Surprisingly, Jason barely celebrated his goal and only did a small fist pump as he turned back.

Perhaps it was out of respect for the opponents, or that he didn’t consider them a challenge worth celebrating scoring against, or... Maybe it was just a sudden thought, no one really knew.

Jason’s lack of enthusiasm on the goal didn’t translate to his teammates though.

He was quickly surrounded and jumped on, receiving hugs and high fives from his teammates as he headed back to his team’s half.

The Mura players were now beginning to look down. It had now dawned on them that this wasn’t a fantasy story where they were the main characters.

This game was already beyond them now and even if they pulled out all stops, their chances of coming back was only about 15% and this was because of Tottenham’s current situation.

The full strength of the team wasn’t on the pitch, they were a man down, and their defense wasn’t much to boast about at their level.

If not the chances would be even lower.

But they would still give it their all and they did just that, even stunning everyone and managing to score a last minute goal on the counter, reducing the deficit to one goal, but at the final whistle, they were still the losing side.

However they had put up a good fight and everyone watching understood and respected that.

Jason grabbed a bottle and poured some in his mouth and was about to pour some on his head, but was hugged and patted on the back but Conte.

"Good work!" Conte was clearly happy and went on to share commendations with other members of the squad while Jason poured some water on his head.

He wasn’t even tired yet and this little taste had left him wanting more so he could only let the water run through his hair and cool down his enthusiasm a bit.

He was still being monitored and there would definitely be checks on his leg before the medical team would allow the manager to give him more minutes.

Weirdly enough, because he was playing as a wingback which was technically a defender, he didn’t get tackled much since he hadn’t gotten into too many attacking positions in the short minutes he had been on.

So that was pretty good. Now he could only hope for more minutes in coming games.

The Tottenham players soon gathered to thank the few traveling fans who had made the journey to Slovenia to support them before finally heading to the dressing room where they received praise from Conte for their unyielding attitude and their determination to win.

It was one of the things Conte loved to see from his players and the squad had really shown that tonight with their performance.

Some parts still needed brushing up, especially the late goal they conceded and that the spirit to fight wasn’t shown by everyone on the pitch at all moments, but these were things that they would have to work on as time went by.

For today, the players were in a celebratory mood.

***

With a string of good results, Tottenham carried on their preparations for their next game in the premier league.

A home game against Brentford who were just 3 points behind them but sitting at 12th place on the league table as opposed to Tottenham who were 7th.

Despite being 7th Tottenham were quite a distance from the title race with Chelsea seated at the top of the table with 30 points.

Man City and Liverpool had 29 and 28 points respectively and were in the title race with Chelsea, while Tottenham was a whole 11 points away.

At this point one could almost say Tottenham was out of the title race unless they somehow kept winning all their games and racking up points while the top teams dropped points, but such a scenario was going to be very tough to pull off.

Not impossible, but almost impossibly tough because those teams were at the peak of their powers at the moment and honestly speaking, Tottenham were still quite leaky despite improvements in their performance over the last few games.

Whether their attacking capabilities would be able to make up for that in the games to come, that remained to be seen.

However now that Jason was back from injury, a lot of eyes were on Tottenham again.

Jason’s goal and brilliant performance on his first game back from injury hadn’t gone unnoticed and teams that had Tottenham on their schedule had begun putting more efforts into their tactics as they now had an extra problem to deal with.

An annoyingly tricky one.

Time passed and it was soon the twelfth month of the year and with the twelfth month came more matches, the first of which for Tottenham was on the second day of the new month.

*4 months into the season, will Jason finally get his first start?*

News articles and tweets about all sorts of football topics filled the online space and even some of the offline platforms but the players themselves were preparing for their upcoming game.

**2nd December 2021**

Tottenham welcomed Brentford at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, each team ready to battle it out for the 3 points at stake. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

With Tottenham playing the 3-4-3 formation and Brentford playing the 3-5-2 formation under Thomas Frank, the two sides arranged themselves in a somewhat similar formation.

Once again, Jason was on the bench as he was still being closely monitored and Conte believed that there was still more to Lucas Moura’s current form.

Lucas had gotten two assists in the last game, building off his previous form and that was good enough reason for Conte to choose to keep him in the starting lineup.

However Moura knew that his position was under contention and if he didn’t keep playing well, his starting spot was about to be taken away.

Moura himself couldn’t deny that Jason was a better player than him and could do more on the pitch, but he wasn’t about to give up his starting spot so easily either.

Either way, the pressure was on.

*Fweeeeeeeee*

The game begun.