'This was a tremendous tour as it was the first time many of our young players had experienced life away from home on their own. This year we had a mixed group with players from the U12s, U13s, and U14s squads.

The tour was carefully planned almost "military style" with the number one focus on players development both on and off the field of play, in foreign country. The facilities were first class with a 3 G Astro, and two stadium pitches to utilise. As coaches we plan everything in a structured manner and this aligns itself with the four x key coaching disciplines of Technical + Physical + Psychological + Social.

Key aspects for the players were to really enjoy the experience, engage in all the sessions and have fun, players received talks on diet, nutrition, behaviour, performance, consistency, understanding their strengths and weaknesses and setting out their individual season objectives.

At such an early stage on their potential road to becoming a Professional Footballer the players definitely experienced many good and bad points covering their own personal progress which if they have listened and taken on board and reacted to will be in better shape to develop to that next stage.

Although a short tour the players experienced over 19 hours of activity with two development games, four detailed and structured technical training sessions as well as activities including "Soccer Olympics" incorporating six different disciplines, The Lieven Soccer Golf Challenge, The European mini soccer tournament and in addition we incorporated a Question of Sport team session as well as talking extensively to the players on numerous topics both as a group and individually allowing us to really fully understand the players.

We created a competitive environment by dividing the players in to four teams - Team Bordeaux, Team Lille, Team Nantes, and Team Paris St.German. This was designed to focus the boys. Points were awarded for good positive behaviour on and off the training field, and points were deducted for poor standards and not acceptable behaviour.

This led us to an awards ceremony on the last night which the boys reacted well to. Tours are extremely important although we were only away for four days including travel the time equated to around dix weeks of normal centre of excellence training programme.

We will carefully review all aspects of the tour and this will determine the approach we take to future tours.

Andy Davies & Stephen Gerrard