Harbinger Of Glory

The call ended as Leo slipped his phone into his pocket and looked across the room.

Mia was still on the couch, focused on her film and pretending not to have listened to the call.

"Mia," Leo called as she looked over.

"What?"

Leo smiled and then shook his head.

"Nothing."

He stood still for another second as Mia narrowed her eyes.

"Why are you smiling like that?"

Leo’s smile widened, and that made her sit up immediately.

"Leo," she muttered again, but he suddenly broke into a sprint.

"No!" she said as he cleared the back of the couch in one movement and landed on her, sending the pillows flying away from the couch.

Mia screamed.

"LEO!"

Leo, on the other hand, burst out laughing as she shoved at his shoulders.

"Get off me!"

"Say you missed me, Mia!"

"Uh, you stink. Get the fuck off!"

"That wasn’t the question."

"Get off!"

Her laughter broke through the shouting as she fought to push him away.

Leo barely managed to keep from falling onto the floor as the two went at it again, this time, Mia holding Leo in a chokehold.

And just like that, Monday arrived!

Like always, the noise of the past matchday began to settle down, replaced by the less exciting reality of recovery.

The players who had gone the full ninety were told to report to the DW Centre for a light session, and Dawson made it clear that nobody was getting out of it simply because they had won.

By the time Leo arrived, most of the squad were already inside.

He had barely stepped through the doors when Dawson appeared in his sights!

"Doctor first," he said as Leo stopped.

"I thought it was recovery."

"For them," Dawson doubled down as he pointed toward the medical room.

"You’ve had malaria for three days. You’re not joining a recovery session until I know what you’re recovering from."

Leo sighed and then nodded, but it didn’t feel particularly pleasant.

The medical staff checked his temperature, blood pressure and hydration, then ran him through a series of basic assessments to see how he was responding after the fever.

Nothing was strenuous at first.

They wanted to know how his body was coping before allowing him anywhere near serious work.

Even the lighter exercises left him more tired than he expected, and Dawson noticed.

"That’s enough."

Leo looked over.

"Come on Dawssss!"

"I know," Dawson folded his arms.

"That’s why I’m telling you to stop."

Leo gave him a reluctant nod, but the rest of the day was spent resting, eating properly and taking the medication exactly as instructed.

By Tuesday morning, the difference was noticeable.

The fever had gone, and the heaviness in his body had eased, and when Leo woke up, he felt much closer to himself again.

Not completely there, but he was close.

The football side of the week began properly that afternoon.

Dawson gathered the squad in the video room and shut the door, and from then on, it felt like hell.

On the large screen was the Liverpool team as the players settled into their seats.

Dawson picked up the remote and then slipped to the side.

"We’ve got four days until Sunday. I’m not going to pretend that’s enough time to change everything we do," he said and clicked to the first clip.

"But it is enough time to understand what we’re playing against."

The room went quiet, and after that, everything Liverpool-related appeared on the screen.

From the gegenpressing football that Klopp was known for to their attacking triggers down to the wire.

Dawson went through it all, or at least as much as he could with the players before it started becoming a chore.

"Look here," he halted on one occasion and pointed toward the screen.

"If we lose the ball there, what happens?"

A few players answered.

"Full-back steps up, and they squeeze the middle."

"Second man closes the pass," Leo answered last as Dawson nodded.

"Exactly. And if you already know that’s coming, you don’t need to panic when it happens."

The session kept going, and there were questions.

Some were tactical.

Others were more specific to individual positions, and Dawson answered all of them, sometimes rewinding the same passage three or four times until everyone understood what he wanted.

Nobody was pretending to enjoy sitting in a room for hours watching paused images of football, but nobody was drifting off either.

They knew what was coming.

Liverpool were not another team in the league.

They were the first side Wigan had faced since their remarkable run had started attracting serious attention, and for the first time in weeks, Dawson was preparing them for an opponent that could punish even the smallest mistake.

By Wednesday, the work moved back onto the pitch.

Dawson experimented, and that was the first thing the players noticed.

He changed combinations in midfield, moved players into unfamiliar positions and tried different ways of progressing the ball against a simulated press.

There were mistakes, arguments over positioning and the occasional laugh when somebody ended up somewhere they clearly had not expected to be.

But by the end of the session, the players understood why Dawson had done it.

He wasn’t looking for one perfect plan.

He wanted them to have answers.

Away from Wigan, Liverpool were doing much the same thing at AXA training centre.

Their preparation was less about reinventing themselves and more about making sure they were ready for a team that had somehow turned every difficult week into another victory.

Klopp had watched Wigan closely.

There was no reason to dismiss them simply because of where they had started the season.

They had overcome a lot of talking points that had been used against them in the past weeks, and they had enough attacking quality to make any defensive mistake hurt.

The Liverpool players knew that and so did the coaching staff.

The work continued through Thursday and Friday, with the intensity gradually increasing as Sunday approached.

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