It’s been a summer. Madre mía.

I knew we’d lose players. That’s lower-league football. You borrow them, you develop them a little, they leave, and then you start again. I didn’t expect to lose quite this many, though. By December we’d said goodbye to Steven Cordova, Abel Caputo, Dani Fernández, Babacar Diene, Real Gill, Guy Brittain, Nico Rosamilia, Nic Lemen, Christopher Tiao, Will Perkins, Jaheim Brown, Scott McLeod, Jordan Skelton, Kyle Linhares and Finn McRobb. Some were sold, plenty simply walked away when their contracts expired. One minute I felt like I was beginning to understand this group and the next I was standing on the training pitch with twelve senior players wondering where everybody had gone.

That’s football. You don’t complain about the weather either.

The board, led by Michael Ward, have worked hard to rebuild it. They’ve handed me another pile of names, another pile of personalities, another pile of football problems to solve, and honestly, that’s the bit I enjoy most. Samuel Sedeh arrives from FC Dallas after already tasting MLS football at seventeen. Jamison Ping comes through the Phoenix academy. Cole Ramsey leaves Aston Villa’s academy and starts university here in Tennessee at the same time. Patrick Birchall is a young centre-back from North Carolina. Victor Wilson arrives from Inter Miami’s academy with ridiculous pace. Chris Lara comes through Washington and Lane United. Jake Ademiluyi has bounced through the New England Revolution pathway. Dale Okobia gives us another goalkeeper. Jessé Costa has somehow managed to have Corinthians, Wolfsburg and Inter Toronto on his CV before he’s really started his career. Trevor Wright joins on loan from Vancouver, while Christ Hegardt arrives from Orange County with a strange but brilliant little detour through Norway at Stabæk.

You can see Wardy’s fingerprints all over it. Young. Athletic. Mouldable. Players who might become something rather than players who already think they are. That’s exciting, but it’s also dangerous because young footballers don’t arrive as finished ideas. They arrive with habits, instincts and flaws, and now it’s my job to build something coherent out of all of that. They are also, largely, here for just a year – at least initially. Whether surviving constant rebuilds is something within my remit will remain to be seen.

The thing is, people think tactics start with formations. They don’t. They start with people.

Everyone keeps asking me about the 4-2-4 because that’s what the board insist we play, but honestly I stopped worrying about those numbers a long time ago. They’re only the starting positions for the team photo. What matters is understanding what every player actually gives you. I kept coming back to the same thought over the summer, scribbling it into notebooks, crossing things out, drawing arrows everywhere like a lunatic.

I don’t think in positions any more. I think in archetypes. With the ball, I keep seeing four types of footballer.

Architects organise the game. They’re the ones who connect everything together, who receive under pressure, who make everybody else calmer. Engines are different. They’re movement. Running. Intensity. They arrive where the game needs them before anybody else does. Guardians protect the structure. They recover loose balls, defend space and stop stupid transitions becoming dangerous ones. Then you’ve got the Weapons. They stretch teams, attack space, run beyond people and actually finish moves. Football becomes much simpler when you stop asking whether somebody is a winger or an attacking midfielder and instead ask whether they’re solving problems or creating them.

I sat down with the staff and started throwing names around.

“David Kavanagh-Merricks?”

Nobody hesitated.

“Box crasher in midfield. Channel forward if you move him higher. Pure engine.”

Exactly what I’d been thinking.

Then Victor Wilson.

“Wardy signed him as a winger, but we’d play him attacking the channels all day. Let him run. Let him scare people.”

Again, we were talking about the footballer rather than the position. That’s important.

Since finishing my coaching licence they’ve also started giving me more responsibility without the ball, which probably says more about how much they trust me than any certificate ever could. So I started building another layer over the top of the first one. If players have jobs in possession, surely they need identities without it as well.

That became another notebook page.

• Hunters.
• Screens.
• Markers.

Hunters are obvious. They go after the ball. They recognise pressing triggers before everybody else and they attack them without hesitation. Screens are quieter. They don’t necessarily win possession themselves, but they close passing lanes, block progression and force opponents towards the trap. Then you’ve got the Markers. They don’t care about space first. They care about people. If that’s your man, that’s your problem.

The interesting bit isn’t those three labels. It’s how they connect to the four with the ball.

Engines almost always become Hunters. That’s natural. They’re already moving. Architects usually become Screens because they’re reading the game anyway, closing angles before chasing tackles. Most of the Markers are defenders, but not always. Sometimes your centre-forward becomes the first Marker because one holding midfielder simply cannot be allowed to play.

I remember asking about Kane Leal.

One of the coaches just laughed.

“With the ball he’s an Architect. Loses it and he turns into a Hunter before you’ve finished blinking.”

Exactly. We talked for hours. Hours. Nobody mentioned formations once. That was when I realised I was finally beginning to understand what this job could become. Because then another problem appeared. You can’t just fill the pitch with your favourite archetype.

• Too many Engines and everybody runs but nobody thinks.
• Too many Architects and possession becomes polite. Nice triangles. No blood.
• Too many Weapons and you’ve got runners everywhere but nobody actually delivering the ball.

It’s exactly the same without possession. Fill the team with Hunters and they’ll chase shadows until somebody plays through them. Too many Screens and suddenly you’re passive, waiting for football instead of taking it. That’s never going to satisfy the board because they want pressure. Constant pressure. Relentless pressure.

So now the real work begins. I’m trying to balance every line.

The defence is still awkward because Wright, Lane and Birchall don’t naturally organise possession. None of them really screams Architect to me, which means I still like the idea of the right-back stepping inside to become that player instead. It gives us another angle in build-up without asking centre-backs to become something they aren’t.

The midfield is probably Architect, Engine, Architect most weeks, although against certain opponents Birchall might become a Guardian in there if we need somebody protecting transitions first rather than progressing play. Then the front four becomes the fun part. Two players stretching everything until it breaks. Two players arriving inside the spaces they’ve just created. That’s the picture in my head anyway.

We’ll see if reality agrees.

Out of possession we’re still defending from something that resembles a 4-4-2, but I don’t think it’ll stay looking the same for very long. I’m fascinated by where we actually begin the press now rather than simply whether we press. The left side might start deeper with one Hunter and two Screens protecting behind him. The right side might be far more aggressive, trying to force the first pass into areas we’ve already filled before collapsing around it. That’s not asymmetry for the sake of being clever; that’s geometry. The objective isn’t to win the ball everywhere. It’s to make the opponent believe one pass is available when really we’ve already decided that’s exactly where we want them to play it.

Maybe it’ll work. Maybe it’ll be absolute mierda. Honestly, I don’t know yet. What I do know is that I’ve stopped seeing football as positions connected by lines on a tactics screen. I see personalities. Instincts. Relationships. Problems that create other problems. If we get recruitment right, if these kids develop the way I think they can, and if I don’t ask too much of them too quickly, then I genuinely think there’s something here.

Not this season. Maybe not even next season. But something. And that’s enough to make me excited to walk back onto the training pitch tomorrow.