The first half ended without a goal.

It was nil-nil and neither team was particularly happy about it, but for different reasons. Derby had come with a game plan and executed it reasonably well, keeping the score level away from home. Middlesbrough had created the better chances and had more of the ball and were frustrated that the quality in the final third hadn’t translated into something on the scoreboard. That particular frustration, the kind that comes from doing the right things without reward, was harder to shake than the frustration that comes from being outplayed. Being outplayed gave you something obvious to fix. This was subtler. The game had been there and it hadn’t been taken.

In the tunnel on the way in, nobody spoke much. There was the sound of studs on concrete and the distant noise of the crowd settling into half-time routines, the queue for the food stand, the murmur of people arguing about what they’d just watched. Will kept his head down and thought about the second half.

In the changing room David was controlled. Not angry, not satisfied. He went through things calmly and specifically, as he thought that the performance wasn’t completely hopeless, it was fixable. He had a whiteboard and he used it, drawing the Derby shape and marking with a marker where he wanted Middlesbrough’s movements to be different in the second half.

"Defensively, I’ve got no complaints," he said, his arms folded across his chest as he looked around the room. "We’ve been solid. Their forwards haven’t had a proper sniff. The problems are all at the other end." He looked at Callum briefly. "You’re getting the ball in good positions and doing nothing with it. Shoot earlier. You have the ability, back it." Callum nodded without speaking. "Liam. When the overlap isn’t on, play it simple and stay wide. You’ve cut inside three times in the first half and lost the ball every single time. I know it feels like the right decision but you’re wrong every single time."

Liam stared at the floor.

Around the room the rest of the squad sat quietly in that particular half-time stillness, somewhere between absorbing what had been said and preparing for what was coming. Will had his elbows on his knees and his hands loosely clasped in front of him, looking at the tiles between his boots. He wasn’t looking at the tiles specifically. He was thinking about the Derby defensive shape, about the moments in the first half where he had been close to something but the final decision had been half a beat late.

David’s eyes moved across the room and settled on Will for a moment. His face was unreadable in the way that made it impossible to tell whether what was coming was praise or correction.

"Smithson. Good half." He paused. "Now make the second half better."

That was all. He moved on.

Will drank from his water bottle and wiped his face with the bottom of his shirt. Around him the noise of the changing room continued, the clattering of boot studs on tiles, the ripping sound of someone’s tape being adjusted, Liam muttering something at the floor that wasn’t meant for anyone in particular. The physio moved between players checking a knee here, a calf there. Someone’s phone buzzed on the bench and nobody looked at it.

Will sat with it quietly. A good half was a decent start but it wasn’t what he was here for. He wanted something decisive. He wanted to leave the pitch having affected the outcome, not just having been present for ninety minutes. Presence without impact was a participation trophy and he hadn’t come this far for that.

He thought about the Derby defensive shape. They pressed high but they held their back line in a flat four that was disciplined. The weakness, if there was one, was in the transition when the press was beaten. When their press was bypassed properly, their wide midfielders had to recover ground quickly and they weren’t always perfectly organised in the moments right after possession was lost. The window was small. Maybe three or four seconds. But three or four seconds was enough if you already knew where you wanted the ball to go before you received it.

He thought about what the system had shown him in the first half. Their defensive midfielder tended to step across toward the ball side during build-up, which left the opposite half space slightly exposed for the two or three seconds before the centre-backs shuffled across to cover. The overlay had flagged it twice in the first half and he hadn’t acted on it quickly enough either time. In the second half he would be ready earlier.

He went back out for the second half with a very specific picture in his head.

Forty-eight minutes. A Middlesbrough throw-in near the halfway line on the left side.

The throw came in to Marcus, who controlled it and played it quickly to Will on the turn. The Derby number six stepped across as expected, the pattern Will had been waiting for. Will waited one beat longer than felt comfortable, letting the covering centre-back commit to stepping toward him, then slipped the ball back to Marcus with the outside of his boot. It was a tight pass in a tight space and it was exactly right. Marcus had already started moving before receiving it, which was the product of a partnership being built through weeks of training. The switch came immediately to the right back who had pushed up on the overlap.

The right back had two options. Will had already made the run. He was already in the half space on the right, arriving at pace into the gap the system had identified, the gap left by the Derby defensive midfielder who had followed the ball left and hadn’t recovered the three steps he needed to close the space.

The right back played it first time.

Will took it with his left foot and drove at the last Derby centre-back. He didn’t use a trick. He used pace and the angle of his body to shape as if he were going outside, waited for the defender’s weight to shift, then cut the ball inside across the centre-back’s planted foot and played a low driven pass across the face of the six-yard box. The pass was hit with enough pace to clear the goalkeeper’s near-post position but enough accuracy to find the back post area where Callum was already arriving.

Callum was arriving from the back post. He didn’t need a touch. He slid in and turned the ball into the open net from two yards.

The crowd noise changed shape entirely. That particular sound of a home crowd when a goal goes in, something that rises from the stomach rather than the throat, spread across the stands at Rockliffe. Will had turned away before the ball even crossed the line because he had felt the geometry of it when he played the pass. He knew. He raised one fist to shoulder height, nothing excessive, just acknowledging it, and then Callum was on him and half the team arrived seconds later in a bundle of arms and noise.

[Ding!]

[Assist registered: 25 Credits]

[Match Rating update: 8.1]

He untangled himself from Callum’s grip and jogged back. Twenty minutes left. A one-goal lead against a team that would now be forced to come forward. Twenty minutes of defending the lead and picking them off on the counter.

He was genuinely looking forward to it.

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