When Scott Allison joined Dundee United as Academy Director in October 2024, one of his first priorities was a full audit of the academy's coaching, medical, and performance operations. What he found was a programme doing a lot of things well, but leaving something significant on the table when it came to data.
"We felt that the professional teams in terms of our full-time players were using GPS tracking and data to good effect," Allison explains, "but we wanted to do something that would work for us at the younger age groups."
That gap between the first team and the academy is one the sport has been slow to close. Senior players at professional clubs have had access to GPS performance tracking for years. Academy players, the ones arguably most in need of insights as through their high development years with rapidly changing bodies, have often gone without. For Allison, he wanted to raise the standard of the academy's performance infrastructure to match the ambition of the players and staff coming through it.
The Right Fit
After reaching out to several providers, Dundee United chose PlayerData. The decision came down to two things: ease of use and the quality of support.
"It was a very easy product to use for our staff," Allison says. "We wanted to bring something in that our coaches could use, and our players could use, not just sports science professionals." That distinction matters more than it might sound. Performance technology in elite football has historically been the domain of specialists. Coaches work around it rather than with it. PlayerData flipped that dynamic at Dundee United's academy.
The proof is in how the coaching staff actually uses it.
At games, coaches take the system themselves, no performance staff required to set it up. On the training pitch, coaches pull up live data on an iPad or phone and adapt sessions in real time based on what the numbers are telling them.
"The live feed for coaches either having the app on an iPad or on the phone allows them to track live what's happening within their training sessions," Allison says. "And for me that's really important for us as an academy."
Managing the Loads That Matter
The primary use case at Dundee United's academy centres on load management for their under-16 and under-17 groups, a particularly complex challenge given the movement of players between age groups, international duty, and development squads.
"If a player's making an appearance for an under-17 squad and he's training with the under-19 squad next week, the training loads need to be managed appropriately," Allison explains. PlayerData gives his staff the benchmarking data to make those calls with confidence rather than instinct alone.
The academy has also used the platform to set physical output targets within football training sessions and hold themselves accountable to them. If a possession exercise isn't generating the metrics it should, coaches can see it immediately and adjust. If players are being pushed too hard on the wrong day in a periodised programme, that's visible too.
"We want to raise the intensity of certain exercises," Allison says. "But equally we want the coaches to manage the training loads so that they're not pushing the boys too much on certain days."
Data Informed, Not Data Led
What comes through clearly in speaking with Allison is a philosophy that will resonate with any coach who's ever been suspicious of technology for technology's sake. Dundee United aren't using PlayerData to replace coaching judgement, they're using it to sharpen it.
"It wasn't just about being data led," Allison is clear. "It was about being data informed."
That's a meaningful distinction in youth development, where the relationship between a coach and a young player is the foundation everything else is built on. The numbers don't replace that. They support it, giving coaches the clarity to have better conversations, make better decisions, and manage young athletes through one of the most physically demanding transitions in the sport.
For Scott Allison and Dundee United's academy, that's exactly what PlayerData delivers.
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