Shaymen's assistant manager Cooper relishing the challenge of life at Town

Less than two months into life at FC Halifax Town, assistant manager Cooper and his new boss Chris Millington were feeling the heat as The Shaymen sat rock bottom of the National League following a 4-0 home defeat to Woking.

It was a far cry from the optimism and excitement at the club before the season began, and in stark contrast to the improvement in form since then that has lifted Town to mid-table security.

"The processes we had remained the same throughout," Cooper says.

"We reflected on the games - I'll review the first-half in-depth and Joe Sargison (first-team coach) will do the second-half - and feedback to Milly, highlighting key areas that have gone well and that we need to develop.

"Clearly we had a lot of areas we needed to work on, but we didn't change the long-term picture of what we were looking to do and how we were trying to play.

"Of course, personnel were coming in and adapting to the club, but it was more late-night phone calls, more long chats, but we dug in, we grafted, we stuck together as a staff and we were really, really desperate to keep going and get through it.

"We believed in what we were doing and I feel if we'd made massive, drastic, wholesale changes we'd have lost the impetus of what we were trying to do on the pitch, which was ultimately to be a possession-based team that can play but we also develop players as well.

"The club have done that over the last few years, we've developed young players, and once we got our ideas across on the training ground, you can see a lot of the young players or new players have been able to take them on board, which has improved us a lot.

"What was happening in the early stages was tough to manage through, but actually probably made us stronger as a staff, my relationships with the staff definitely formed much quicker in adversity because we were working for each other and desperately trying to get things right without making a massive u-turn in what we were doing.

"When things don't go well, and the goals were leaking in, we needed to address it quickly and put it right, which we did, and credit to everyone who bunkered down in those difficult moments to really get us going."

To the relief of all concerned, Town turned a corner after the low-point of Woking, winning the next game against York and embarking on a much-improved run of results that lifted them away from the clutches of the relegation zone.

"I think it's been more how we want to set-up out of possession when we don't have the ball, we've been really solid in that way, really good shape and structure," Cooper reflects.

"Performances and results have picked up, which is always what we're after.

"We still think there's more to come in the final third in terms of the quality of delivery and finishing, that's an area we're still working on.

"But there's definitely been more of an identity that I associated with the club when I did my research about coming in, about how the team play.

"At the beginning of the season, without making excuses, we were integrating a new team and a new management team, but in the cut and thrust of the National League, it can be difficult to review your processes and the overall cycle of a season.

"But we're definitely in a much better place in terms of what we're doing every day in training and what we're doing on a matchday.

"That's been really pleasing and I think anyone who's been coming to watch us will have seen an improvement in the style of play, and regardless of system or shape, the principles of what we're trying to do seem to be largely remaining the same, which is what we're after."

And Cooper, speaking before Town's home game with Chesterfield, sees no reason why The Shaymen can't be looking up the table rather than over their shoulders as the new year approaches.

"We've almost played everyone in the league now and there's nobody I look at and really fear in terms of their style of play," he says.

"Clearly the top two or three teams in the division have got huge resources, deep squads and real quality off the bench.

"But I don't think anyone above us to those top two or three, there's anyone who really blows us away in terms of style of football or anything we need to be concerned about going into the second-half of the season.

"I think we're on a real upward curve in terms of getting these young lads and our more experienced players together, we've got players coming back from injury which helps.

"We're getting players offered to us in terms of transfers but it's only people who will make the starting team better who we'll bring in, so we'll continue to work with the players we have.

"But there's nobody between us and the top of the table we really fear.

"We saw it at Solihull, how we can tactically work against some of the top teams and top coaches, and I think that's what we've got to be striving for.

"Clearly we're lacking that end product in the final third, which is something we're continuing to work on, but it's about getting the ball more consistently in the right areas as well and with more quality, giving our front players more opportunities.

"Set-pieces and corners as well are areas we want to improve the threat we have.

"I think we're on a really upward curve. We need to make sure we're consistently solid at the back in terms of the whole tea out of possession, but I do feel we've got good momentum to kick on around Christmas and going into the second-half of the season.

"I don't think there's anyone we should be fearing, we should be clawing our way back up and having a real excitement to play these top teams."

Cooper feels there is a greater togetherness among the Town squad and bonds have been built between the players.

"There's a great work ethic on the training ground, which isn't just running around and being physically exhausted, but taking in the messages, questioning and feedback from players, the work we're doing with analysis to prepare for games," he says.

"I think a lot of it now has hit home and sunk in with the players, and recent results have shown that.

"We're massively improving, the players' understanding of what the demands are on them and their expectations from us as staff is increasing, and we're getting the fruits of that.

"But I do think we've got so much more to come, the squad we have, there's massive growth in them.

"We've seen the emergence of a lot of players who are having their first real taste of men's football and they're getting into the rhythm of what it takes to succeed.

"Not everything has gone for us and we've had really difficult moments, but I think that's made us stronger and you can see there's a lot more to come for the second-half of the season."

Cooper is reluctant to pin his ambitions for the rest of the season onto any particular league position, but insists there is no team in the league The Shaymen can't go toe-to-toe with.

"I have no fears or worries in saying we can be competitive in every game," he says.

"We want to be getting right up there and getting up to a play-off position, and fighting for as high a position as we can.

"It's such a brutal, relentless league that we don't look too far ahead, it has to be small cycles of games and making sure we do all our processes right game-by-game.

"The short-term target is making sure we stay competitive, stay hungry and stay focused for each game, but knowing the result of that is hopefully is us climbing the table.

"I don't see any reason why we shouldn't have the play-offs as a target."

Cooper has been instrumental in the use of live GPS data in training and games, which is used to inform much of their work away from, and building up to, matchdays.

"That provides us with live data on a large amount of components of physical fitness, such as total distance covered, high speed running in different zones, highest speed run," he explained.

"That helps us with planning the training week in terms of what we need to hit to make sure we're as fresh as possible going into a game.

"And off the back of that, it shapes the recovery going into the next week.

"The skill of the coach isn't really for the information to tell us what to do, it's for us to get the information off our sports science team and then use it to help us plan training, not for them to tell us what we need to be doing in training.

"So that might be changing the dimensions of the training pitch for certain aspects of training, the length of time you're training for and a key one is the gap from players being injured to coming back into full training, so the physio can gradually step them back into training knowing what output each drill or exercise gives.

"So if someone's coming back from an injury, if they do the warm-up and the possession bits at the start, he might then only take part in one bit of the 11 v 11 session, because that will get him up to what he needs on that particular day."

Cooper has also trumpeted a greater focus on individual and small group work with the Town players.

"There'll be tactical and technical days of training where we break into small groups and it might be defenders, midfielders and attackers, and we take a small group each, or we work on players that link together in units, so wingers and full-backs, to defend or attack crosses," he says.

"We had individual chats with every player in pre-season, which formed an individual learning plan, so everyone has areas we are looking to develop.

"We feel they have an impact and you get buy-in from the players because you're not just working as a whole squad, you're focusing on units and individual needs.

"It's not just weaknesses either, it's important to keep working on strengths, so if a player is particularly good at something, it doesn't mean we just leave it alone, we try to develop that as well."

Cooper has previously worked on Qatar, India and Australia, but is enjoying being part of the backroom team at The Shay.

"I'm absolutely loving it," he says, "I'm loving the opportunity of working day in, day out with the players, I love getting on the grass, I love being able to try and help the players.

"It is relentless in terms of the demands it has, but I'm a young coach, a young assistant manager who wants to progress in the game and I'm in a brilliant environment for that, surrounded by like-minded people who challenge, who've been through difficult moments together but who've got stronger through it.

"The league is tough and challenging in different ways but I do really enjoy working with Milly and the staff and the club, it's been great.

"It surprises you, the level of some of the players and the quality some people have.

"I've learnt a lot about myself in terms of reviewing games, preparing games, working individually with players, all the additional stuff away from the games you have to deal with.

"But I'm enjoying the challenge and long may it continue.

"I can't believe it's only December! It's brutal in that sense but it's an industry I absolutely love and it's very rewarding when things go well, as they have done recently, for all the hard work.

"But you know you're only a game away from potential crisis in people's eyes.

"We just try to keep on track, we've got a really challenging environment and Milly's not closed off in his ideas, so Paul Oakes, Joe and I can always bring ideas to him, we have good discussions and we're in constant contact.

"But I really enjoy and embrace the challenge of getting the high turnover of players in place, getting myself embedded into a new management team.

"It's been great. It's been hard work but everything in football is that's worth anything.

"My journey so far has been about hard work and graft, but I'm very much enjoying it."

Cooper reckons the morning of our interview is the first decent bit of time off he's had since starting the job.

But even then, he's spoken to Millington on the phone at 9am.

"We're in at quarter to eight in a morning, tidying up the review process of the previous day's training," he says.

"We then get organised for that day's training, so who's in, what stage is everybody at and what do people need, and then we have a meeting to plan the session and map out what we're going to and allocate who's responsible for what.

"Off the back of that we go out and set-up, we'll double-check how the players are when they arrive, the players go through their pre-hab and their gym work and we train.

"Following training we do a hot review, looking at practice design and what we've just done that day, which will normally be on Monday.

"The players will head off but we'll still be working either at the training ground or at home on the laptops.

"It's a non-stop job, so you might be out watching a game, having phone calls, we have close links to the academy so it might be stuff to do with that.

"You don't have to be at the training ground or The Shay to be on duty.

"You might be watching games back.

"Tuesday, it's same again in terms of training, but then we'll start to look at opposition, a broad view of what's coming over the hill at the end of the week.

"There's no training for the players on Wednesday but that's our opposition analysis day, so Dylan (Mistry) and myself will have watched the opposition and he will present his findings to us.

"It's a massive document, including things like goal trends, how they play against our kind of game model.

"The meeting lasts around 40 minutes and from that will spill out things that will shape Thursday and Friday's training.

"Thursday and Friday are the nuts and bolts for the weekend's planning.

"Game on Saturday and then Sunday we review the game, we'll watch the full game but analyse a half each and compile a document we present to Milly on a Sunday night, which will box off the week's work and lead us into Monday again.

"So it's non-stop, it's constant, but it's what we love."

The work on the training ground is only part of a wider picture of work during the week for Town's assistant.

"It's dynamic, it changes, you have ideas, you see something, it might be going onto Wyscout to watch clips of a potential signing or it might be preparing player clips for our players," Cooper says.

"We prepare clips for some of our players. Some will want to know who the full-back is they're up against, who their winger is or who their centre-back is, so me and Dylan will go through clips of opposition players, areas of potential threat but also areas we can exploit, clip together a two-minute video we can share with the players and they can watch it in their own time.

"So there's loads of cogs to the wheel that go beyond the training ground at 7.45am and leaving at 2pm, there's all the stuff we do outside of that to support the players.

"It might be a phone call to someone coming back from injury, seeing how they're getting on.

"The demands are always there, but it's the demands you place on yourself in terms of wanting to be an elite coach and wanting push ourselves and the players as much as we can.

"You never really switch off in terms of what you want to and getting ideas across, it's a constant evolution.

"We've got a couple of interns who work in the analysis team so you're training them up to speed on how we play and what we're looking for.

"There's a long process to it, and when you get games postponed there's real frustration there over all the preparation that's gone to waste.

"It's a lifestyle. I don't see coaching as a nine to five job, you're on all the time, that's what you commit to."