The training ground emptied again as the international break swallowed the squad. The call-ups had grown since September sixteen players scattered across the globe. Neves to Portugal, where he was now a regular starter.
Sakho and Mandanda to France. Gnabry to Germany. Rodríguez to Colombia. Milivojević to Serbia. Digne to France. Navas to Spain. Benteke to Belgium. Hennessey to Wales. Tarkowski earned his first full England call-up not a standby, a call-up the reward for his performances stepping in for Konaté.
Wan-Bissaka, Kirby, Eze, and Blake went to the England U21s again, the Palace contingent in the youth setup now so large that the dia had started calling it "the Crystal Palace wing of St George’s Park."
I used the break differently this ti. In September, I had been a man discovering his free ti. Now I was a manager with a plan.
Monday and Tuesday were dedicated to the Pro Licence. Module 2 at St George’s Park two days on "Leadership in High-Performance Environnts," which felt faintly ironic given that I was currently living the case study.
The lecturer, a forr head of coaching at the Dutch FA, used Manchester City’s centurion season as the primary example. I sat in the back row, took my notes, and thought about the ways in which what we were building at Palace was fundantally different less financial power, more tactical innovation, a younger squad, a system that didn’t depend on any single player.
During a group exercise on "managing squad dynamics during fixture congestion," I shared our rotation model from the West Ham–Vitória–Newcastle week. The room went quiet. The lecturer asked to repeat the details. I did.
Three matches, three different starting elevens, three wins, seven goals, one conceded. One of the other candidates a forr Championship manager in his fifties shook his head and said, "That shouldn’t work." I smiled. "And yet."
Wednesday through Friday, I was at Beckenham. Without the senior internationals, I worked with the youth players again Hannam, Grant, Webb, Mitchell, Morrison, Aviero, Senyo, Fletcher, and Olise, the sixteen-year-old whose left foot continued to do things that shouldn’t have been physically possible.
Paddy McCarthy ran the sessions, and I observed, coached, corrected. Olise, in particular, was progressing at a rate that made slightly dizzy. His ability to find space, to receive on the half-turn, to play passes that belonged in a different age group it was all there, developing session by session. I pulled Paddy aside on Friday.
"He’s not going on loan," I said. "Not in January, not in the sumr. He stays and trains with us. I want him in the first-team squad by next season."
Paddy smiled. "You sound like you’re talking about your own son."
"I’m talking about a footballer who is going to be worth a hundred million pounds in five years. Let’s make sure he’s still wearing our shirt when that happens."
But the emotional centre of the week was Konaté. I spent ti with him every day in the dical room, in the gym, and on the pool deck. Rebecca had him on a structured rehabilitation program: hydrotherapy, resistance band work, isotric exercises, the slow, patient, unglamorous process of rebuilding a muscle fibre by fibre.
He hated it. He was an eighteen-year-old who wanted to run, to tackle, to play, and instead he was doing leg raises on a mat while his teammates trained on the pitch fifty tres away.
On Thursday, I sat with him during his pool session. He was waist-deep in the heated pool, moving through a series of exercises under Rebecca’s watchful eye, his jaw set, his movents precise.
"Two weeks down," I said. "Four to six to go. How are you feeling?"
He looked at , water dripping from his face. "Bored, gaffer. Bored and angry."
"Good. Use it."
"That is what Mama says too." A faint smile. "He calls every day. Every day. He tells about the matches, about the training, about what Tarkowski is doing in my position. He says Tarkowski is playing well but that my shirt is still mine." He paused. "Is that true?"
"Tarkowski is playing well," I said honestly. "He’s been excellent. But yes, Ibrahima. Your shirt is still yours. When you co back fit, you co back into the team. That’s my promise."
He nodded, and sothing in his eyes the frustration, the fear, the impatience settled into sothing calr. The promise mattered. The certainty of his place, the knowledge that the injury was a pause and not an ending it was the foundation of his recovery.
Chilwell, anwhile, was approaching full fitness. I watched him train on Friday sharp, quick, no hesitation on the hamstring. Rebecca cleared him for contact work the following week. "He’ll be available for selection by mid-October," she said. "The Lazio match, probably."
Lazio. Ro. The Stadio Olimpico. October 19th.
I spent Saturday morning on the balcony with the System open, reviewing the season so far and running projections for the next phase. The numbers were remarkable.
[Season Review October 7th, 2017.]
[Overall: P18 W16 D1 L1. GF: 51. GA: 11. GD: 40.]
[Premier League: P7 W5 D1 L1. 16 pts. Position: 3rd.]
[Europa League: P2 W2. 6 pts. Top of Group H.]
[Squad Usage: All 28 first-team players have made competitive appearances. 3 GKs used. 5 CB partnerships deployed. 4 strikers rotated. 11 different goalscorers. Kevin Bray set-piece goals: 7.]
[Key trics: Goals per ga: 2.83. Goals conceded per ga: 0.61. Clean sheets: 10 in 18 matches (56%). xG outperformance: 8.4 the highest in the Premier League.]
[Upcoming: PL resus Oct 14. EL Group H MD3: Vitória SC (A), Oct 19. Then: Vitória (H) Nov 2, Marseille (A) Nov 23, Lazio (H) Dec 7. The autumn acceleration begins.]
By the following Tuesday, the internationals were trickling back. Neves arrived looking sharp two appearances for Portugal, one assist. Tarkowski returned from his first England camp buzzing, a man who had gone from Burnley’s third-choice centre-back to an international in four months.
Rodríguez strolled in from Colombia with the sa insouciant calm he brought to everything. And Wan-Bissaka, Kirby, Eze, and Blake ca back from the U21s together, their bond as a Palace quartet within the England setup growing stronger with every camp.
The machine was reassembling. Konaté was two weeks into his rehab and ahead of schedule. Chilwell was training fully. Tarkowski and Digne had proven themselves as more than capable deputies. The squad was deeper, more battle-tested, more unified than it had been in September.
I stood on the touchline at Beckenham on Wednesday afternoon, watching the full group train together for the first ti since Newcastle. The October sun was low and golden, the shadows long across the Beckenham grass. In the distance, beyond the training pitches, the London skyline was a haze of light and possibility.
Neville had moved his deadline to Christmas. Thirteen matches in five weeks. The gauntlet that separated the pretenders from the real thing.
I thought about what Carragher had said on MNF. The defeat freed them. They don’t have to be invincible anymore. They just have to be good.
He was right. The Chelsea defeat had hurt. The Konaté injury still haunted this injury was preventable and it would for a long ti. But the response had been the most important thing this team had done all season.
More important than the City draw. More important than silencing the Vélodro. Because anyone can win when things are going well. The asure of a team, the asure of a manager, is what happens when things go wrong.
Three wins. Seven goals. Three different lineups. The machine didn’t just recover. It proved that it was built to survive anything.
The international break was over. Ro was waiting. And I was ready.
***
Thank you for 50 Golden Tickets.
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