I took them into the video room. I walked them through the tactical blueprint. The 4-2-3-1. The gegenpress. The five-second rule. The pressing triggers. The new Bojan role. The shadow finisher. I gave them the language. The framework. The rules of the new world they had just entered. They listened in silence. They were tired. They were sore. But they were paying attention. They were starting to understand.
I left them with Marcus for a more detailed breakdown and then took them outside.
We had forty minutes before I had to leave for the drive back up to St. George's Park. Forty minutes was not enough to teach them anything. But it was enough to show them something. I grabbed a ball from the equipment room and walked them back out onto the main pitch. The sun was high now. The grass was warm. Kevin Bray had set up a small grid, twenty yards by twenty yards, with a cone in the centre.
I put the ball down in the middle of the grid. "Simple drill," I said.
