Within men's elite youth football in England, academies are talent development centres set up and funded by professional clubs with the primary objective of developing players to reach the professional level. However, this transition is a complex and demanding process (Bruner, Munroe-Chandler, & Spink, 2008; Mills, Butt, Maynard, & Harwood, 2012), with low numbers of players graduating into senior football (Brown & Potrác, 2009). The ability to reflect on and learn from performance has been identified as a crucial element associated with successful progression within professional football (Harwood, 2008; Toering, Elferink-Gemser, Jordet, & Visscher, 2009), with youth football often characterised by a balance between 'development' and 'results' (Gilbourne & Richardson, 2006). The desire to maximise learning opportunities within youth football has led to widespread use of videobased performance analysis by coaches, athletes and sport scientists within the football environment (Drust, 2010). Coaches have reported using video for a broad range of purposes, including tactical work, pre-match psychological preparation, team building and as a tool for reflection and debriefing (Pain & Harwood, 2007). Performance Analysis (PA) research has contributed significantly to our current knowledge of identification of movement and performance patterns within competitive football (Hughes & Franks, 2007), and other areas, such as the identification and use of key performance indicators (James, Mellalieu, & Jones, 2005), and the role of motion analysis techniques to gather information relating to work rate data (Carling, Reilly, & Williams, 2008). However, while a great deal of attention has been paid to the role of video as a method to record sports performance data in an 'accurate' and 'reliable' manner (Hughes & Franks 2007; MacKenzie & Cushion, 2012), less attention has been paid to understanding how players are responding psychologically to VFB. The old adage 'the camera never lies' may have led some coaches and practitioners to see video 2 Running head, Perceptions of VFB primarily as an 'objective' source of information, one which is less open to subjective interpretation than alternative methodologies. Recent research suggests that the delivery of VFB may not be as straightforward or as simple as sometimes assumed (Stratton, Reilly, Williams, & Richardson, 2004). A number of recent studies have begun to shed light on the ways in which elite teamsport coaches and athletes interact within applied video practice. Responding to the dominance of (post)positivist research paradigms within existing VFB/PA studies, researchers have adopted qualitative methodologies in an attempt to capture the reality of how video-based performance analysis is delivered 'in situ' within applied practice (e.g.