Alongside grassroots coaching, I’ve run 1-2-1 sessions with a number of professional and semi-professional players, several of them through my time at Arbroath FC. I don’t lead with this often, because grassroots and the professional game are genuinely different environments. But the feedback from those players is real, and some of it has shaped how I design every session I run now, whatever age group I’m coaching.
What They Actually Said
Marcel, who has played for Birmingham City and Solihull Moors, put it plainly: “Kevin’s sessions are high intensity. The sessions are good, very technical. This is all a player can ask for when they are looking to improve their game.”
Michael, who trained with me during his time at Arbroath, said something almost identical about a specific type of session: “The precision striker drills were challenging, but match realistic. This is all a player can ask for when they are looking to improve their game. The sessions are good, very technical, and high intensity.”
Two different players, on different occasions, landing on the same three things without being prompted: intensity, technical depth, and match realism.
Jay, who moved on from Arbroath to Salford City, was specific about the effect rather than just the delivery: “They were position specific, which allowed you to improve on areas you needed to and were always of high quality and intensity. Since Kev joined Arbroath I’ve seen an increase in my confidence on game days, playing out the back, decision making and positioning.”
The Three Things That Come Up Every Time
Strip the individual comments back and three themes repeat.
Intensity with a purpose. Not running for the sake of running. Yasin, who came through Newcastle United’s system, described it as attention to detail “in every session,” paired with enough enthusiasm to bring out the best in the individual rather than just running them into the ground.
Technical depth over generic drills. Michael’s precision striker work is the clearest example. It wasn’t cones and generic finishing. It was specific, repeatable, and demanding.
Position specific, not one-size-fits-all. Jay’s comment about decision-making and positioning improving because the sessions targeted his actual role, not a generic template, is the one I think about most when I’m planning for a group rather than an individual.
What This Actually Means At Grassroots
You are not running a U11 session at the intensity of a 1-2-1 with a professional full-back. That would be the wrong lesson to take from this.
The principle that does transfer is smaller and more boring than it sounds: audit how many touches your players are actually getting. Six players queued in a line for one ball is not a technical session, whatever the cone pattern looks like. Split it into pairs or threes with more balls and the same twelve minutes produces far more repetitions, more decisions, and more of the intensity the players above are describing.
The other transferable piece is specificity. A generic passing drill develops a generic passer. A drill built around what your actual team needs, whether that’s playing out from the back under pressure or receiving on the half-turn, develops something your players will use on Saturday. Bobby, who I coached alongside at Arbroath before he moved into coaching himself, has said the thing that stuck with him wasn’t a specific drill, it was how approachable the sessions were and how willing I was to share what I knew with anyone who asked. That’s as much a design choice as a personality trait: sessions built to teach, not just to run.
If you want to see how that thinking scales down into full session plans for grassroots ages, that’s what the 328 Training Sessions and the Football Coaching Academy are built around, taking the same principles professional players describe above and applying them at whatever level you actually coach.