MIDDLESBROUGH, England — Aitor Karanka, the Middlesbrough manager, spins in his chair and reaches behind him, sifting through the reports and the notes on the desk in his office at the team’s training ground.

The sheaf of papers he is looking for is by his laptop. He spins around again and puts it down in front of him with a thud. It is at least 100 pages thick. Some of the pages are covered in diagrams, others are decorated with portrait photos of players, still more with just text — some in Karanka’s native Spanish, some in English, some in both.

The information goes into the finest detail, not just tactical shapes and set-piece routines, but also breakdowns of individual players’ movements. Only Karanka will see it in full. His coaching staff and his players need only the snippets relevant to their work. “I am the only one who needs to know everything,” Karanka said with a grin.

This is the master copy, the blueprint. It is ready for Karanka, typically, every Tuesday morning, off one weekend’s match and ahead of the next. The dossier is the starting point. Everything Karanka and his coaches work on in training during the week, all of the video clips they show their players, all of the plans they concoct, will be tailored to the information contained on these pages.