informing other people’s work in practices also.”