Analysis is one of many areas which has moved online and this week Head of Academy Analysis, George Brown sat down with RangersTV to discuss how they have continued to support players and coaches.
Brown oversees the Academy analysis department and works to develop the output methods and delivery of analysis information.
He said: “We manage the analysis remotely at the moment, we have daily meetings with all of the staff where we set out what needs to be done, we tend to work a week ahead and in terms of what we produce.
“Some of it is based around individual analysis and feedback, some is about a unit and how they work together and some of it is about a more overarching team perspective.
“Across the pandemic up until April 1, we produced 141 webinars, 21 videos for the video library and 15 masterclasses.
“When that gets broken down seven of the webinars were highlight videos, 42 of them were unit analysis, 35 were player profiles, 46 were game model videos and 11 were positional analysis so there's lots of different types of content and lots of different ways of producing that.
“We obviously normally present face to face, we present in the auditorium as part of team meetings or unit meetings. Moving those online brings different challenges in terms of player engagement and trying to make sure everyone is taking the information in.
“It was slightly difficult to manage to start with, we weren't sure on the best way of presenting.
“We are able to conduct research on what the best practice was over the course of the pandemic. We don't think we are perfect, we think we have done an unbelievably good job, but we also know we can learn and develop our practises and get better as well.”
Brown also oversees a successful student programme which brings undergraduate university students into the club to develop their knowledge in a football environment.
He continued: “We work with a number of universities and what we try and do is bring in undergraduate students from Strathclyde, Stirling and Edinburgh Napier.
“The reason we do that is because there isn't a bespoke performance analysis degree pathway in Scotland so we bring them in and give them that work experience and help upskill them.
“What we then do is if we identify good students at year three, when they move to fourth year we then support a dissertation and again try to identify the best students. Once we have done that we will then work with our postgraduate partners and those masters students then get a full time placement with us for 12 months.
“They get lots of experience and mentoring so that by the end of the 12 months they are capable of getting a full-time job in football either with us or elsewhere. We really try to be innovative about how we develop our students because we don't want them to just be in the building and not learning anything and not developing, we really want to create a pathway into professional football for students.”
Brown says the one-club ethos has been key as he continues to learn from first-team analysts Scott Mason and Graeme Stevenson.
He added: “I am very lucky that up until November I was working in and around the first team learning from Graeme and Scott and developing some of my skills and the ways that they work and how we can absorb that information and change the way we work in the Academy.
“It has been really helpful to develop that relationship and some of the information that we give to our Academy players is information that is still ongoing with the first team.
“It is being shared with first team players regularly and it is really nice to be part of that one club ethos and it is a really enjoyable thing.”