PDP Performance Analyst

The Role

As Professional Development Phase Performance Analyst, you’ll be at the heart of Manchester City’s Academy, supporting the development of our most promising young players as they transition towards first team football. This exciting role has become available following an internal promotion, reflecting the strength of our internal pathway and the opportunity to grow within a world-leading performance environment. You’ll bring a wealth of experience in performance analysis within elite academy environments, with a genuine passion for long-term player development. Your deep understanding of football tactics, combined with advanced analytical skills, will allow you to identify key trends, track progress, and inform impactful interventions across the professional development phase. You’re someone who thrives in collaborative environments, enjoys working closely with coaches and players, and can translate complex data into clear, actionable insights that enhance individual learning and performance. This is an opportunity to play a central role in shaping the journeys of future first team players, using your expertise to influence how young talent is nurtured, challenged, and supported at every stage.

This is Your City

As part of our team, you will be entitled to a generous annual leave entitlement, plus an additional day off for your birthday, private healthcare and a simply health cash plan, an annual discretionary bonus, plus a range of partnership and lifestyle discounts.

Your Impact

• To work in line with, and deliver against, the Performance Analysis and Insights Strategy and manage the day-to-day, quarterly and seasonal tracking and reporting of player development.
• Responsible for developing and managing informative and insightful data and video reports to support team learning and shape player development plans.
• To work closely with the interdisciplinary team to effectively capture and report on player performance and to support data driven methodologies for player profiling and transitions.
• Maintain individual player dashboards, ILP action trackers and deliver regular player progress reports to the wider team: Academy Management Team, First team and Loan teams when relevant.
• Deliver statistical insights relating to technical and tactical markers to support player ILPs, underpin player reviews and drive analysis interventions.
• Engage and support players and coaches to continue to develop their data literacy and ability to adopt data insights to inform practice and decision making.
• Support on the development and management of best practice libraries for personalised individual player analysis support.
• Lead on the long-term capture of player development at Man City and ensure learnings are shared in relation to player exposure and performance benchmarks.
• Work collaboratively with CFG’s Football Intelligence team to capture, manage and ensure the provision of performance data within the Academy.
• Work collaboratively with the Academy analysis team to drive and support on strategic projects and undertake any other tasks as outlined by your line manager.

What we are looking for

• Essential
• Undergraduate degree in Performance Analysis, Sports Science, Data Science or equivalent.
• Considerable experience delivering analysis support within youth/professional football.
• Experience of working with, driving and communicating actionable insights from football data.
• Experience of deriving insights from large data sets and demonstrating abilities to deliver insights in engaging and innovative ways.
• Excellent understanding of football tactics.
• Desire to specialise in player development and will work to detail.
• Strong team player and a good role model for the players.
• Proactive and driven to succeed.
• Analytical thinker with a solution focussed approach.
• Ability to work in an agile manner, to be curious and creative to ensure performance questions are understood and addressed.
• Clear understanding of the Elite Player Performance (EPPP).
• Desirable
• Post-graduate degree in Performance Analysis, Sports Science, Data Science, or equivalent.
• Experience with third party performance data (Statsbomb, Opta, Second Spectrum etc.).
• Experience creating visually appealing dashboards and reports with clear, concise insights.
• Well versed in industry-standard technologies – used for capturing, interpreting and reporting on group and individual data.
• Appreciation of psychological profiling and learning styles.
• Expertise in scoping, building and maintaining dynamic dashboards (e.g in Tableau, Power Bi etc., Excel etc.).