A season isn’t 46 games. It’s eight blocks.
Football performance strategy, applied to the whole league. Five to seven games at a time, one question per block, and a case study at the end of each one.
Nobody is the same team on day one as they are on day ninety.
In August, a team looks sharp for an hour and shaky for the last third. A manager reads it as a character flaw. It isn’t. Players are match-fit on paper and not yet match-sharp, because their last ninety days were holidays, pre-season and friendlies. It is the default state of nearly every squad in the country.
What a team does today is a product of where its attention has really been for the last 45 to 90 days, not of the last result. Blocks turns that into a working structure: a season cut into eight stretches, each with its own character and its own question.
Most people watch football one match at a time. This is a way of seeing the season.
Seasons inhale and exhale.
Odd blocks are about circumstances: squads, windows, weather, fixtures, the world of things. Even blocks are about people: identity, cohesion, the world of whether a group can suffer together. Over any two blocks, every base is covered and nothing hides.
Each block follows the same four steps.
The survey
You tell me what you’re seeing and what the block should investigate. It shapes the question.
The call
A live hangout at the start of the block, where the hypothesis is set together, not handed down.
The live test
Audio notes through the block, putting the hypothesis against real matches as they happen.
The case study
A rigorous written case study at the end. Only members present for that block, that season, receive it.
Built in the open, with the working shown.
Block 1 is the first full run of the method. Its report is coming soon, and it isn’t a claim of proof. It’s the process: the questions Blocks is trying to answer, the infrastructure those questions need and don’t yet have, and the work going on behind the scenes to build it.
The next few blocks are about building that infrastructure and sharing what emerges along the way. Members see it as it happens. Everyone else can follow along in the free newsletter.
The method itself was built inside professional football, at Exeter City, where staff profiling and season structure were part of the work in 2025/26. The honest description is instrumental, not the driver. The club’s results were Gary Caldwell’s to take credit for.
Follow along in the newsletter →No inside information from any club, ever. The edge is behavioural pattern-recognition across the whole league, and partial inside knowledge actively gets in the way of it.
No guaranteed results and no promised profits. Honest, unglamorous, verifiable numbers over hype.
Real scarcity. A block’s case study belongs to the members who were there. It is never resold, and next year’s Block 1 gets a new one.
Two ways in.
Joining after the season has started? There’s a trial block further down.
All eight blocks: every survey, every call, every live test and every case study.
Join for the seasonOne block, with its survey, call, live test and case study. Priced above the season rate on purpose: the season is the better deal.
Buy a blockOne trial per email address. When it ends I’ll get in touch personally, and if it’s a fit I’ll tell you what the rest of the season costs.
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Frameworks, not foresight. No blind spots.
Blocks is the football-fan expression of a wider body of work. If you run a club, advise players, or lead a team, the same thinking is available one-to-one.
Work with Mike at mphprofiling.com →Football Manager Profiling
An evergreen course on reading managers: how they’re wired, how they behave under pressure, and what their words give away.