Chapter 24: The Quiet Climb
Sunday, 14 December
The training ground was wet again.
It hadn't rained. It was just the usual mist settling over everything, leaving the grass and the players' jackets damp.
Niels stood at the edge of the pitch with his arms folded, watching the squad jog through their recovery work.
The Burton game had ended 1–1.
It hadn't been a great match, but it wasn't a bad result either. Crawley had gone behind and still managed to come back.
The old Crawley might have fallen apart after conceding.
This team didn't.
They stayed calm, kept playing and eventually got themselves back into the game. That was progress.
Reece jogged past Niels and gave him a quick look.
They both understood what it meant.
Niels nodded.
There wasn't much else to say.
The team had taken a setback and dealt with it.
Now they were starting to learn how to respond.
Later that afternoon, Niels sat alone in his small office.
Match footage played quietly on his laptop. Outside, the pitch lights were still on, but the training ground was empty.
He watched the goal again.
It had been a proper team move. Everyone had done their part, and for once, everything had worked exactly as planned.
Niels leaned back and let out a slow breath. He picked up his pen and wrote a quick note on the pad beside him.
His phone buzzed.
It was a message from his sister.
"Mum made your favourite. Nobody else wanted it 😂"
She had attached a photo.
There was a half-eaten casserole on the table and a cake beside it, with a plastic fork stuck into the middle.
Niels stared at the picture for a while.
The kitchen looked familiar. The curtains. The corner of the counter. Small details he somehow recognised without remembering why.
He typed back.
"Tell Mum I would've eaten all of it. And tell Dad the fork in the cake is ridiculous."
Her reply came almost immediately.
"He put ketchup on it too. Call us soon, okay?"
Niels smiled at the message.
It was the sort of silly family conversation he remembered seeing in old photos, even if he couldn't remember actually being part of it.
He didn't answer the last message.
Instead, he locked his phone and placed it face down beside his notes.
It wasn't because he didn't care.
That was the problem.
Every message from his family brought the same feeling. A little guilt. A little distance. And a reminder that he still didn't know how to bridge the gap.
Since waking up in this strange version of his life, he had no real memories of them.
Only photographs.
Small clues.
Pieces of a life that were supposed to belong to him.
They were his family, but it sometimes felt like they belonged to a story he'd never lived.
Still, he looked at the phone again and smiled.
Even if it hurt a little.
Monday
The meeting room was warm from the old radiator, which always seemed to make more noise than it needed to.
Niels was already at the whiteboard when the senior players came in.
Accrington Stanley were next. It was an away game against a tough, physical side. The kind of match that rarely made the highlights but could tell you a lot about a team.
Niels wrote two words on the board:
Ugly.
Composed.
"We need to keep this one simple," he said. "Control the pace. Don't let the game become a coin toss."
Reece leaned back with his arms folded. Luka spun a pen between his fingers.
Nate had a notebook open in front of him.
He'd started taking notes after matchday 12.
Niels noticed and gave him a small nod.
"They're good at turning games into chaos," Niels continued. "We can't let them do that."
There was no big speech.
No attempt to get everyone fired up.
They knew what was expected.
The climb wasn't about doing something special every week.
It was about doing the right things again and again.
That afternoon's training session was sharp and focused.
There were no sloppy passes or players switching off. Everyone knew what they needed to do.
Max still had the shot against Burton on his mind. It had hit the post, and he clearly wanted another chance. But he wasn't forcing anything. He kept his passes simple and stayed focused throughout the drills.
Luka and Dev worked well together, using quick one-touch passes in tight spaces.
Reece was talking constantly, organising the left side and keeping everyone in position.
The players outside the starting eleven were working just as hard. Ellis, Korey and Qazi all trained as if they could be called on at any moment.
There were no complaints.
Niels watched from the side with his hands in his pockets, making a few notes.
After a while, he put the notebook away.
He just watched.
The team was changing slowly. They weren't there yet, but they were becoming more organised and more confident.
The climb was taking time.
But they were moving forward.
That night, Niels heated up some food and sat on the small sofa with his laptop.
He opened the same file he'd been writing in since pre-season. The one where he kept his thoughts, notes and things he never said out loud.
He scrolled through a few of the older entries.
"What comes after survival?"
Then:
"The teams that rise don't always win. But they don't lose the wrong ones."
He clicked underneath and started typing.
"You don't always notice when something changes. Sometimes everything is quiet, and then suddenly, everyone feels it."
He read it again.
Then he stopped typing.
Niels picked up his phone.
There was still one unread message from his sister.
"Call us soon, okay?"
He opened the reply box and stared at it for a few seconds.
Finally, he typed:
"I'll try. Soon. Just tell Mum thanks."
He sent it.
For now, that was enough.
Niels still didn't know how to explain everything he was feeling. He wasn't even sure he could explain it to himself.
But at least he had said something.
Maybe that was a start.
Outside, frost was settling over the streets again.
Niels stood by the back window, looking out at the empty road. There were no cars and hardly any movement.
He didn't need attention or headlines.
He just wanted progress.
Calm. Consistent. Steady.
The kind that lasts when things get difficult.
Matchday 19 was coming.
And they would be ready.