For the team in possession, this session is all about keeping the ball by making the pitch big and reacting quickly to the loss of possession. For the team out of possession, it’s about making the pitch small and working together to win the ball and then trying to score.

To make it really engaging for the players, I’ve made it a competitive game and I like to keep score so players know who’s winning and who’s losing.

In every game, we aim to be dominant in terms of good possession and good movement. So, this session is about players adopting learned and thought-out positions involved in transitions between defence and attack.

This is actually one of the easiest principles to coach – it doesn’t require complex instruction, just players being willing to ‘know a role before playing it’.

This is a training session that incorporates quick combination passing, positional awareness and intelligent decision-making. It’s important to practise this because receiving and passing are core skills, and they are fundamental to the success of every football team.

Preparation is essential, as is practising what we play and how we play. Players must have seen the situation before it occurs – in this instance, that means always looking up before passing and receiving.

This session is about the creation and application of the counter-pressing moment as an offensive weapon. It looks at recovering possession in the shortest way and time, by creating ‘hectic situations’ in the opposition formation. We want to attack the opponent non-stop when we have the ball, when we lose it and when the opposition have it…