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‘A huge asset for us’: Wanderers assistant Jed Davies playing key role in player development
August 24, 2023

Patrice Gheisar calls him ‘a triple threat’, and Jed Davies has the titles to back that claim up.

The Wanderers assistant coach, video analyst and head of youth development balances all those acts like an experienced acrobat with bowling pins, knowing full well that each pin is equally important to the spectacle. You will see him on the pitch during training sessions, cutting video clips during matches, and leading the coaching team for the Wanderers development teams.

“Jed goes to sleep thinking about football and wakes up still thinking about football,” Wanderers sporting director Matt Fegan said.

Still only 35, Davies’ has written two books on the sport, worked in both professional and national team setups, and co-founded a coaching education company for coaches worldwide to come together and learn from each other.  

“My first exposure to wanting to be a coach came from having good coaches,” Davies said. “A lot of my coaches were team coaches and wanted the team to be better. And then I met a coach called Tim Lees, who ended up working for Liverpool. He introduced me to other coaches who specialize in making individual players better, so my whole joy and everything I love about coaching is making individuals better for teams.”

Davies’ interest in the tactical side of the game led to his first coaching opportunity. While writing his first book (Coaching the Tiki-Taka Style of Play), Davies interviewed a coach working with Oxford University’s soccer team. This meeting would eventually lead to Davies joining the staff at Oxford in 2013. 

“I actually started writing blogs online about players that were excellent when they were 15,16, one of them being Cherno Samba, who’s famous to people that played the old Football Manager games. So, I started a blog online about that and ran a website where I was sharing coaching information. It had a database that ended up with 20,000 people on that database.”

That networking between coaches led to Davies co-founding Inspire Football Coach Education, a company designed to get coaches to present their knowledge of the game to large groups of their peers. 

“I was basically thinking of people I would pay to be in a room with and actually paying them to present,” Davies said. “We were hiring the best speakers across England and people that work within a national team and then I would also present to the group.”

In the room for one of Davies’ presentations was Magnus Pehrsson, the national team manager for Estonia. Pehrsson would hire Davies to work on his staff in 2015. From there, Davies worked with the Iran National team and at just 27, he began coaching professionally in North America with USL sides Ottawa Fury and Miami FC.

Between all those jobs and eventually joining the Wanderers in 2023, Davies was an influential figure at Ottawa’s Futuro Soccer Academy. As much as the players were learning from Davies, Davies continued to learn, too. 

“We were heavy into football and would bring in coaches from places like PSV Eindhoven and Manchester United, and I would also get to sit down with them or have dinner with them and learn everything they had to know about football,” Davies said. “As a club, Futuro has produced 56 professional players. In 2014, I joined the ’03 group, and I think 12 pro players came out of it.”

Coaching at Futuro would lead to a chance meeting between Davies and Patrice Gheisar. A relationship that led to Gheisar targeting Davies as an assistant coach for Halifax. 

“He had come to a few tournaments I was at with Vaughan, and we would get to talking because we see the game similarly and were both excited about our football journeys,” Gheisar said. “Jed has a deep background in teaching and videos; I always thought when the opportunity came for me to be a professional coach, he would be the perfect guy to have on a staff.” 

 For a Wanderers-specific example of Davies’ influence on individual player development and how it can help the team, Gheisar points to Tiago Coimbra, a young striker in his first professional season with Halifax.  

“Tiago needed time at the beginning, and Jed became like his mentor coach,” Gheisar said. “He did a tremendous job, and Tiago has come along nicely with that support.” 

“Tiago does not look his age physically, but as a first-year pro, you’re not a man amongst children; you’re playing with guys like Dan Nimick and Doneil Henry,” Davies said. “He reminds me of players like Patrick Bamford in some ways and Edison Cavani in others, and we would have conversations about those players. So I made a 25-minute video for him. Which I sent him and made him do some old-school homework on. He would make detailed notes on how Patrick Bamford moved, and I collected clips on how Edison Cavani attacked the box or how Mario Gomez scores goals.”

By his fourth match of the season, Coimbra began a run of four goal contributions over six matches, with only an injury cooling off his mid-season form. 

 “It was really easy to work with someone like Tiago, who’s humble, hardworking, and shares the same values as me: humility, respect and willingness to commit to excellence, and that’s who Tiago is, and it’s why it’s so easy to work with.”

The Wanderers players, too, see the role that Davies plays to complement the rest of the coaching staff. Look up to the press box at Wanderers Grounds, and you’ll see Davies watching the match and cutting clips on his laptop. And especially watch for the halftime whistle, when Davies packs up his gear and runs to the dressing room to await the squad and share his notes.

“Having somebody like Jed and his eye for the game is a huge asset for us,” Wanderers midfielder Mo Omar said. “Whether we need to address our shape, adjust to what the opponent is doing or go over what is working and what isn’t, it’s helpful for our group.” 

Knowing the game at a high level and seeing something you think can be adapted off the screen to the pitch is one thing, but how do you share that information with the players? Anyone asked about Davies lauds his ability to translate what his football brain is seeing and present it to his players.

“It’s something he does an excellent job of and helps the players understand what we want them to do,” sporting director Matt Fegan said. “I sat in on one he did about scanning and scan rates (active head movements players make to take in information off the ball). He had a lot of easily digestible content, with all the components boiled down.”

“It’s great to be able to talk about something, but to be able to paint a picture of it for our guys is even more important,” head coach Patrice Gheisar said. “What he’s done well is being able to paint his pictures with his video support, and then for us to be able to execute that on the field.”

Davies’ ability to teach the game was evident through his influence on the Wanderers Development teams. Just a few weeks ago, the Wanderers U18 team won their division at the Rising Tides Canada Youth Cup in Halifax. With only weeks to prepare, Davies and assistant coaches Lewis Page and Oliver Hewish brought together a group of local players from various clubs, tasked them with emulating the Wanderers way of playing, and took it into games against teams that train together all summer. Wanderers U18 went undefeated in the tournament. 

“What they managed to put on the field with so few sessions was remarkable, and that speaks to the quality of players,” Davies said. 

Wanderers U23, meanwhile, played a competitive three-game series against Holstein Kiel, scoring in every match against the professional side from Germany. The U23’s were made up of locally developed players, AUS athletes and trialists with the Wanderers first-team. 

“They got a lot of video work and had constant exposure to the first team,” Davies said. “What I enjoyed most about that group was working with someone like Luke Berryman (Dalhousie University midfielder) and giving them the same process as a first-team player and seeing they were attentive to it.” 

With the Wanderers right in the thick of the CPL playoff race entering September, Davies’ is as busy as ever, doing his part to prepare the team for each critical match down the stretch. But no matter the stakes, the approach stays the same: give each player the tools to succeed, and it will help make the group better. 

“That’s still how I coach today, and the decision to take a job or not take a job is based on that.”