Chapter 324: The Theatre of Nightmares II
I looked over at Mourinho. He was still there, hands in his pockets, occasionally barking an order, but mostly just watching, a look of serene, almost bored, satisfaction on his face. He knew. He had known all along. This was his world. This was his theatre. And we were just the sacrificial lambs.
At the twenty-five-minute mark, I knew I had to act. To continue like this would be to invite a humiliation on the scale of the 9-0 we had just inflicted on Hull. Pride was a luxury I couldn’t afford. Survival was everything.
I called Nya Kirby over to the touchline during a break in play. The boy was breathless, his face pale, his eyes wide with a mixture of exhaustion and bewildernt. He had never experienced anything like this level of quality before.
"Forget the press," I said, my voice low and urgent, my hands on his shoulders. "Forget it completely. When they have the ball, I want you to drop. Drop deep. Sit right in front of Scotty and Tomkins. You are a shield. Nothing gets past you. Understand?"
He nodded, his chest heaving.
"Macca!" I yelled, getting Jas McArthur’s attention. "You’re on Herrera! Wherever he goes, you go! I don’t want him to have a second on the ball! He’s their engine! Shut him down!"
It was a huge tactical shift, made on the fly, born of desperation. We were abandoning the high press, the philosophy that had defined our revival. We were retreating into a deep, compact, defensive 4-4-1-1.
Eze dropped back into the midfield two, Zaha was instructed to stay high and wide on the left as an outlet, and the rest of the team was to form two tight, narrow banks of four. It was ugly. It was pragmatic. It was a betrayal of everything I had preached. But it was necessary.
The effect was imdiate. The tide didn’t turn, but the storm began to subside. The vast, open spaces that United had been exploiting began to disappear. The midfield was no longer a playground for Pogba.
With McArthur sticking to Herrera like glue, United’s rhythm was disrupted. Their possession beca slower, more sterile, their passes more sideways than forwards. The roar of the Old Trafford crowd softened into a frustrated, impatient murmur. The heckles from the fans near my dugout beca more pointed. "Parking the bus, are we, genius?" one of them sneered.
We were weathering it. Just. We were still barely touching the ball, but we were no longer being carved open at will. Then, in the thirty-eighth minute, a glimr of hope. A loose pass from Rooney was intercepted by Van Aanholt.
He played a quick, simple pass to Eze, who, for the first ti, had a yard of space. He turned and sprayed a beautiful, raking pass out to Zaha on the left wing. For the first ti all ga, our best player was running at their defence, not towards his own goal. He took on Bailly, a man who was a right-back playing out of position, beat him for pace, and won a corner.
Nothing ca of the set-piece, but it was a mont. A sign of life. A reminder that we were still in the fight. It was a mont that told the 75,000 ho fans, and the one man in the opposite dugout, that we would not go quietly.
Then, in the forty-first minute, the ambush that I had planned all week finally, unexpectedly, sprang.
Ander Herrera, increasingly frustrated by the relentless, nagging presence of Jas McArthur, tried to force a risky, forward pass into the feet of Zlatan. It was ambitious. It was arrogant. And it was a mistake.
Scott Dann, my captain, my leader, read it perfectly. He stepped in front of the giant Swede, intercepted the pass with a powerful, commanding header, and the ball fell to Eze.
This was the mont. The transition. Eze, without a second’s hesitation, turned and played a perfect, curling, first-ti pass into the vast expanse of green behind the United defence. He didn’t even need to look. He just knew. He knew that Wilfried Zaha was already gone.
Zaha was a blur of red and blue against the green pitch. He was eating up the ground, his legs pumping, the ball bouncing perfectly in front of him. Phil Jones, a man not blessed with recovery pace, was scrambling desperately to get back at him.
The Old Trafford crowd held its breath. Zaha reached the edge of the box, slowed down, and for a second, it looked like Jones had done enough.
But it was a trap. Zaha feinted to shoot, sending Jones into a desperate, sliding tackle, and then, with a devastating burst of acceleration, he cut back inside, leaving the England defender on the floor, and drove towards the byline.
He lifted his head. He saw the red shirts scrambling back in panic. He saw the white shirt of Christian Benteke, a man who had been a ghost for forty minutes, now alive and hungry, storming towards the near post.
Zaha didn’t blast it. He didn’t dink it. He drilled it. A low, hard, vicious cross, fired into the corridor of uncertainty between the goalkeeper and the defenders.
Benteke, a man born to attack a cross like that, t it with the raw power and desire of a proper number nine. He threw himself headlong at the ball, getting in front of a static Marcos Rojo, and his diving header was a thing of brutal, beautiful simplicity. The ball flew past a helpless David De Gea and bulged the back of the net.
0-1
Silence. A stunned, disbelieving, almost absolute silence descended on the Theatre of Dreams. The only sound was the eruption of pure, unadulterated pandemonium from the small corner of travelling Palace fans, a pocket of noise that sounded, in that mont, like the loudest thing in the world.
On the touchline, I didn’t move. I just stood there, my hands in my pockets, my face a mask of calm. Inside, my heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest. I looked over at Mourinho. He was standing on the edge of his technical area, his face impassive, but I saw it. A slow, almost imperceptible nod. A nod that acknowledged the blow. A nod of respect.
We saw out the final few minutes of the half, the Old Trafford crowd now a sea of angry, frustrated murmurs. The half-ti whistle blew, and my players, my warriors, walked towards the tunnel, their chests puffed out, their heads held high. They were exhausted, but they were winning.
As I walked down the tunnel, the sound of the Palace fans chanting my na echoing behind , I t Mourinho’s gaze one last ti. He was waiting for .
"Not bad, kid," he said, his voice a low, gravelly murmur, his Portuguese accent thick. "Not bad. But the ga is ninety minutes."
He turned and walked away, leaving
standing there in the tunnel, the roar of the crowd fading, the reality of the situation crashing down on .
The first round was mine. But the master had just reminded
that the fight was far from over. I took a deep breath and walked into the dressing room, my mind already racing, preparing for the second half. Preparing for the storm that I knew was coming.
***
Thank you to Sir nayelus for the magic castle.
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