Knowing what is expected

I see coaching as an art form, and I want to master it.

Sometimes it is raw, sometimes it is technical – I love it. I live and breathe the challenge of preparing for an opponent: finances, skills, tactics, formations, coaching, power, pace, analysis, travel, preparation. It’s in my blood now.

I want my teams to think about options, to stretch their minds, to be able to tell me why they made the decision they did if I stopped the game. It makes them better players. My ideology is simple because I don’t get carried away with the bells and whistles of the sport.

I want my teams to play fast, convincing football, and not have possession for possession’s sake. I want to know why we are moving the ball around the pitch. What is the purpose, and what is the move we are building towards? I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel, or be the cleverest manager in the Football League. What I am trying to do is what's right for my group at any given moment.

At Wycombe, we explain to our players that they are playing against whoever is in that particular position and not a specific individual. An opposition player might start in midfield, but then roll out to be a false full-back. In that case, we treat them as a full-back rather than as a midfielder. It’s not: “I'm up against my direct midfield opponent, so if he moves over, I'm going to chase him.” It's about understanding what formation the opposition are playing at any given moment, and then how we press against that.

In their ‘create’ phase, a lot of teams try to evolve from a four at the back to a three. They push one full-back high, and roll their wide player inside to create a box. We press a lot differently against a three, compared with how we press against a four. It’s about recognising the triggers and moments that mean, once the opposition’s shape has evolved, we need to evolve ourselves and press in the correct manner. If not, you allow your opposition to dictate and dominate the game. We want to dominate the game, whether that’s in or out of possession. So we need to have a really clear understanding of how we dominate our opposition, irrespective of formation.

“If someone moves to play in a different position, then everyone else has to understand when and where they need to move”

This is why I believe analysis is so important, because we always want to press to create attacking opportunities. For example, the players need to have a clear understanding that if we are pressing against a four at the back, it looks completely different to how we're pressing against a three. Or, if we're playing against two holding midfielders rather than a single pivot, we need to know how we adapt. 

Even if we're out of possession, how can we dominate our opponents in a structured manner? When we're in our high press or mid-block, it has to be structured and organised. When we're in our build phase, it's probably quite structured, too. Once we get higher up the pitch with the ball, we probably need to be more fluid, because our opposition will be more structured at that moment. But we need to be fluid to the degree that, if one of our players moves to a different position, the others adjust their positions accordingly.

If one of my midfield players becomes a false full-back, I don't want my full-back still playing there. And if my full-back moves, I need my wide player to understand that he needs to move. Not to the degree of players going and doing what they want, though. If someone moves into a different position, everyone else has to understand when and where they need to move. There has to be a trigger that they need to move, to retain the structure we're trying to play with.

We played Aston Villa in the Carabao Cup in September. That gave us an incredible opportunity to pit our wits, tactically, against top opposition. Unai Emery is at the top of his game, and while people said Villa played their reserves against us, they still had nine players on the pitch who’ve played for them in the Champions League. We made changes ourselves, too. We were in the middle of a seven-game run in three weeks, with only one day to build into the game.

Emery’s Villa build with an initial four. Once they get into their create phase, though, they evolve into a three and roll their wide-left player inside to create the box. So it was about how quickly we could understand the principles of what we were going up against. That comes back to being consistent with our own principle-based philosophy.

When I meet a new player, we sit down and go through our philosophy pamphlet and playbook. So, when we're up against a three at the back, our players understand what we believe in. That was really important when we only had a one-day lead going into the Villa tie. 

“Every game is tough, with every opponent set up with tactical nuances that ask questions of you”

Our principles remain the same, but against Villa we had to try to implement them against elite opposition. The way they build and create is very similar to a lot of League One teams. They're just a lot better at doing it. So you have to be a lot cleaner in your moments when you come up against what they are trying to do. We gave a good account of ourselves in a 2-1 defeat.

In League One, people are talking about Villa’s neighbours, Birmingham City, and the budgets teams now have in what is a highly competitive league. At Wycombe, we only spent in the thousands – not even hundreds of thousands. Some teams have spent multimillions.

That is the challenge we face, but that is what drives me. We have chosen a path because we don’t have the same financial resources, and we believe strongly in what we are doing.

That is what makes the game and sport so compelling, while my job is to master the art of coaching with the tools I have available. I don’t know if I will ever achieve that, but it’s what I aspire to do.

Every game is tough, with every opponent set up with tactical nuances that ask questions of you. You have to understand these to be able to get the best out of your games, which come thick and fast in the division.

When preparing for the 2024/25 season at Wycombe, we wanted to have lots of options in forward areas. That is because, with the way we want to press – the energy and intensity we need in those parts of the pitch – we need to be able to rotate.

“Our players need to understand what our opponents are showing us and what the formation consequences are”

Which brings me back to our principles and implementing the style of play we want. No matter how many changes we make, we want the team identity to look and feel the same. Everyone needs to understand their role within the team. It's not just about the 11 players starting the game on any given Saturday. It’s about every one of the 22 players we have training on Thursday, knowing what is expected if they play on that Saturday.

Last year we had 58 games. That is a lot, with all the travelling, late nights and midweek games. While you’re always going after the work, the schedule is so relentless that you also need to know when to come off the players – when to give them a moment to breathe and not overload them with information.

Sometimes we will present our analysis in team meetings. Other times, we'll code the footage, paint it up and put it on the TV in the gym or the canteen. That way, the players can access it in a more informal way; when they're eating their lunch, or doing weights and stretching in the gym. This enables a constant flow of information, but in a way that doesn't feel like we're going after them every minute of every day.

We know that every formation has consequences, tactically, which is why we call them formation consequences. There will always be strengths and weaknesses to an opposition’s formation, so our players need to understand what our opponents are showing us and what the formation consequences are. We must guard against the opposition’s strengths, of course, but mostly we try to go after how we expose their weaknesses. 

Going back to my playing days, that is something I learned on the pitch. When you're on the pitch, you can see and feel things quicker than when you are standing on the sidelines. Playing in midfield, I was always in among the action. I could sense quite quickly if the opposition were doing something slightly different to what we had been expecting, or than they had been doing. That fed into my love of the tactical side of the game. I love the implementation of understanding what needs to be done at any given moment. 

For our boys, it's about repetition and consistency. We've got mini-pitches, where we can keep going over and over our build and create phase, and how we want to play in possession, without accumulating the load of doing it on a full-sized pitch. 

“One of the key skills I need as manager is the ability to sift through information the analyst is feeding me”

Out of possession, it's about doing it in different ways. That can be on a tactics board, with opposition analysis, or walk-throughs. Doing it as a walking phase means we can literally move the players into the positions that are expected, with repetition. Then we can have live run-throughs on an 11-a-side pitch;. With the quick turnover of games, though, it's not possible to do that all the time.

If you go back 10 years, to when I played in League One, the tactical side was fairly basic. You knew what your opposition were going to do, and it was about who came out on top on the day. Now, the tactical element of the game can have a huge bearing on the overall result.

These days, I have a video analyst on the bench with me, coding the game live. We have an aerial view where the spacing can be seen so much more easily, compared to being on the pitch or sidelines. Anything the analyst can see quicker, they can feed back to me. We can then adjust things on the pitch before it gets to half-time.

We have a screen in the changing room, so at half-time we'll show clips. In my playing days, the manager used a tactics board when he spoke to us. Now we use the screen pretty much every half-time, as long as the situation suggests that we should. It’s not a matter of just telling players what they did; they can now see it for themselves. That gives them greater understanding of what they should have done better, or could do slightly different in the second half.

One of the key skills I need as manager is the ability to sift through information the analyst is feeding me, and know what is important at that moment. The last thing the boys want is for us to overwhelm them by throwing loads of numbers and video at them. We might show two or three clips at half-time, of the most important moments. That can then be followed by some information from me.

It might be that the data is telling us something, but it is my job to know if that data is the true picture. For example, it may say that our pass success rate wasn’t particularly high, but our opposition kept putting it out for a corner. So the success of the pass was zero, but we got corners off the back of the passes.

“It was one of our toughest games, tactically, because of the rotations and patterns they played with”

The pinch point at half-time is so important – your information needs to be spot on. You need a clear mind at a time when it can be difficult, in busy moments with a lot going on. Players’ emotions can be heightened by winning or losing. They might be buzzing because they scored, or affected because they missed a chance. You have to know how to bring these emotions down, to deliver important information with clarity. Then you have to bring the emotions back up, so the players are ready to go against opposition who are going to come flying at them as soon as the whistle blows.

And how often does the game change in the second half? That means you have to be forward-planning. When you're walking out for the second half, you need to have a plan for what changes might be needed and when they might need to be implemented. But you can’t be too hell-bent on them. What the game presents to you in the second half might be different from what you were expecting. You have to be open-minded.

You certainly need a tactical understanding of the game, because the teams we are coming up against – from top to bottom of the league – are so tactically clean. Burton Albion were struggling for results when we played them in October. It became one of our toughest games, tactically, because of the rotations and patterns they played with. 

Mark Robinson is an incredible coach, and I felt so disappointed for him that he lost his job at Burton. I had to do a huge amount of work to prepare for our game against his team. My presentation to the boys the day before the game was quite a tough task. We had to be tactically on it at Burton. If we hadn’t been, they would have dominated us. At the same time, everyone was expecting us to go there and win. So you are dealing with that expectation, while facing tactically sound opposition. I’m not sure that is always easy to see from the outside.

Ultimately, my team has to know exactly what is expected of them, in and out of possession. Whether it's our high press or mid-block, our build or create phase, they must know what is expected of them in every moment of the match.