CHAPTER 175: EXPECTATIONS

Chapter 175: Expectations

November 16th, 2010

The Southampton team bus rumbled steadily along the M25, its sleek frame cutting through the misty English countryside.

Inside, the atmosphere was quiet and cool.

At the front of the bus, manager Alan Pardew sat hunched over his tablet, eyes fixed on a replay.

It was Crawley’s winning goal against Rosenborg, a stunning chip from Thiago that seemed to float in slow motion before nestling in the net.

Pardew watched the clip again.

Then again.

His jaw was tight, his brows drawn together, caught between admiration and irritation.

As a coach, he lived for structure, for patterns and planning but this goal had none of that.

It was bold, instinctive, and completely unpredictable.

A flash of brilliance that no tactics board could ever fully explain.

Pardew leaned back in his seat and let out a long sigh, rubbing his temple with his thumb.

"He just made it up," he said quietly to his assistant, shaking his head. "That little flick, that chip... you can’t plan for that."

He had warned his players not to take Crawley lightly, but he could feel it the unspoken doubt lingering in the air.

A quiet cynicism they all shared.

They’d seen this kind of story before: a lower-league underdog pulling off a shock win, the press jumping on it, calling them the next big thing.

But Pardew had been around long enough to know how those stories usually ended.

They made headlines for a week, maybe two.

Then the spark faded, and the real world took over.

Fairytales didn’t last long in football.

At the back of the bus, a few of the senior players sat close together, their conversation just audible over the steady hum of the tires on wet tarmac.

"They’re a good story," said Alex, a seasoned midfielder with more than a decade of matches behind him. He sat with his arms folded, voice calm but edged with skepticism. "But come on although they got promoted to league one, they’re still a League Two side. Their pitch is basically a mud pit, isn’t it?"

The others chuckled quietly, not disagreeing.

It wasn’t said with cruelty just the blunt realism that came with years in the game.

Crawley might have had their moment, but this was the league match, not a fairytale.

And in the end, the difference in class usually showed.

A striker, a burly man who had played in the top leagues, scoffed. "And the crowd? It’s just a few hundred or thousand people shouting at you. It’s nothing. We’ve played at Old Trafford. This is just a paycheck."

They weren’t being disrespectful, just realistic.

They were professional footballers, not romantics.

They knew that passion and heart only get you so far.

The game was about discipline, fitness, and talent.

And they believed they had more of all three.

Their journey to Crawley was more like a business trip.

Nothing more.

Meanwhile, down in Sussex, the silence had a different weight to it.

The training ground was still, the air heavy with moisture and the earthy scent of wet grass.

A chill hinted at the winter creeping in, but the cold wasn’t what made the players quiet, it was the moment.

They had just wrapped up their final session before the biggest match of their lives.

The usual banter was gone, replaced by a focused, almost reverent energy.

For weeks, the media had been calling them giant-killers but now, for the first time, they were starting to believe it themselves.

They weren’t under any illusions.

They knew they couldn’t out-muscle a team like Southampton.

But that had never been the plan.

Their strength wasn’t in brute force it was in belief, in precision, in ideas.

They were going to out-think them.

That was the mission.

Niels had spent the entire session drilling one thing: movement. He had Dev, Nate, and Thiago running constant, intricate patterns, pulling defenders out of their organized shape.

"They’re a machine," Niels had said, his voice a low rumble that carried across the field. "But machines have predictable movements. You have to find the tiny spaces between the cogs."

His words lingered in the minds of the players, not just as strategy, but as belief.

Southampton might have the stronger history the bigger stadium, even the Premier League pedigree, the name that carried weight.

But history doesn’t win matches.

Not on the day.

Movement, timing, and a bit of daring, that’s what could make the difference.

Niels had Dev and Nate drilling a rapid series of one-two passes tight, sharp exchanges meant to slice through Southampton’s relentless press like a knife through cloth.

It was a high-risk, high-reward strategy, the kind that left no room for hesitation.

To make it work, the connection between the two had to be near-telepathic passing, moving, then reappearing in a new pocket of space before the defense could reset.

It wasn’t just football.

It was controlled chaos, fluid and unpredictable, like jazz on a muddy pitch.

"We can’t get dragged into a physical battle," Dev said to Nate, his breath rising in pale clouds against the cold afternoon air. "We’ve got to be quicker and smarter."

Nate didn’t say a word. He just nodded, still catching his breath from the last drill. He didn’t need to respond.

He understood completely.

This wasn’t going to be won by muscle, it would be won in the space between decisions, in the half-seconds where instinct beat strength.

The two of them were opposites, and that was what made it work.

Nate, the quiet technician, precise and methodical.

Dev the bold creator, full of flair and unpredictability.

Individually, they were skilled.

But together, they were dangerous, a contradiction that made perfect sense on the pitch.

The night before the match, both teams settled into their pre-game routines.

The Southampton players, in their high-end hotel rooms, watched a movie or read a book, the thought of the morning’s game a dull, professional hum in the back of their minds.

They had a plan, they had the talent, and they had history on their side.

In their own quiet homes, the Crawley players were doing the same, but with a different kind of focus.

The Europa League had been a dream, a wild, beautiful ride that draped them in a cloak of pride. But it was also heavy now, almost surreal.

What lay ahead was something far more personal.

The League, their league wasn’t glamorous.

It was muddy pitches, early kickoffs, and crowds that knew your name.

It was in home.

And with that came a pressure that didn’t roar like the European nights but it whispered.

This wasn’t about headlines anymore.

This was about proving they belonged in the top stage.

That Crawley wasn’t just a lucky spark, but something more.

The fairytale had done its job.

Now it was time to write the rest of the story one built not on magic, but on grit, belief, and staying power.