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Club Focus - Bristol City FC
BRISTOL City boss Steve Coppell says the Prozone football analysis system will play a big part in the club's quest to win promotion to the Barclays Premier League.
Former Robins manager Gary Johnson adopted Prozone as a means to monitor performance following promotion from League One in 2007.
And his successor insisted the statistics-based system has a place in the modern game and is planning to utilise it in the Championship next season.
Coppell embraced Prozone during his time in charge of Reading and claimed it leaves "no hiding place" for players.
He explained: "It gives you incredible information on players, in terms of their fitness and work-rate.
"Every Premier League club has it and the majority of Championship clubs now have it, subject to finances. It's a vital ingredient in the development of the club."
He added: "When I was a player, it came down to an opinion of whether you played well or not. Now you can look at the stats and there is no hiding place.
"For instance, a player can have 30 passes, of which 15 go astray. Sometimes, you are not aware of that on the day, because people only remember the good passes.
"You make continual assessments and it's great for the players who are really professional, because they pick out their weaknesses and try and improve upon them. It's also good for them in terms of fitness preparations."
City first adopted the Prozone package three years ago and now have the full system in place, deploying 10 cameras to track the players during each and every game at Ashton Gate. The club also employs a dedicated performance analyst, Stewart Dougall, to collate the data and work with the coaching staff.
A modern manager in his outlook, Coppell has forged a reputation for being thorough in the way he prepares his teams and he openly embraces the use of technology.
He described the Prozone system as a "huge elephant" and stressed the importance of analysing the data in detail. He said: "It's massive and you can look at it and admire it, but the attention is in the detail.
"There is no-one yet who has been able to give me a specific one-two-three things in a game which will make you win. You can concentrate on doing those three things and still lose.
"There is never going to be a way of looking at Prozone and expecting it to give you the key. But it still has a very important role to play if you harness it in the right way."
Article courtesy of the BRISTOL EVENING POST / Andy Stockhausen
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