“Being around the club with Unai, you have to take everything in,” says Conor Hourihane, the experienced midfielder who has just finished his first year coaching at Aston Villa.
“I’ve seen players I shared a dressing room with going to the next level. That’s a testament to the manager and the detail he goes to improving every player.”
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Hourihane, who captained Derby County to League One promotion, returned to Villa last summer after two years away, where he made 132 appearances as a player. This time, he came back as a budding coach, nearing the end of his playing days and mapping out his next steps.
The reunion came about following a webinar event staged at St George’s Park for coaches undertaking their UEFA B and A Licences. Hourihane, 33, ran into a familiar face in Ryan Maye, Villa’s head of coaching and development.
Maye invited Hourihane to Bodymoor Heath, Villa’s training campus, and asked if he wished to shadow the then under-21s manager, Tony Carr, for the day.
“It then snowballed from there,” Hourihane smiles. “They knew how keen I was, so they offered me a role coaching the under-16s on a Thursday night.”
Hourihane was able to watch Unai Emery’s training sessions — among the world’s most eminent coaches from the past decade — first-hand. It was an experience Hourihane, who has completed his B and A Licence, describes as “invaluable”.
“It’s his intensity and his detail,” says the former Republic of Ireland international. “He splits the group up and takes certain individuals away at certain times of the day. He’s big on units and individual work and improving the player first before anything else. It’s been fascinating. It just shows you with unbelievable coaching and work ethic, you can get the best out of players.”
Hourihane is speaking to The Athletic in the week after Derby secured promotion from League One. It marks a third promotion, having captained Barnsley out of the same division in 2016 before reaching the Premier League via the play-offs with Villa three years later, a day he says “was extra special”.
There has, understandably, been an extra spring in Hourihane’s stride. Leading Derby’s promotion felt especially poignant given the end of playing days are in sight and, more broadly, the existential crises the club has endured in recent years.
GO DEEPERDerby County: Back in the Championship - thanks to an accidental manager and reluctant owner“This one has hit home because I’m getting older, so you cherish promotions that little bit more,” he says. “We had a couple of days after Saturday when family and friends joined in celebrating. We had a team day on Sunday, reminiscing on the season and having a few drinks.It was just an emotional few days. There’s been a lot of dark days, but the club has steadily rebuilt and is in a completely different place to when I signed two years ago.”
Hourihane has played a leading role in Derby’s recovery (Malcolm Couzens/Getty Images)
Hourihane is packing and preparing for Derby’s trip to Vegas, where 16 of the squad — along with players from Portsmouth and Wrexham who were scheduled to be there at the same time — headed to continue the celebrations.
The next two months will present a window into Hourihane’s present and future. His time at Derby came to an end after our interview and this will be the longest break away from football he has been afforded, yet will serve as a period where the end of one career will overlap the start of another.
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Dovetailing playing with coaching over the next year, he hopes to ease the transition to his first full-time management role. This summer, Hourihane has enrolled on a manager’s diploma course under the League Managers’ Association, starting in mid-June.
“There are only 20 people every summer that go on it, between having your A Licence and your Pro Licence. It is at Liverpool University for five days and then another five Wednesdays throughout next season, with all of them at St George’s Park.”
It is rare to hear a player so open in discussing life beyond football, but for Hourihane, it is demonstrative of coaching being the direction of travel for some time.
“I used to be scared of retiring,” he says. “I’m not anymore now; I’ve got a huge passion towards the other side of the game. I’m very lucky because I’ve come across many players in dressing rooms where they’ve struggled at the end of their career and they’re just carrying on for the sake of it as they’ve got nothing else to fall back on.”
Hourihane kept session plans from former managers and coaches over several years, routinely coming home from training and making notes. He would detail the design and delivery of practices, affirm the key coaching principles and even read articles when his managers would speak publicly, recognising how best for a coach to convey their messages effectively.
“Back then, there was no format to it,” Hourihane says. “It was just in a notebook. But the more I’ve become obsessed with coaching, I’ve transferred everything onto my laptop. I’ve got sessions, notes and presentations. For example, I have information on set plays and how I see my team with or without the ball, explaining how I will press in a particular formation.
“I use a software called Sportscode, where I get games off one of our (Derby) analysts. I will clip up patterns of play that I like so I don’t forget them. I’ve watched a lot of Arsenal’s set plays this year because they’ve been great. It’s just a constant clipping portfolio of all aspects of the game. I’ve built up a big bible.”
Hourihane remains a popular figure at Villa (Paul Harding/Getty Images)
With Villa’s academy, Hourihane followed a template in his sessions, based on coaching principles that were led by those above him. Though on Wednesday mornings, working at Future Pro Academy in the Midlands, he had greater autonomy in creating his sessions.
“I did my B and A Licence assessments with Future Pro,” he says. “I trial and error my sessions and come home to debrief — what I liked, what I didn’t, assess the area size, the effectiveness, etc. For instance, I might be trialling a session on opening a player’s shoulders when they’re receiving the ball. It may be playing through a line or it may be scanning. I’m then creating sessions based on that, as well as scouring the internet, seeing what other coaches do.”
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Despite the 33-year-old being at a nascent stage in his coaching career, he has built up experience. He counts Steve Cooper, his former manager at Swansea City, as a close confidante and a sounding board, regularly speaking over the phone and offering advice. Cooper’s successor at Swansea and Southampton manager Russell Martin has been similarly willing to share his knowledge and invited Hourihane to the club’s training ground this season.
“I’ve been to see Russell a couple of times and got to know him,” he says. “I’ve seen Rob Edwards and that’s been through my agent setting up meetings with coaches and also sporting directors. I ask them, ‘Why do you appoint certain managers? What characteristics do you want to see?’. I want to know how that process works. I’m picking people’s brains, being a sponge and moulding myself as a coach.”
Last year, before joining Villa’s academy, Hourihane coached Stourbridge FC in the Southern League Premier Division Central twice a week. He knew their assistant, Scott Adey-Linforth, who, incidentally, is now a first-team analyst at Villa.
“The lads are much more harsh on your sessions at times,” he laughs. “That’s fine because you have to be thick-skinned and take it on the chin.”
After securing a third promotion, the next step lies in coaching and Hourihane, through his time working at Villa, feels well set to take that step.
(Top photo: Naomi Baker/Getty Images)
Jacob is a football reporter covering Aston Villa for The Athletic. Previously, he followed Southampton FC for The Athletic after spending three years writing about south coast football, working as a sports journalist for Reach PLC. In 2021, he was awarded the Football Writers' Association Student Football Writer of the Year. Follow Jacob on Twitter @J_Tanswell
