Chapter 69: Chapter 69: Preston
(Jamie POV)
Jamie woke before his alarm on Saturday and lay still for a second, already knowing the day.
He was starting. Against Preston.
The room told him the rest. His boots were by the door, cleaned last night. His shin pads sat on the chair. His school folder still stuck half out of his bag from Friday, an assignment inside it that was due Wednesday and had no business being in his head today. His Tranmere training jacket was folded over the back of the chair.
He did not lie there long. Lying there let his mind run.
He got up, and he moved through the morning the way he was learning to, like it was normal, even though it was not yet.
He checked his bag once. Then, a few minutes later, without deciding to, he checked it again.
Downstairs, Alan was already in the kitchen with the radio low.
"Eaten?" Alan asked.
"About to."
"Don’t go on an empty stomach. And check the time, transport won’t wait for you." Alan did not make it more than that. No speech. He was not coming to the game, and neither of them pretended today needed one. "Good luck. Play your game."
Jamie ate, and adjusted the same boot lace twice in the hall, and looked at the clock even though he was early.
Alan dropped him at the academy base and did not linger.
"Text me the score," he said, and pulled away.
Jamie stood at the doors with his bag on his shoulder and felt the thing he had not expected to feel.
Not fear. Just the space where two people used to be.
At the trial, and at his first start, Garcia had been somewhere at the edge of it, a still figure with a folder, and Alan near him. Today there was no rope to glance at. No one watching who was on his side before the whistle even went.
This one was just his, and the team’s.
He was surprised by how much heavier that made his bag feel on the walk in.
In the team room, the weekend pack was on the table, and someone had left the league table on top.
EFL Youth Alliance North West — U18 Table
Blackpool U18 — 12 ptsPreston North End U18 — 10 ptsBolton Wanderers U18 — 9 ptsTranmere Rovers U18 — 7 ptsWrexham U18 — 7 ptsPort Vale U18 — 6 ptsSalford City U18 — 5 ptsCarlisle United U18 — 4 ptsMorecambe U18 — 3 ptsAccrington Stanley U18 — 1 pt
Preston second. Tranmere fourth.
Nobody had to say why the game mattered. The two lines in the table said it on their own.
The base filled up the way it always did, in ones and twos.
Boots tapped along the corridor floor. Kit was laid out on the benches in numbers. A roll of physio tape went from hand to hand, and the water bottles got filled at the cooler in a slow queue.
And every few minutes someone glanced at that table on the desk and then pretended they had not.
Noah Taylor got there and started doing what he always did, trying to loosen the room. He was slim and light on his feet, light-brown hair still damp, that easy grin never far off.
"Second," he said, nodding at the table. "So they’ve got further to fall."
Callum Wright dropped his bag with a thud. He was stockier than Noah, louder before he had even sat down.
"They only look second ’cause they’ve not played us yet," Callum said. "We fix that today."
A few of the boys laughed. It helped.
Ethan Brooks came in quieter than both of them. He was taller, neat-haired, and he did more watching than talking, taking in the room from the edge of the bench. He was a sub today, and he already had the still, serious look of a lad who wanted to be on the sheet and was not.
Mercer brought them in and put Preston up on the screen. He did not read a team sheet. Everyone already knew it.
"This is what they do," he said, and clicked through their shape. "They keep the ball. They’re second because they move it well, not because one lad’s a superstar. So we deal with the pattern, not the names."
Then he gave them the names anyway, because you had to.
"Riley Shaw. Their eight. He lives between our lines, in the pockets. If he’s turning, we’re in trouble, so somebody’s on his back the second it goes into him."
He tapped the screen.
"Harvey Cole sits in front of their back four and sets the tempo. Don’t let him get comfortable. Isaac Monroe up top will pin our centre-backs all day. And down our right," he looked at Jamie, "Kieran Doyle, their winger, and Archie Bennett, their left-back, behind him."
Jamie kept his eyes on the screen.
"We can hurt them out there," Mercer said. "But only properly. Finn pins Bennett. When Finn pins him, Jamie goes. When Jamie goes, Noah covers the space. If we lose it, centre-back slides early. We use that side, we protect that side. Same as always."
Jamie’s name was in there, but folded into the plan, one moving part of it. That was how he liked it now.
Preston came out to warm up, and they did not look like a team you could bully.
Their keeper, Finley Carter, was tall and loud, coming for every cross in the warm-up and claiming them clean, talking the whole time.
Their captain organised the back line without smiling once. Lucas Hartley, broad through the shoulders, pointing men into place. Beside him the other centre-back, Fielding, was quieter and better on the ball, stepping up into midfield during the passing drill like he wanted to be a midfielder when nobody was defending.
In the rondo, Harvey Cole moved the ball with two touches and never looked rushed.
And Riley Shaw kept appearing where you did not expect him, behind a teammate, off the shoulder, always asking for the ball in the place where the pressure was thinnest.
Kieran Doyle, the one Jamie would live with all afternoon, had quick feet and a clean first touch. He was not loud about any of it. He just did it.
Jamie watched him and told himself nothing clever. He just filed it.
TWEET.
The match kicked off, and Preston took the ball and kept it.
They did it through the middle, not down Jamie’s side. Harvey Cole dropped between the centre-backs, took it off them, and started moving it left and right. Their full-backs pushed high. And Riley Shaw kept drifting into the gap behind Tranmere’s midfield, showing for it, turning where he could.
From right-back, Jamie read the problem before anyone scored from it.
Tranmere’s midfield was arriving half a second late every time. The centre-backs kept pointing, telling the runners to be picked up, and the passes were being cleared too fast, so the striker up top was already on his own, chasing balls that came straight back.
It was not panic. It was just a better team keeping the ball, and Tranmere chasing the tempo instead of setting it.
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