1. Scottish Football Association CPD Event
27/11/13
Sean Kimberly
Aston Villa Football Club
Encouraging Positive Play
Notes by Max Rogers

2. Sean Kimberly – Profile
He started career as a part-time coach at Blackburn Rovers under Kenny Dalgleish, DID NOT HAVE A
PLAYING BACKGROUND. Stayed at the club for 12 years before moving onto Aston Villa. Has been at Villa
for 8 years at academy level, however is now involved in the recruitment side of things. Stated that his
coaching practices have been ‘stolen’ from other coaches over the years and he remains an ‘old school’
coach.
Key Phrase – Coaching is Communication
Uses a personal categorization method to identify the characteristics of different players –
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Ball carrier – Full back for example bringing the ball forward. Not beating a defender 1v1.
Dribbler – Takes on defenders and loves to be in possession of the ball.
Passers – Rarely dribble, always look to pass the ball.
Destroyers – Not much of a dribbler or passer, prefer doing the defensive work. Under pressure they
perform better as they don’t have time to think (make decisions).
In England, he mentioned, there are a lot of passers and not enough dribblers. He then showed video clips
and asked us to identify what players in the clip fall into which categories. The best dribblers were of course
foreign.
Coaching Session
The theme of the session was to encourage players to receive the ball on the half turn and to play positive.
Without giving direct demands such as ‘I want you to do…’ or ‘When you have the ball you should…’ he
attempted to affect the players’ attitude through communication and emphasising that he wanted them to play
positively at all times. Coaching style in England is very autocratic!
He kept mentioning that in England the current trend is for players to maintain possession of the ball without
taking the risk to penetrate the opponent’s defence. Instead of playing a vertical pass into a striker or taking
on a defender 1v1 the player in possession will decide to pass the ball sideways. Players are manufactured
and rely on a coach telling them to do something rather than having the intuition to do it themselves.
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Small Sided Game
Technical Warm-Up
Small Sided Game
Attack v Defence Phase of Play

3. Small Sided Game
The session started with a small sided game, an unconventional method. Sean mentioned that he wanted to
do this in order to find out about the players and how they could be classified into the four playing roles. His
only instruction to the group was to play positive.
To begin with the games were stopped quite often as he attempted to influence the behaviour of the players.
In all the stoppages he didn’t tell the players what to do, instead repeated his phrase of playing positive and
also asked open ended questions. These questions were along the lines of ‘What can you do here?’ or ‘What
could you do differently this time?’
After quite a number on interjections to reinforce his desire to see positive play, the game started to settle
down and the players, through their own decisions, started to play more positively.
What is Positive Play?
The picture on the left shows a scenario which might appear
during a game. I’ll use it to help provide an example of
positive play. The ST is in possession of the ball just outside
the opponent’s 18 yard box. Four options have been
highlighted that the ST can pick from in this moment. A –
take on the defender 1v1, B – Switch the ball to the LW, C –
Play a square pass to the RW or D – pass the ball inside to
the CM. In your opinion, what is the most positive option the
striker can take? (Hopefully it’s obvious!).
A is the correct option. The defender has no cover and the
striker can create a scoring opportunity. The other options are
less positive. Players should be encouraged to attack a
defender 1v1 and shoot on goal rather than pass.

4. Technical Exercise
The focus on the technical practice to begin with was to encourage the central player, X2, to receive the ball
on the back foot. This enables them to play the ball forward quicker, and therefore become more positive.
Sean didn’t provide any demonstrations to begin with, which resulted in the players performing below par and
quite sloppy.
In his first stoppage, Sean picked up on the lack of movement from all three players. X1 and X3 should be
constantly moving to the left and right, whilst X2 should be moving between the two central cones before
exploding deep into the space to receive the ball. As part of his positive play theme, he encouraged the
players to do their own things and to use their imagination, such as;
 Don’t always use the same control and pass when receiving on the half turn. Try using just one foot
– instep to control, outside to pass.
 End players vary their feed, not every pass in a game is going to be perfect so get used to dealing
with aerial passes etc.
 End players, X1 & X3, when they receive the ball dribble towards X2 creating a 1v1, try and beat
them.
 Communicate!
He progressed the exercise by placing poles in the grid to act as defenders and to also encourage more
movement.

5. Small Sided Game
The session then returned to the small sided game in an attempt to see whether or not the technical practice
had any effect. Sean mentioned that the game had no conditions because the game on a Saturday doesn’t
have any conditions.
Phase of Play
Attacking Team – 8+1 feeder.
Defending Team – 7
Again, the message of playing positively was repeated at the beginning of the phase of play. During all the
stoppages he never really told the players exactly what to do, only gave them small ideas which they then
built on. I thought this was a very interesting coaching style and it certainly had an effect as the attacking
team started to play some positive football.
In one stoppage he emphasised that a player doesn’t need to have the ball to be positive. In the example
he showed that if the winger moves infield and central midfield drops deeper, only small changes, these
movements force the opposition to react and make decisions as to where they should be positioned.