Harbinger Of Glory

The following morning, the first fifteen minutes of the session proved they weren’t there yet.

The defensive line lurched forward one moment and hesitated the next.

Sometimes O’Shea stepped first while Leo held.

Sometimes Leo went, and the rest arrived a heartbeat late.

The Wigan forwards turned opponents for the day running the drills found themselves clean through often enough that nobody needed Dawson to point out the problem.

Things improved, but it was still lacklustre, causing Dawson to half the game and call Leo, O’Shea and the rest of the defensive setup to his side.

He rolled another ball into play himself before striking a measured pass.

"This," he said as the ball moved forward.

"This is what we are looking out for. The moment the pass leaves the foot of our man," he stepped back, "everything is too late."

The players nodded keenly as they reset, and the results after that gradually became a night and day difference.

"Again," Dawson called after an attempt at catching the forwards offside came through.

The next one came cleaner and then another.

By the time the session reached its closing stages, words had almost disappeared between the two of them.

Leo and O’Shea were so in tune that the line moved as though it belonged to one player instead of four, and the attackers who had spent the opening part of the morning running in behind now found themselves jogging back after another raised flag.

Dawson watched the final repetition from the touchline and only when the whistle sounded did he allow himself a slow nod.

"That’s it."

He looked across the pitch.

"Let’s keep doing that until Saturday..."

"...and Fulham are going to have a very long afternoon."

By the time Saturday arrived, the international break already felt a world away.

Supporters streamed through the turnstiles at Craven Cottage, black-and-white scarves mixing with the travelling blue of Wigan’s away end as the familiar rhythm of league football settled back into English weekends.

"Welcome back to Premier League football," the commentator said as the cameras swept across the packed stands.

"The international break is behind us, and we return with an intriguing one this afternoon. I’m joined as always by my colleague, and I have to say, it’s Fulham against Wigan Athletic, and all eyes, perhaps unsurprisingly, are on one young man returning from quite the fortnight in Italy."

"I’ll be honest," the main commentator said, with a laugh in it. "When I first heard of this boy, I thought he was Spanish. I mean his name sounds Spanish."

"Well, you never know, he might even be, but Spalletti has clearly seen something because the debut he had against Ukraine was something to behold."

On the pitch, the pleasantries finished quickly, and the game began.

And Fulham were immediately what Dawson had said they would be.

Their long ball game focused heavily on Jimenez, with the Mexican striker being a reliable target for Leno’s distribution.

Wigan proved interesting though as it seemed they always came up against those balls as the game went on.

In the twelfth minute, the goalkeeper sent one long and searching toward the Fulham forward, who took it with his back to goal, pressing Whatmough slightly, and turned to try and shift it to Pereira, making the angle wide.

It all looked set as the former Manchester player tried getting onto the end of the ball, but before he could, Leo stepped into the pass.

He won it cleanly just as Pereira backtracked and tried to get a hand across Leo’s form, but Leo looked up in the same motion and found James McClean already moving on the left, and played it into his stride immediately.

The Veteran who was starting his second game of the season after being ousted from the lineup in the past two matches by Carlo, took it in stride and drove inside.

He cut inside and tried getting a shot off, but Diop read the cut and got his body across the line and redirected the effort away immediately, causing the attack to dissolve.

The applause rained down from the away side while the Fulham crowd cheered their team back.

Fulham shook it off and kept coming.

They recycled possession patiently until it found its way out to Willian on the left a few minutes later, with the Brazilian receiving on the half-turn after a loose pass in midfield had handed the initiative back to the home side.

The moment the ball settled under his foot, he had a go at the Wigan defence, testing its integrity.

Seriki backed away just enough to keep himself between Willian and the penalty area, shuffling with him instead of diving into a challenge, but the veteran winger had already decided how he wanted the duel to end.

Seriki, through it all, had no idea until Willian nudged the ball into the space right behind him, causing the former to chase, but the deed had already been done.

The cross whipped into the area with pace, curling toward the space between goalkeeper and defence where Jiménez had begun his run.

Before it could reach him, Whatmough attacked it first.

The centre-back climbed above everyone around him and met it with a firm header that sent the ball arcing beyond the edge of the box, drawing an appreciative roar from the travelling supporters tucked into one corner of Craven Cottage.

Fulham gathered the second ball almost immediately, then another and then another as they tried to give their home side something to cheer for.

By then it had become obvious that Wigan were allowing exactly that to happen.

They weren’t carelessly surrendering possession, they were inviting it.

Their shape dropped fifteen yards deeper every time Fulham got the ball, with every mint blue shirt tucking into its place until the space between the back line and midfield almost disappeared altogether.

Passing lanes closed before Fulham could recognise them, and every time the white shirts thought they had found an opening, another Wigan player appeared to smother it.

The ball travelled from flank to flank, from centre-back to full-back and back into midfield again, but it was useless.

Fulham dominated possession without ever feeling in control of the match itself.

Whenever someone tried to force the issue, a blue shirt stepped in.

It wasn’t spectacular defending, but it was organised, disciplined and relentlessly frustrating for the home side.