Andy Barr lifts the lid on life with the New York Knicks and tells us what the Premier League can learn.
Ian Watson meets New York Knicks performance specialist Andy Barr
New York Knicks performance specialist Andy Barr reveals how dealing with the packed schedule of the NBA and it's highly-paid superstars contrasts with working in the political environment of the Premier League.
Ian Watson puts the questions to the former Bolton, Southampton and Manchester City man.
Did the Knicks look to English football to bolster their sports science and medical department because the Premier League is seen around the world as a good example of how sports science can be successfully applied?
No, it's quite insular over here. Most people have no idea what is going on in the Premier League really.
I'm not sure that there are many teams inside the NBA that are looking outside of the USA for new ideas in terms of sports science. Because the US is so vast, they have their own system; it's very different to what we do in Europe.
The USA is basically the size of Europe, and there you have a lot of different influences from different countries and cultures. That doesn't happen so much over here because the USA is so vast.
In terms of the individual player, how do you compare the experience of working with an NBA star to that of dealing with a Premier League footballer?
From the start, you're dealing with a more responsible athlete.
Because of the American culture, you're working with an athlete coming into the professional game at an older age and it makes a big difference.
Most go to university for at least one or two years, so you're getting them at 20 or 21. We have a player at the Knicks that we picked in the draft at the age of 23 and he had just been to university to do his Masters.
They have a bit more experience outside of professional sport, and they haven't earned millions of dollars before the age of 19. Whereas in the Premier League, you get 16-year-olds coming into that environment, they think they've made it straight away and they lose sight and respect for certain things.
The American athletes seem to be a little more mature. These guys are really good at looking after themselves and they are happy to come in and do a lot of the injury prevention work. They appreciate that it's all part of keeping them on the court and they love it.
I found sometimes that working with some footballers, they think 'why am I doing all this crap? I just want to play'.
It was nice to come to the USA and work with these guys because they want to buy into it and a lot of the stuff we were bringing over from football was really well received.
When a manager is replaced in the Premier League - unlike the NBA - it seems to be a case of 'one out, all out'. What kind of effect can that approach have on the long-term development of a football club?
Obviously as a manager you want to be able to do what you want to do. But from a club philosophy, in my opinion, the sports science and medical team should be a separate and self-sufficient entity.
That's what I like about working in the USA; there is much less of a hierarchical structure. I work in a sports science and medical department that works alongside the coaching department within the organisation. It's a completely different structure.
Over here, the medical departments can withstand changes in the organisation, whereas often in football, when one major change occurs in the coaching department, everyone gets affected.
Because it's so high-pressure in football,
