Coventry City’s unique transfer strategy revealed as Cristiano Ronaldo point made
Sky Blues reporter Andy Turner sits down with the club’s new Performance Director Dr Claire-Marie Roberts to take a fascinating look at her role as a sports psychologist
Team spirit and a strong dressing room have been one of the hallmarks of Mark Robins’ time at Coventry City.
Two promotions and four Wembley appearances in the space of seven years are testament to that as the Sky Blues recruitment department – currently in its third generation – has consistently brought good people, as well as talented players, to the club as the manager has built and evolved different teams to work their way up the divisions to where they are today, a top end Championship side with serious ambitions to get to the Premier League.
There has been the odd exception along the way but, by and large, Robins and his staff have been good judges of character, backed up by a few choice phone calls to previous employers. Now, however, City are moving away from the uncertainty of instinct and chance to take a more scientific approach to the players they recruit by getting a psychological profile of potential new signings.
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The club’s new Performance Director, Dr Claire-Marie Roberts – a highly qualified sports psychologist – has been hired by owner Doug King to help optimise the players’ performance on several levels, applying the very best sports science to everything from injury prevention, strength and conditioning to nutrition.
But a fascinating aspect of her work is playing an active role in recruitment, with the Championship club trail blazers in the game.
In the second part of CoventryLive’s in-depth interview with Dr Roberts, she explains: “At the moment I am working really closely with Dean (Austin) and the recruitment team to make sure that the people we are thinking of signing have got the right sort of character profile; the right psychological profile to fit into our existing team.
“And secondly, to make sure that we have got decent human beings in the squad that are going to want to develop and play, and don’t have an ego. People who are going to respond well to coaching and be able to meet the psychological demands of the game.
“We can do all the fitness testing and medical testing in the world. Everyone does that and there’s nothing different in what we do from the physical assessment side of things, but we are looking at how we measure character and how we select players on the basis of their psychological profile that’s going to enable us to get the best out of them. So that’s one element of my role.”
She added: “My background is in psychology, and the team dynamic of Coventry City is one of the most important things for us. We want to make sure that those individuals gel and are cohesive, want to support and play for each other and are able to build, foster and sustain really strong relationships not just with each other but with the performance staff and coaching team as well.
“So in terms of my expertise, I want to make sure I bring that to help our player selection, so I am working really closely with Dean and his team to make sure we understand as much as possible about the players that we are bringing in.”
