Ten Hag brings Ajax analyst Keij to Manchester United
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Keij worked with Ten Hag at Ajax last season
Written by Training Ground Guru — July 31, 2022
ERIK TEN HAG has brought in Kevin Keij from Ajax to become Manchester United's new first-team performance analyst.
Keij has worked for the Dutch side for the last three-and-a-half years. He started out as a video analyst for their Under-23s and was promoted to the first team under Ten Hag in June 2021. Prior to this he worked with Holland's U15s and U17s for the KNVB.
Writing on LinkedIn, Keij said: “It will be a bit different: driving on the left, paying with pounds and of course speaking English. After 3.5 years at Ajax I made the switch to Manchester United. A great challenge in the biggest football league in the world.
“I want to thank everyone within Ajax for a very nice time; on to (new) success in Manchester!”
Paul Brand is United’s Head of First-Team Analysis, while Andrew Meredith is their Analysis Operations Manager.
Previous boss Ralf Rangnick brought Ewan Sharp to the club as a coach-analyst, but he is now Assistant Head Coach at Leeds United. Rangnick also leaned heavily on former colleague Lars Kornetka, even though he was still working for Lokomotiv Moscow.
Performance analysts analyse team performance (from matches and also often training) using mainly video and also data. They can be involved with opposition analysis pre-match too.
Joe Carnall gave this in-depth insight into the work of performance analysts (the titles can vary from club to club) in a previous piece with TGG.
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