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Projected on to a wall at the Newcastle United training ground is the monthly report of a prominent first-team regular.

These are the progress bulletins that ping into player’s e-mail inboxes and tablets throughout the season and, for this defender it’s an impressive read. High 9s and 8s dot through the endurance and stamina categories, his energy levels are near the top of a Newcastle group that, statistically, is in the top four of the Premier League for its work rate.

The level of detail in the report is astonishing, from maximum and average speeds in training through high tempo sprints right down to dietary advice gleaned from regular pin-prick blood tests. “Could eat salmon twice a week,” it reads. “And think about putting olive oil on pasta.”

As a brief snapshot of the work that goes on every day away from the public eye every day at Newcastle United it is instructive. Every single day they are peering “beneath the bonnet” of their elite athletes, hoping to make nimble use of the reams of data available to give them an added edge over their Premier League rivals.

Never mind marginal gains, this is the appliance of sport science at St James’ Park . And, thanks to Rafa Benitez and his secret weapon, it is working.

Standing to the side of the screen is Jamie Harley, Newcastle’s head of sport science and one of the key cogs in a system that is both relentless and crucial to what the club has achieved on Rafa Benitez’s watch.

Harley is at the centre of the big data revolution that has changed the face of the club. This is his story.

The 8.45 medical meeting

United train at 10.30, but their day begins a couple of hours earlier as the players begin to pull into the training ground car park. And the inspiration for what happens the moment they walk through the doors came partly from a fact-finding mission to Borussia Dortmund.

“They had a room in the middle of the training ground with a basketball ring – there was a picture of south stand painted onto the walls with speakers on it,” Harley explains.

“The idea was to have a place where all the players could congregate in the morning where they wouldn’t put too much strain on muscles. The players were just literally bouncing and throwing the ball but the idea was that they’re all together in a circle and then the staff can come through and talk to them leisurely and informally, really. You’re asking questions on that information – once the players left the court, the medical team went over that information.”

Newcastle took that idea and ran with it, adding short face-to-face time between medical staff and players to get an idea of how everyone is feeling. In that half hour – which Harley looks on as the most important 30 minutes of the day – the players have to give themselves marks out of ten in three categories: energy levels, sleep from the previous night and muscle soreness.

He explains: “That’s key information – it doesn’t have to go to the manager right at the top but it can go to the doc (Dr Paul Catterson) so we can say ‘Check in with him before training’.” The idea of the self analysis is to catch any problems early, rather than dealing with them after injuries occur.

“Sometimes a player will turn up and say ‘Sleep’s fine, muscle soreness is a five but I’ve got no energy, I don’t know why’. What we do then is take a finger print blood test to check for inflammation.”

Working with world-leading Irish sports science firm Orecco, United are at the cutting edge of this kind of test. They are looking at C-Reactive protein levels – which is a marker of illness or undiagnosed injuries produced in the liver. “Sometimes if you’re in the early stages of an illness the inflammation levels shoot high – and then the doc can just in and give the right kind of medication to stop it from becoming a fully blown illness,” Harley explains. “The blood test is impossible to cheat.”

After speaking to the players, the medical staff then chat to Benitez and his coaching team a cup of coffee. That is where Francisco de Miguel Moreno – Paco – gets involved . He is Newcastle’s secret weapon.

Paco’s background is in fitness not football, but he has coaching badges too. He is an absolutely critical member of Benitez’s backroom, with a razor-sharp understanding of both the sport and medince. “He is asbsolutely fantastic to work with,” Harley says.

Paco’s expertise means the big data is quickly filtered into meaningful nuggets for Benitez. Every morning a training plan is tweaked accordingly and to protect them from injuries, some players only do certain phases of the session.

It is a far cry from the days when players felt they had to play through the pain barrier. “Managing the load” is Paco’s role – and it means never over-loading anyone. “The aim is never to pull players out of training. More often than not they’ll train with issues and maybe do certain bits of training – which is where Paco comes in. Having someone who can use the information we give him so well is massive, it’s huge. That’s his expertise, he can manage the load effectively,” he said.

Training sessions

If you’re looking for a secret to Benitez’s enduring success at getting the very best out of Newcastle, it is in the series of green rectangles on the big screen.

Each denotes a training pitch, and each is sliced into three categories: tactical, technical, game. These are the drills that are critical to Benitez’s way of playing: for the week we’re looking at Newcastle are preparing to play a counter-attacking side.

“Attacking waves” is one drill, “10 v 0” is another. That is the game side of it. But through the season, based on the information Harley, Dr Catterson and Paco collect, Benitez works on bigger picture stuff like stamina levels. And for that, he relies on the data collected in every single session.

“We go out and do the session then we analyse the session. We get physical outputs from each drill: distances, high speed running distances, number of sprints the players have done in total and heart rate session plus we get subjective info from the players themselves.

“We want to know how hard did the player find it out of 10 and their thoughts on the session.”

The players wear GPS vests and there is individual analysis measuring their high intensity work, the number of accelerations, decelerations and the distance covered.

“The key thing with this is recognising trends – who is at the top of these numbers, who is at the bottom? That’s not to say bottom is bad, top is good – it’s down to profile of the player, or the position.

“You know that the way Yoshi Muto moves, for example, is very, very quick and dynamic and that might be different to one of the centre halves who is a different shape and different weight.

“It’s not that top to bottom is good to bad. It’s about tracking whether a player has fallen down the trend or even gone up higher which suggest he’s pushing much, much harder.”

The sheer amount of stats being collected is amazing. “The final step for us is taking all of that information and putting the training sessions together and that’s the genius of Paco. He makes sure the way we train most of the days is related to the next opponents we play.

“Every drill will be related to either what we’re trying to do or what the opponents do. It’s a very difficult job but Paco does it so well.”

Big data – and how Rafa and his team are ahead of the game

Two years ago, the Premier League did something revolutionary that has never really filtered into the mainsteam. They made match day data “open source”: so suddenly there was access to reams and reams of information on every single player, formation and team in the top flight.

It was a goldmine for teams that knew how to use it – or had a willingness to try and learn. And, Harley says, Newcastle – through their partnership with Orreco – were one of those sides.

“We used to be limited to our information and our opponents’ after every match. Now we have access to every team in the league – physically, technically and tactically,” he said.

“Working with data scientist Prof. John Newell from the National University of Ireland, Galway (Insight NUI Galway, Ireland) we’ve built a system where we can plug in all this information and we can compare any of our players to any player in the league. You can start to build a profile of the players. You can start to see who is the leader in the league in any specific parameter.

“That sort of data is huge, it’s massive.”

Newcastle’s data analysts use the information on their opponents to measure it against their own data for their players. Daily digests are entered into the Soccer System Pro software, which then have to be crunched into the info that matters so that Benitez and Paco can make the decisions that make a difference.

All this information creates an index which reveals which players are in peak condition and who is dropping dangerously close to the red zone. So that team selection you just don’t understand? It’s usually because Benitez has noticed a player’s number dropping below that line.

But you’ve got to do the data right. “There’s a lot of information and we have to keep it simple – and consistent,” Harley says. “Every day is a new day. It’s a relentless stream of information and the hardest job – which is the manager’s – is putting all of that information together and deciding on the ten to take you forward.”

But in Benitez, they have the right man. “The manager and his staff are a well-oiled machine,” Harley says.

“I came in with Chris Hughton, was here for Alan Pardew, John Carver and Steve McClaren and then Rafa and the data side of it has always been there in terms of communicating that back to the key men but it’s never been as effective as it is now.

“Rafa and his coaching team brought in this regular profiling of players so if Paco decides that on this day we’re going to profile all the players for stamina, that becomes the key part of the training load for that day and it’s built into the training sessions for that week. If it was another manager, it might be difficult to get that into the training session.

“The fact that Paco organises it all and understands the data is key. The data is used. He’s a fitness coach by trade and experience and so it’s a different coaching model from ones I’ve worked in before.

“It used to be the job of the fitness coach was very different – you’ve got them for 20 minutes, do what you want but just bring them back to me fit. Whereas now that would never happen – it’s so tightly controlled and the data becomes important because it’s fed into the system to be used.

“Things change over time. We didn’t used to do the blood monitoring but we try to be forward thinking – we’re trying new systems that will measure heart rates at home as well next season.”

Blood tests – and the importance of Carton House

For those that wonder why Benitez is so keen on his annual trips to Ireland, the answer lies in the manager’s meticulous pre-season planning.

It is not just tactics being worked on when they head off to Carton House, it is conditioning. “We carry out venous (blood) tests four times a year. We do this at the start of pre-season, end of pre-season, half-way through the season and three quarters of the way through the season so we can impact the run-in,” he explains.

“We do it from day one in pre-season and pre-season is quite unique in that we do a few sessions here and then we go off to a camp, which has been Carton House in Ireland. It’s a great facility there, there’s training pitches and a gym that’s close and you’re on top of each other 24/7 in a camp environment.

“It’s a really good time to stamp down what we want to do for the season, the information we want and what we’re going to do.”

That includes blood tests that are used to measure everything from recovery rates to food intolerance.

The club review those tests five times a year so their supplements, recovery shakes and nutrition advance can be adapted – along with training programmes. It is a good reason why the team finish so well.

Harley explains: “The huge thing for Rafa and his staff is that historically, at this stage in the season they’ve been in the latter stages of important competitions at the either of title races or Europa or Champions Leagues so the team have to be ready to perform at this stage.

“It’s been really interesting to see how it happen. The season, right from day one on pre-season, is considered as a whole. He’s preparing them for the whole season, not just up until Christmas or for the first six weeks or to work hard during the season and then find with six weeks left, there’s no energy and they’re losing games.

“You see different trends in different teams – you see teams dropping off at the wrong time and it’s a definite tactic from Rafa right from the start to prepare them fo the whole season so that at this stage they should still feel fresh.

“Doing things like taking the bloods with eight weeks left, that can inform what we do in the last stage of the season to make any final adjustments.”

United also take blood markers after every game from the 10 starting players to measure how quickly they’re recovering.

If the number is less than 0.5 it’s no problem. But if mark is more than 3, there is a red alert attached to it. This has flagged up injury or illness problems that even the player didn’t know about.

Harley explains: “It’s a widely used test in hospitals and GPs will do it as well to see if there’s an underlying issue. It’s a really useful marker we’ve added in this season.”

Nutrition & hydration

Last summer Newcastle’s training ground restaurant got a mini-overhaul. In the far corner, a smoothie bar popped up for the players to take recovery drinks after training.

It was all part of the work United did with consultant nutritionist Tony Derbyshire to improve the way the team fuel. “We’re a hard-working team and we have to recover that way,” Harley says.

Players have their own individual fridges with mixed drinks and while the club aren’t big on supplements, some players use caffeine tablets with a six-hour life.

(Image: Newcastle United's 'Colour fit' meal programme for players)

The players are also given access to an online system called Colour Fit, which provides simple recipes tailored to them on their phones or tablets – with video clips to make it easier to eat right.

“It’s all set up so they don’t have to think about it. It sounds like you’re trying to baby sit them but the fewer decisions they make outside of playing football, the better,” he said.

There is little drinking any more. Most eat well and embrace the diet – they are weighed every week and, Harley notes, the shirts are unforgiving. “That older English mentality has gone to be honest.”

United’s hard workers

Harley, who came to United after working in Rugby League with Leeds Rhinos, reckons the current crop of players are united in their effort and endeavour.

In the course of an afternoon at the training ground you can see how many of the players are in peak condition. Isaac Hayden rates highly ; Sean Longstaff’s performances in training were so impressive it nixed a move to Portsmouth as Benitez wanted to keep him.

“We get information from the other teams in the Premier League as well and we’re in the top four in terms of work rate in games,” Harley says. “It’s no kudos to say you’re in that necessarily, because you could be running all over the place for no reason, it’s just that we have a group of players who work hard in training and games.

“You never see them giving up. We have good results and bad results as you go along but you still see them pushing hard every week. Even the players coming in, they have the same sort of spirit and mentality. It shows in the figures.

“Although we’re happy with where we are you can see this week in training they’re working really hard and trying to push on again.” And Newcastle have the stats to prove it.