Coventry City's Head of Goalkeeping discusses working as a multi-disciplinary team, Wembley appearances, and the challenges and successes to date.
If you listen to the ‘experts’ in football, they often say the Championship is the toughest league in English football, possibly even the world.
The Championship Play-Off Final is billed as the 100 million pound game and the winners get a ticket to the top table in football: the Premier League.
Scattered across the division is a mixture of fallen giants looking to return to the big time, the clubs who are happy to survive in that division and teams ready to challenge the established order and mix it up with the so-called big boys.
One team that competes in the Championship is Coventry City. The former Premier League side have been back in the second tier for four years since winning League One in 2020.
Their Head of Goalkeeping, Aled Williams, has been on this roller coaster journey over the last six seasons.
With 200 Championship games under his belt on the club’s coaching staff, he’s overseen two Team of the Season goalkeeper campaigns: Marko Marosi in the 2019/20 League One season, and Ben Wilson in the Championship in 2022/23. The latter won the golden glove and broke the club’s long standing clean sheet record in 2023, featuring in that year’s Play-Off Final which made up one of Williams’ two Wembley appearances.
He currently presides over ‘strongest goalkeeping department [manager Mark Robins] has had’ in his time at Coventry, to paraphrase the Sky Blues’ boss, and explained to Goalkeeper.com how difficult the Championship can be.
“It's very tough, and it is relentless, but you wouldn't change it. Also because, as a coach, you're coaching because you're obsessed with football.
“I get to watch a lot of football, I get to watch a lot of our goalkeepers, and come up with game plans. What can we do? How can we use our strengths against the opposition? And that's where I mentioned earlier about squeezing departments, the multi-disciplinary team (MDT), without them, you can't function in Championship season.
“How do they recover physically? How do they recover mentally with a psychologist?
“The analysts are a massive help with the workload, and they'll get the next game ready, especially if it's a quick turnaround, so we utilise them as much as we can. And then sometimes, I'll take the decision off the keeper, where they might recover indoors rather than on the pitch if they've had so much to do in the game. There are lots of different strategies to achieve that mental reset where they can go on the bikes or do something with their feet, but also talk to their teammates about the game that they just played.
“I think that side is important, that they have a voice and have an opinion with each other, also, because at the end of the day, these lads are the ones that are crossing the white line come Saturday, Tuesday, or Wednesday,”
Footballers are creatures of habit, and routines create effective output when they are implemented across a club. Most football fans would love to know what the goalkeepers do at a training ground on an average week and Williams afforded us a glimpse into life behind closed doors during a Championship season that can sometimes finish upwards of 50+ games.
As Williams explains, it’s “a hard working week, but hard work in a way where you're working sort of smart.
“So, if it's a Saturday to Saturday, we'll focus a lot on our goalkeepers and their IDPs (individual development plans) on a Monday and Tuesday, generally. It will be a hard working day, and we'll make it physical.
“It's important that they are put under pressure sort of early on. So, there'll be a lot of decision making throughout the week. Typically, Monday, Tuesday we'll start off with that.
“Then we're normally off on a Wednesday and then have a two day build-up to matchday. On a Thursday it will be all about the opposition they're playing. What are their main threats, what the individual players will pose as a threat to them, and how we deal with that as well.
“It's important that we come up with solutions for that. Then, generally, on a Friday, it’s minimal input from me. It's more about just 15-20 minutes with the goalkeepers, then I like to link them up with the outfielders on a Friday because of the social side. You know, small-sided games, maybe a bit of head tennis, and then, if there's set pieces involved, which I do at the club now as well, they'll hear my voice again at that.
“But it’s good, as they have a few solid days of goalkeeping and information from me leading into a game.”
All the work done at the club’s Ryton training ground builds up to a matchday, typically a Saturday at 3pm, at which point William’s work is virtually done and he allows whoever is starting in goal, either Ben Wilson or Oliver Dovin, to get on with their routine ahead of kickoff.
“On a match day I'll generally just leave them to their own devices because all the work's done in a week.
“Generally, like I said, if it's a Saturday to Saturday, all our work is generally done on a Thursday. And on the Thursday they'll have their pre-match, they'll have the video of what they need to do in the game plan, then that gets sent into our goalkeeper group for them to review.
“But on a game day, it's just a warm-up. It's just all about their individualised warm up. It will be a few last minute reminders from me based on the information they’ve received and prepared during the week. When they cross that white line, they're ready to go and make the correct decisions and be a game winner on that day.”
Following the promotion in 2020, the Sky Blues have been riding the crest of a wave as two seasons ago they almost got another promotion, taking on Luton Town in the 2022 Championship Play-off Final and narrowly losing on penalties at Wembley Stadium.
That season was also special for the goalkeeper department as Ben Wilson performed heroics throughout the campaign which deservedly got him a lot of plaudits right across the division.
Mark Robins’ men returned to the National Stadium less than a year later as they reached the Emirates FA Cup semi-final. 3-0 down against Manchester United, they pulled it back to 3-3 and thought they had won it in the final minute of extra-time, only for VAR to disallow Victor Torp’s goal for offside.
Williams described what it was like working at Wembley: “Stressful!” he jokes.
“No, it was fantastic, both fantastic achievements to get there.
“I think the Play-Off year one, we had a late run. We were excellent. Ben (Wilson) scored a goal which got us into the Play-Offs because it took two points off Blackburn, which was fantastic for him. And it was within a season where he achieved so much as well. It was probably something I was more proud of than anything.
“He broke the club's clean sheet records, he won the Golden Glove. He was in Team of the Year.
“Three years before that, he was just released from a League Two team in Bradford City, and he's come back and done all that, and he went to Wembley, and, you know, the penalties were tough. We managed to correctly identify the correct diving side on most, but they were just fantastic penalties on the day.
“We went again last year, we had that fantastic FA Cup run. And then we sort of came alive in the second half of that game in the semi-final, played outstandingly, and should have won in the end. The emotion was there. And the VAR lines comes into play, which we sort of forgot about for a brief moment, and again, it went to penalties again.
“We saved the first, thought that you know, hopefully this time we'd score them all. And it's just not to be, because penalties are a lottery when you're taking them. But I think for everyone in the club, you know, it was something to be extremely proud of to achieve, to get there, just hopefully when we get there next time we will be on the winning side.”
In football, it’s always important to look to the future. Williams does that in his role as Head of Goalkeeping as he keeps an eye on the youth team goalkeepers.
They are doing very well; Oliver Dovin (a Sweden U21 International), Cian Taylor, Luis Lines, and Elliot Meredith have been called up to the Wales squads at their respective age groups.
It’s a big coup for the Sky Blues as Williams explained: “Yeah, 100%, it's really good, obviously, being a Welshman as well, it's kind of an invested one for me also.
“It's something as a club I think we're all very proud of, especially with the Academy staff, because they do such a fantastic job down that side of things. And again, it's making sure, you know, that our values fall into line all the way down the system.
“Like I said, working as an MDT and collaboratively with the analyst guys, staying on top of everything, making sure our attention to detail on and off the pitch is nailed on and that respect, and making sure they all believe in themselves as well, that they can play for this football club and also the international side of things.”
He concludes: “we hold ourselves to the highest standards and we all drive each other’s standards to the highest levels to get where we need and want to be.”
Coventry travel to Middlesbrough on Saturday, 2nd November, kicking off at 3PM at the Riverside Stadium.
