Tom's wisdom in new book

Tom King a Sport and Performance Psychologist lecturer at Wrexham Glyndŵr University previously worked with youngsters at Leicester City FC.

He has co-written a chapter for the newly-published book, Football Psychology – From Theory to Practice.

Tom, from St Martins near Oswestry, drew on his work with youngsters from the under nines though to the under 23 squad for his chapter on psychosocial behaviours in academy players, which tells how the performance psychology team restructured the psychology system at the club.

“The problem in professional football with sports psychology is a lot of people don’t understand what it is, everybody gets a little confused and there’s kind of a mixed message in terms of what we try to do as psychologists,” he said.

“What we aimed to do is create a cohesive programme that everybody can understand and get on board with so we can improve the psychological development of our players.”

Tom spent around three years full-time with the former English Premier League champions and also worked with coaching staff and young players parents.

The latter stages of his time at the club involved working with the under 23 side, with two of the players who are regulars in the first team set-up.

“As you can imagine the work changed from workshops to much more one-to-one, hands-on support, travelling with the players and coaches and assisting the coaches in psychological development,” he said.

Tom has been at Glyndŵr for a year and is relishing the opportunity to lend his applied knowledge to academic programmes.

He said: “I suppose the biggest thing that I’ve learnt in the last year is that students really benefit from knowledge in the applied environment – it contextualises it for them."