Christmas Day was a rest day. A proper rest day, sanctioned by Rebecca and protected by the fixture list Boxing Day was twenty-four hours away, but the morning training session on December 26th was light, recovery-focused, the squad would convene at two o'clock for pre-match. Which meant that Christmas Day, for once, genuinely belonged to us.
The squad had scattered. Sakho was with his family in London he had sent a photo earlier of his two daughters attacking a mountain of presents under a tree that was bigger than the apartment containing it.
Dann was in Liverpool with his parents. Neves was in Portugal via private jet, having left Stoke immediately after the match, and managed to squeeze a trip home before Boxing Day. Konaté was with Sakho's family: the eighteen-year-old had been adopted as an unofficial son by the older Frenchman, who had decided that no teammate would spend Christmas alone if it fell within his jurisdiction.
