Look, if you’d offered me this league table the day I walked through the door, I’d probably have stared at it for a while before saying yes. Thirteenth doesn’t sound particularly impressive. It won’t make anybody outside Knoxville stop scrolling and it certainly isn’t the kind of finish that gets managers talking about successful first seasons. But context matters. We inherited a group that had forgotten what winning felt like and, across the entire season, won eight of our nine league matches under this staffing model. Across the second half of the year we collected twenty-six points, which would’ve had us comfortably inside the top seven over the same period. The underlying numbers moved as well. Expected goals up. Expected goals against down. The performances stopped depending on emotion and started depending on structure, and that’s the bit I’m proud of because structures last longer than confidence does.

There are still moments where I watch us back and think, madre mía, what were we doing? We can still become too stretched after losing the ball and there are matches where the distances between the midfield and front line drift five yards further apart than I want. Five yards doesn’t sound like much until you’re trying to counter-press. Then it feels like fifty. The encouraging part is that we’re no longer making random mistakes. They’re recurring mistakes, which sounds strange to celebrate, but recurring problems can be coached. Chaos can’t.

The player who surprised me most was David Kavanagh-Merricks. When I arrived, I saw somebody who could run forever but wasn’t really being asked the right questions by the game. Once we started using him as the more aggressive midfielder, breaking the lines with passes and crashing the box late on, everything changed. His timing became excellent. He started receiving balls in dangerous transitional places and suddenly midfielders had another problem to solve because they couldn’t just track runners like him anymore. He’s shooting less accurately than I’d ideally like from twenty-five yards and, bueno, we’ll spend plenty of time on that because not every attack needs ending with a thunderbolt into Row Z. But I’d rather coach restraint than bravery. Bravery is much harder to teach.

The tactical side has been fascinating because, honestly, I haven’t really been allowed to build my football. I’ve been allowed to build football inside somebody else’s framework. That’s a completely different challenge. The club wants a 4-2-4. The recruitment department decides what positions players are. The staff have strong opinions on role suitability. So instead of asking, “What shape do I want?” I started asking, “What spaces can I steal without anybody noticing?” That’s where the fun began. Donovan Williams becoming the third centre-back in possession. John Murphy or Mikkel Gøling, earlier on and now Real Gill, stepping inside from right-back. Cordova leaving the pivot to attack the half-space while somebody else quietly replaced him. On paper it stayed a 4-2-4. On the grass it became something much closer to a 3-3-4. Nobody asked me to invent anything revolutionary. I just kept looking for little advantages. Football is usually won by collecting enough little advantages until they become one big one.

I still don’t think people quite understand why we rotate so much. Supporters see players swapping positions and think we’re trying to be clever. We’re not. We’re trying to make every pass easier than the last one. If Murphy steps inside, Cordova can leave. If Cordova leaves, Conway can drift underneath. If Conway drops, Gill stays high. Every movement exists because it creates another picture for the player receiving the next ball. That’s all tactics really are. Pictures. Better pictures lead to better decisions.

Around the league I’ve learned something important as well. Nobody scares me. Boise were excellent against us and Greenville deserved what they got, but there isn’t a side I’ve watched and thought, “There’s no answer to that.” Every team has weaknesses. Every coach compromises somewhere. The difference between finishing thirteenth and finishing sixth next season won’t be discovering some magical new tactical idea. It’ll be whether our squad gives us enough different profiles to solve different problems. That’s recruitment, not coaching, and that’s why I trust Michael and the board to do their job. Within the financial limits we’re working under, they’ve already shown they’re capable of finding players who improve us. Now they need to do it again.

The biggest uncertainty is that I don’t really know who I’m coaching in six weeks’ time. Loans end. Contracts expire. Half this dressing room could look completely different by the first day of pre-season. Usually that thought would terrify a coach. Weirdly, I’m excited by it. We’ve also established a Knoxville II side now, which changes everything. Suddenly you can carry an extra midfielder. Suddenly an eighteen-year-old doesn’t have to disappear because he isn’t quite ready. Development becomes part of the club instead of something squeezed into spare minutes at the end of training.

The other thing that’s changed is me. I’ve completed another coaching course over the last few months, which means the club have started loosening the reins a little. Not much. I’m hardly walking into Michael’s office demanding complete tactical freedom. But every qualification earns a little more trust, and trust buys influence. Influence lets you shape details. Details become habits. Habits become identity. That’s the long game.

So that’s where we are.

The table says thirteenth. The numbers say we’re improving. The football says we’re beginning to recognise ourselves. For the first time since I arrived, I don’t spend my evenings thinking about how to stop us losing. I spend them wondering how much further we can push this idea. That’s a much better question to have.