The ball flew powerfully at goal, homing in on the bottom right corner, but a slight deflection from Allison sent it a little farther to the right and just past the right post.

{Oh no no no!)

{How did that not go in!?}

Dele Alli had his hand on his head as he stared on flabbergasted that the ball hadn’t found the back of the net.

Even Jason was beginning to get a bit frustrated now. He had made quite a few beautiful plays and created four clear goal scoring chances, but his team’s current abysmal form in front of goal had only seen one of the chances converted.

There was only so many times he could make these kinds of plays before the opponents began going for his legs instead of the ball whenever he looked like he wanted to start something.

Scratching his head in frustration, Jason headed to the corner flag to take the corner kick.

He tried to pick out a Tottenham player but the cross from the corner was easily cleared by the Liverpool side and the Tottenham players quickly rushed up the field to defend against a counter attack.

They managed to hold on till the referee finally blew the whistle to end the first half of the game.

{It’s been quite the first half of football. Goals from both sides and beautiful attacking and defending football from both sides}

{Even now we still don’t know who will end up taking the three points or if they’ll have to share the points. Both sides have been pretty equally matched so far, however some would argue that Tottenham should be in the lead} 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

{They have been brilliant in creating chances, but they just haven’t been able to convert their chances, but if they can keep up this brilliant display, then they might be able to end the game with the three points in their grasp}

Jason grabbed a bottle of water, guzzling it as he walked into the tunnel, receiving a pat on the back from Conte as he walked past him.

One of the team’s physios quickly sidled up to Jason asking about his condition and whether he felt anything out of place.

Offhandedly, Jason replied that there was nothing wrong so far. His ankle was holding out well and he didn’t feel at any risk despite having taken a few hits in the first half.

Nodding his head, the physio followed Jason to the locker room and began giving a Jason a massage as soon as he sat down.

Jason had said there was nothing wrong, but this was still part of the procedure to ensure that there wasn’t too much accumulated stress on his leg too quickly.

Jason just sat there and let the medic do his job.

If it was up to him, he felt that the continuous attention was a bit too much at this point.

He had made a full recovery and though he was a injury risk, he wasn’t going to become injured just by taking a few hits on the leg.

He was a professional athlete after all, however the massage and special treatment was something he wouldn’t reject.

The team only had so many physios.

Having one personally taking care of you first during games was something reserved for the team’s superstars normally and definitely a welcome thing to Jason.

What Jason didn’t know was that injury or not, he was already going to be receiving superstar treatment from the Tottenham team and his performance in the first half was only cementing that factor.

With how much he seemed to have pushed himself, making impressive play after play, Conte had sent the physio to help he recover from the fatigue so he could keep up this performance in the second half of the game.

Conte didn’t have much to say to the players other than to motivate them and tell them that they had to be more clinical.

Liverpool was already a team that didn’t have a splendid defense thanks to their tactics of throwing themselves forward.

Their star center back, Van Dijk was someone who helped to cover this weakness with his spectacular zonal defending style that could slow down opponents or force them into awkward shooting positions, but he was away injured right now.

It was already clear that Liverpool was having trouble stopping Tottenham’s rapid counterattack but since they were looking for a goal, they didn’t dare to stay back to defend so it was a weakness that Tottenham could exploit.

However that weakness wouldn’t mean much if the Tottenham side couldn’t convert their chances to goals.

If Liverpool somehow managed to take the lead and then began defending, the game would become a lot more difficult so Conte emphasized to his players that they had to take their chances.

After speaking about a few more things related to the tactics, Conte sent his players back out to the field.

As Jason walked down the tunnel, Conte caught up to him.

"Good work out there in the first half. I need you to keep creating chances like that in the second half,"

"We need to take the lead as soon as possible," Conte said to Jason.

In the first half, Jason had not only done good work as a forward, but he had also done well as a holding midfielder when needed.

Even though a lot of times Jason drifted away from the center and into Emerson Royal’s zone on the flanks, Conte had tacitly chosen to ignore this as it hadn’t affected his effectiveness.

Jason’s finishing was very good and he had quite the ability to score goals, but right now they needed his creativity more and his creativity needed him to have a freer role than the constrained role of forwards in Conte’s usual formation.

So as long as it helped him play well, Conte was willing to ignore certain minute things like Jason drifting out of position sometimes.

As long as the team ended with the win.