The Crawley Town Education Academy offers a minimum of three training sessions per week – with our coaches focusing on the following key areas:

 

Individual Player Development

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As a part of the football development structure, we always look to focus on individual development over team development – teams get better if players do! Some of the key individual development principles are:

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• Social development: We encourage all our players to develop their social skills throughout their time with us, encouraging them to branch out with friendship groups, become leaders and manage conflict positively.

• Strength-based coaching: We encourage our players to develop their strengths first – becoming excellent at what they’re naturally good at.

• Under-developed characteristics: We encourage all our players to work hard on aspects of their game that have been previously under-developed.

• Position-specific: We encourage players to develop position specific skills and understanding for roles that we feel they can be successful in.

• Strength & Conditioning: We encourage players to work physically in order to prepare for the jump into Under-19 football, and to progressive into the senior men’s game.

• Psychological aspects: We encourage players to develop the psychological side of their game, handling difficult situations and improving their attitude, work-ethic and winning mentality.

• Player profiles: We encourage players to have input by identifying their own strengths and weaknesses using Player Profiles.

• Embracing challenges: We encourage players by creating an environment where it is safe to make mistakes but always with a view to challenge the individual to aspire to a sense of responsibility to improve.

 

Our Ideal Player Model & Core Values

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We encourage players within the programme to embody the following ideals:

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• They are open minded and have a growth mindset

• They have a hunger and desire for learning

• They are motivated, and they want to work hard every day

• They actively participate in 3-channel feedback: Player-Coach-Teammates

• They embrace and are determined at being proficient in the technical basics of the game

• We are Honest

• We are Positive

• We are Driven

• We produce Quality

• We are Respectful

 

We aspire to be the best we can in everything we do and take personal growth as a never ending development journey for us all. When we win we stay ‘Humble’. When we lose we stay ‘Dignified’.

 

Systems of Play

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We encourage our players to have an ‘adaptable’ approach to playing systems, being open minded that there is no right way to approach all situations. We educate our players to take into account their own strengths and weaknesses, the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses, and to be flexible in understanding the ‘in game situation’.

 

Whilst all coaches have a ‘go-to’ system, we never play ‘one way’ during the game – players learn to understand how to set up in and out of possession, and we encourage our players to understand that it is beneficial to them developing their own game understanding by being able to adapt to different positions, systems and responsibilities.

 

Styles of Play

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Our style is based on the notion of ‘TENACIOUS COMPOSURE’. When defending we look to be tenacious, once we win the ball back, we look to play with composure.

 

Much like our approach to teaching systems, we also encourage players to understand a combination of themes that they can adapt to depending on the game situation, for example; ‘Compact Defending/Pressing when possible’, ‘Counter Attack/Possession Based play’.