Three days was and still is a long ti in football.
It was long enough for a dressing room to either find itself or lose itself entirely, long enough for a manager to run out of ways to rearrange the sa thirteen nas on a whiteboard, and long enough for matchday to arrive.
Even if misfortune had befallen them, the world wasn’t going to wait for them to finish grieving.
Despite the growing consensus that Wigan might not even be able to win a ga in the upcoming weeks, not to ntion them keeping their 6th spot, the DW was still as lively as ever without a hint of change in the atmosphere as compared to previous ones.
The people making their way toward it that evening ca in the usual clusters, their scarves up against the cold, hands dug into their jacket pockets, and conversations already halfway through themselves by the ti the turnstiles ca into view.
"...three promotions, two relegations, and just being in the sa place we started at. Yet I am still here," one of them was saying, shaking his head in the way that couldn’t quite capture the disappointnt he was feeling.
"Every ti you think we’re finally going sowhere,"
"We were going sowhere," another suddenly interjected before the forr could finish.
"We were. Dawson had us going sowhere. The team was in a roll, but then half the squad decided to fall apart at the sa ti."
"I think we might have sinned or done sothing bad without knowing because there’s levels to how shit your luck can be, and ours is turning the deepest shade of shit I’ve seen and trust when I say, I’ve seen a lot."
"That’s gross and a very weird analogy, but at this point, I can’t even bla you," another voice in the conversation suddenly said as they made the last turn towards the last stream of people heading towards the entrance.
Then, from slightly behind the group, soone had their phone out, scrolling and squinting at the screen under the glow of the floodlight near the car park.
"Hang on," he said as the others half-turned towards him.
"Has anyone seen the team sheet?"
Nobody answered imdiately, but they all began taking out their phones to inspect.
"Leo’s on the bench."
A second passed as they inspected the sheet and truly saw Leo’s na amongst the substitutes, but then one of them made a sound that was sowhere between a scoff and a laugh.
"Well, it’s not the first ti they’ve done this since his injury. I actually think they might be spoiling him too much, but they bench him to keep him involved, more like rather than him being fit to play since he still has like a couple months give or take before we can see him on the pitch."
"Dawson knows how fragile these young lads can get. You keep them away from the squad entirely, and they start disappearing into their own heads. He’s putting him on the list so the kid feels part of it."
"Maybe."
"It’s not maybe, it’s just—" the man waved his hand loosely.
"That’s what you do with youngsters. You manage their confidence. Keep them close."
"I don’t know," the one with the phone said, still looking at it.
"Well, whatever it is or whatever plans they have, we’ll know eventually, won’t we?"
Nobody had anything else to say after that.
The conversation drifted into sothing else as they fed through the gates, and the stadium swallowed them up the way stadiums do, gradually, completely, until the individual voices beca part of a larger one.
After entering the stadium, it was like there was no concept of ti because from the mont they entered till the warm-ups ca and went, it felt like just a few minutes even though it was close to an hour.
The tunnel filled and emptied, and after that went by, the two sets of players stood on the pitch in front of the crowd, going through the handshakes and the formalities and the brief, functional small talk that professional footballers exchange before they spend ninety minutes trying to take sothing from each other.
The DW was not full.
But it was loud enough in the right places, and the people who were there had co with sothing to say.
Up in the gantry, the broadcasters had settled into their rhythm, and with a few minutes still to go, they turned their attention to the shape of the evening.
"Wigan Athletic sit sixth in the table tonight," the lead comntator said, "and if that sounds comfortable, I’d encourage you to look a little closer, because sixth is doing a lot of work to disguise what is a very precarious situation.
"They are level on points with the seventh-placed side, and it is goal difference, and goal difference alone, keeping them above the line. The gap between where they are and where they need to be is not a chasm. It’s a step. But steps, in the final stretch of a league season, have a way of becoming chasms very quickly."
His co-comntator let that sit for a mont before adding, "And the injury situation hasn’t helped. Dawson is working with a threadbare squad — thirteen senior players available, six of whom were his first-choice eleven when he joined after the start of the campaign. Whatever you think of the recent results, keeping this club in contention at all, with what he’s had available, has been no small thing."
"Bristol City, by contrast, sit thirteenth, mid-table, comfortable enough, with nothing particularly riding on this for them beyond pride and professionalism. The danger in that, for Wigan, is that a team with nothing to lose can sotis be the most difficult kind to face."
The mont the comntators finished, the caras cut to the pitch where Bristol City had won the toss and now their striker, tall and unhurried-looking, with the quiet confidence of soone who had done this a thousand tis, stood over the ball in the centre circle, waiting.
And he didn’t have to wait long because the referee brought the whistle to his lips and sounded it a mont later.
The striker looked up once, just once, at the space ahead of him and then kicked the ball back to start the ga.
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