Ten games feels like enough time to stop introducing myself and actually start talking about the football.

The results have reflected that. We’ve absolutely dismantled NY Cosmos and Hearts of Pine – then top fo the league, winning both games 5-0, although one scoreline flattered us. Those matches looked like the football I’d been imagining since taking the job. Then there have been afternoons like Boise, where we somehow finished with the better expected goals despite feeling second-best for most of the afternoon. Greenville never allowed us to establish any rhythm at all, Charlotte were deserved winners, and I still think Madison might have been the strangest game I’ve coached. We won 4-2 and I drove home wondering how we’d managed it. Football has a habit of making fools of anyone who thinks they understand it completely.

Still, we’re climbing. We’re up to fifteenth now. There’s a little breathing room between ourselves and Cosmos, and enough teams packed into mid-table that a couple of good weekends completely changes the picture. I’m trying very hard not to spend too much time looking at the league table because it’s still early in this project. Progress, for me, isn’t just measured in points. It’s measured in whether the football looks more recognisable than it did a month ago.

Goals had been a real issue before I arrived, so I’m pleased with where we’re heading there too. Real Gill has five now. David Kavanagh-Merricks has four. Eli Conway has four. Every one of those goals has come since I took over, which suggests we’re creating far better situations than we were before. Stavros Zarokostas deserves mentioning too. He wanted to leave when I first met him. Now he’s become our main creative outlet, producing five assists from just 3.36 expected assists. The numbers actually suggest he should have even more. Sometimes players don’t need rebuilding; they just need putting somewhere they can recognise themselves again.

The tactical side has probably been the most enjoyable part of the job because the constraints have forced me to think differently. The club wants a 4-2-4. Fine. We can work with that. All of our wide players are natural wingers, which gives us width but leaves the half-spaces empty far too often, so I’ve tried solving that without changing anybody’s official position. Additionally, three of our better players appear to be central midfielders and I cannot fit them all in to the base shape. I’ve tried out numerous striker combinations – with most being quite static or me using wingers to create a false forward but Eli Conway has become really important because he’s naturally the most comfortable dropping underneath the other striker. Steven Cordova has been encouraged to leave the double pivot and arrive through the inside channels instead of simply sitting beside his midfield partner. Once he vacates that space, either John Murphy or Mikkel Gøling naturally steps inside from right-back because the staff view both of them as inverted full-backs if I had the desire to play them outside of their natural positions. Donovan Williams then stays much more conservative on the opposite side, giving us balance. On paper it’s still a 4-2-4. In possession it usually looks much closer to a 3-3-4.

I’m not obsessed with shapes for the sake of it. If somebody tells me they’re watching us play a 3-3-4, that’s fine. If somebody else calls it a 3-2-5, that’s fine too.
 
What I’m actually trying to create is options. I want the player on the ball to have three passes instead of one. I want triangles appearing naturally all over the pitch. When people talk about positional play, they often make it sound complicated. Most of the time it isn’t. It’s just making sure every player can see enough solutions before the pressure arrives. I want my midfielders to get on the ball and influence play and, so far, they have been able to do that:

Out of possession has been much harder because I don’t think we currently have one pressing identity that suits every opponent. Some weeks I’m picking players because I trust them to recognise pressing triggers. Other weeks I’m picking them because I know they’ll stay compact for ninety minutes without becoming impatient. We’ve started using our wingers differently depending on the opponent, asking them to track full-backs or even wide midfielders just to change where the game begins. Against one side I had Eli Conway marking their right-back rather than a centre-back because their entire build-up revolved around finding him. It looked strange if you only glanced at the team sheet, but it removed the pass they wanted more than any other. That’s the part of coaching I enjoy most. You’re not solving football. You’re solving this football match.

If you looked purely at the league statistics, you probably wouldn’t say we have much of an identity yet. We’re hovering around league average in possession, pressing, dribbles, entries into the box and crosses. I don’t mind that at all. Identity isn’t something you decide you’ve got one Tuesday afternoon. It appears slowly, usually before you even notice it yourself. My job isn’t to force one into existence. My job is to keep giving the players clearer pictures every week, keep simplifying decisions and keep removing excuses.

We’ve got twelve league games left this season. Twelve more opportunities to test ideas, make mistakes and hopefully become a team that people recognise before they even look at the shirt. That’s enough time to learn a lot about ourselves. Whether it’s enough time to become the team I eventually want us to be… we’ll find out together.