Dr Alan McKay

Dr Alan McKay is a Research Associate in Professional Football Psychology at Loughborough University, supporting Arsenal Football Club’s development of a performance psychology framework to aid football players’ psychosocial development into professional football athletes. Working alongside Professor David Fletcher, the goal of this project is to integrate the best available research evidence with service expertise in professional football to develop a framework that will enable players to apply their mental skills, strategies, and technical ability every time they perform, and obtain a ‘champion mentality.’

Alan possesses a wealth of both research and applied experience in creating and delivering performance psychology frameworks within professional football settings, having completed a PhD at the University of South Wales in conjunction with the Football Association of Wales (FAW) in 2023 entitled, “Developing a framework of mental toughness in youth football: Exploring mentally tough behaviours and personality to aid talent development.” The purpose of this research was to assist coaches in learning how to identify and develop their players’ mentally tough behaviours, allowing those players to perform more consistently under pressure. This framework is now being utilised across the FAW organisation to aid the psychosocial development of players within an international football setting.

Alan’s main research interest lies in applied sport psychology, mental toughness, managing transitions, and effective coach education and development. Specifically, Alan is passionate about creating and delivering performance psychology frameworks that integrate the development of key psychological skills (e.g., mental toughness, resilience) and observable behaviours within the training and performance context alongside technical, tactical, and physical pillars of performance to create ‘psychologically informed environments’.  

Previously, Alan worked for three years as a Senior Research Assistant at the Football Association of Wales (FAW) Centre for Football Research. Within this role, Alan worked alongside the Welsh Institute of Performance Sciences (WIPS) research steering group and industry partners to produce world-leading applied performance science projects to enhance the performance of Welsh athletes and organisations.

Alan has also been the benefactor of several prestigious research grants, including the Knowledge Economic and Skills Scholarship for his PhD research exploring mental toughness development in international youth football, and the UEFA Research Grant for his work exploring the process of effective coach education across European football. He has published his research in leading international sport psychology journals, including the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, Frontiers in Psychology, and the Journal of Sport Science and Coaching. He has also disseminated his internationally recognised research at both national and international academic conferences.

Alan was a recent guest on ‘The Sport Psych Show’, an internationally renowned sport psychology podcast. Listen to the podcast to find out more about Alan’s research.

Alan is a HCPC-registered Sport and Exercise Psychologist with over eight years’ applied practice experience, delivering both 1-1 and team support to high-performing athletes and coaches across a wide range of sports including, football, rugby, triathlon, cycling, swimming, rowing, BMX, and taekwondo, as well as athletes competing at both the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

• Ashdown, B., Mulvenna, C., Partington, M., McKay, A., Oxenham, P., Cook, J., & Sarker, M. (2026). The Evolving Role of Performance Analysis in Football: Integrating the Observation of Psychological Behaviours. International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching.
• McKay, A., Shearer, D., Hanton, S., & Cropley, B. (2025). “What can you see? What can you hear?” The implementation of a behaviour-based mental toughness framework within international youth football. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 1-25 (In Print).
• McKay, A., Cropley, B., Shearer, D., & Hanton, S. (2024). Developing a ‘clarity of mind’: exploring a behaviour-based approach to mental toughness development in international youth football. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 36(4), 543-567.
• McKay, A., Cropley, B., Mullen, R., Shearer, D., & Hanton, S. (2022). Psychosocial demands and situational properties of the club-to-international transition in male youth football. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 34(6), 1272-1294.
• Smothers, N., Cropley, B., Hanton, S., McKay, A., & Williams, T. (2022). (Re) conceptualising effective teaching in further education: an exploratory study. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 46(5), 620-635.
• Cropley, B., Baldock, L., Hanton, S., Gucciardi, D. F., McKay, A., Neil, R., & Williams, T. (2020). A multi-study exploration of factors that optimize hardiness in sport coaches and the role of reflective practice in facilitating hardy attitudes. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 1823.