Such decisions are never absolute but with Ross McCrorie and Haydon Roberts arriving at Bristol City with an element of intrigue as to where they fit into Nigel Pearson’s side and squad in a positional sense, the manager has made it clear he sees them specialising as full-backs.
McCrorie performed a variety of roles for Aberdeen last season - in central midfield, wing-back, as a right-sided centre-back and a more orthodox right-back - and it’s the latter designation in which Pearson believes the Scot will flourish. That also chimes with McCrorie’s recent call-up to the Scotland squad, as a replacement for Celtic right-back Anthony Ralston.
As for Roberts, he hadn’t really considered himself a left-back until his loan move to Derby County last summer having spent much of his youth career as a centre-back. Paul Warne’s lack of options on that flank, however, saw the 21-year-old increasingly shifted out wide and the bulk of his 39 appearances for the Rams were as a wing-back.
Pearson’s preference for a 4-3-3 - and he referenced the system several times this week at the HPC - means Roberts probably won’t be stationed there, but after City failed to strike a deal with Joe Bryan and with Jay Dasilva’s departure to Coventry City, Cam Pring has some competition on a position he increasingly made his own.
“Both of them as full-backs,” Pearson said, when asked as to what positions he saw them playing, before adding of McCrorie. “I know he can play in midfield and at centre-back, his profile if you like in terms of what he gives us will be energy, he’s a good runner, he’s aggressive. I think he’s a decent signing for us, he really is.
“If you look at Ross, alright people might say he can play centre-back, yeah he can do but I’d like to see him rampaging down the pitch from a full-back position because he can do that but he likes defending too.
“He’ll have to dislodge George (Tanner) who finished the season very very well. I think this is what I was alluding to about players driving the competition.
“It’s really important that people don’t come in with fixed ideas of what the team is going to look like. The team will look like who performs best in pre-season, and that’s what it will look like. Not based on last year. Last season has gone.
"All the players have a responsibility to themselves and their teammates to be as good as they can be. The team that finished the season has no bearing on what is selected for the first game of the season. It’s gone now.”
As mentioned by Pearson, that puts McCrorie in direct competition with George Tanner who after the shift to a back four was a model of consistency, and Roberts up against Pring, who was one of the Robins three best players of the season. As a side point, the arrival of McCrorie is also a fundamental reason why Kane Wilson has been made available for transfer.
If you were selecting a starting XI for the opening game of the Championship season on August 5 against Preston North End right now, you’d almost certainly have Tanner and Pring as full-backs. And while that’s a logical decision to make, Pearson wants to emphasise the next five weeks will dictate more of his decision than the previous nine months.
“They are aware of my philosophy on who plays,” Pearson added. “If you speak to Haydon one of the things he’ll mention, I don’t care whether Pringy’s had a great season. Pringy had a great season but if Haydon is better than him in pre-season, I don’t have any qualms of picking a player who has limited experience over a player who has got a good experience, if they are in better nick or we feel they’re better.
“Age is something we get bogged down a bit at times. The only time I really step in with the age, inexperience and younger players in particular is to protect them, not to overexpose them, it’s my job, and a judgement call we have as staff in terms of how we select teams or our team and get the balance right for us. I like to have different options. I always talk about fluidity, you’ve got to have a flexible mindset in terms of what happens.”
That flexibility also means, of course, that over the campaign McCrorie and Roberts may be required to adopt different roles for the good of the rest of the team; most likely to be injuries, suspensions or even, who knows, a system change as proved the case in 2022/23.
But the manager is keen to emphasise he doesn’t want a squad of Swiss Army knives, particularly with emphasis on Roberts who, despite being the product of a Premier League academy and with a good season in League One behind, is still into unchartered waters at a new club and in the Championship for the first time.
“Players can suffer sometimes by being versatile,” Pearson said. “I think if you look at Kal Naismith last year and Zak the year before and the year before that, sometimes players’ form can suffer because the manager and the coaching staff ask them to do too many different kinds of jobs.
"Cam Pring is another good example of benefitting from playing mainly in one position, although we did at times have to use him again as a centre-back, and he did that willingly and admirably too.
“It is important to have some versatility within the squad but you’ve got to be careful with how you can’t abuse it, and that’s the key thing. When players are possibly suffering from a bit of self-doubt, you’ve got to give them a role within the side which is not easier for them but clear on what they need to do.”
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