Season notes
The Boxing Day match ends after dark. The Sunday noon kick-off is already on the sheet. By the time the analyst has clipped both games, the head coach has had one recovery session and a travel day. A forty-page seasonal review will not be read. The briefing has to shrink without pretending the two matches were the same.
We keep three pages, in this order. First, minutes and travel: who started twice, who sat on the coach overnight, who reported tight groins on the Monday. That page is ugly on purpose. Coaches already know the names; they need the sequence in one place.
Second, restarts. Festive games produce more throw-ins in the final third than a mid-table Saturday. We draw only the routines that appeared more than twice, and we mark the one that leaked a cut-back. Everything else waits for January.
Third, two questions for the next session that is not a recovery day. Not twenty clips. If the staff want the rest of the footage, it stays on their own machine. Our job in that week is the wall, not the archive.
Clubs sometimes ask us to add expected-goal maps because a video company already exported them. We refuse if the map cannot be read from two metres in a cold portacabin. A number that only makes sense on a laptop belongs in the spiral pack in March, not on a festive board.
If you want this treatment for a named stretch of fixtures, write with the dates before the first match. We will not promise a 10:00 note if the recording arrives after breakfast.