©Novel Buddy
Greatest Of All Legends-Chapter 785: Settling In III
*Huff* *Huff*
Jason breathing was a bit strained as he jogged around the pitch to warm up before the drills began.
After 2 laps around the field, he switched to short sprints and finished up with some stretches.
When he was sure his muscles were warmed enough, he began juggling the ball, first just keeping it from touching the ground but a little while later he began adding a few tricks for variation.
Juggling was one of the things that anyone who wanted to grow in football had to do as simple as it looked.
Juggling helped to grow intimacy and understanding with the ball as it increased experience in ways the ball could arrive at one’s feet.
Adding tricks was not just because the players were bored, but because the more tricks one could do with the ball, the easier it was to control unexpected ball movements in an actual game.
While Jason did his warm up routines, the cameras stayed on him and so did the eyes of quite a few of his new teammates.
The cameras needed to get some shots of the new players’s first days at training while the players watching were looking to see what he could do.
Jason noticed all this but didn’t think much of it.
This much was normal to him. Players at any new club always wanted to know what the new guy could do, especially if the player was a threat to their position in the starting lineup.
From the initial curiosity, things could graduate to a hazing, or a competition of skills between the old players and the new guy.
To Jason, either one didn’t matter, he liked the attention he was getting anyway. It was proof that he had come a long way.
"Gather round boys," Nuno put an end to Jason’s warm up with a loud call.
Kicking up the ball one last time, Jason caught it with a no-look pass as it came down, sending it towards a bag filled with other balls.
Since most of the starting lineup wasn’t even at the training ground as they were undergoing recovery, Nuno had decided to allow the U-18 team to train with the main team today.
Thus, the training ground was filled with a lot of faces that Jason didn’t recognize as Tottenham players while the U-18 players were happy at the chance to train with the main team... Or some of it at least.
The players were soon split off into training groups depending on their positions and they were led off by the various position coaches.
Jason was scheduled to join the forwards, but before he left, he was called aside by Nuno.
"I know that you can play on both flanks but I’ve mostly seen you on the left,"
"I plan to majorly play you on the right since we have Son on the left,"
"Of course, if need be, or if situations call for it, you might sometimes play on the left, but you’re primarily a right winger in my mind," Nuno told Jason, who nodded.
Since he could use both feet, it didn’t matter which side he played on though he was usually more of a creative player when he was on the right while he did more shooting on the left flank.
He could use both feet, but his default was still his right foot, after all. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞
"Hopefully situations wouldn’t call for you to play attacking midfield or striker either," Nuno joked as he knew Jason had also appeared in those positions a few times, but he’d rather not that Jason played those positions as it would mean the original people in those positions were out of commission.
"Anyway, for position training, unless I say otherwise, you’ll be on the right wing,"
"For today, take it easy, stay in your element. I know some of the guys will try to push you and you will want to show them what you can do, but don’t stress too much about it,"
"Your first priority is to settle into our game, learn how we play and find your way of fitting in,"
"You might feel that there is a lot of pressure for you to hit the ground running, but don’t worry about it, just do your best without bringing any detrimental effects to yourself,"
"Train as hard as you can, but don’t overdo it, this isn’t the youth level anymore where they leave you to your devices,"
"You’re a part of something bigger. If you cannot play because you got injured, it’ll affect not only you, alright,"
Somewhere while Nuno was talking he had forgotten that Jason was a bonafide player with trophies already in the bag.
He had simply been trying to take the pressure off Jason when he unintentionally gave the speech he usually gave to kids who just joined the main team.
"I know coach, I’ll stay within reasonable bounds," Jason nodded, knowing that a lot of eyes would be on him and would stop him from overtraining.
Not that he planned to overtrain, he had learnt balance from being with Ronaldo the last half year.
"Right, I’m not sure if they told you but there’s a bit of a weakness in your ankle ligament from your last injury, so I’ll be easing you into the game,"
"If you don’t start the next few games, it’s not because I have something against you," Nuno added.
"... Oh?" Jason was a bit surprised as he hadn’t heard about this.
Not to mention that he felt fine. Nothing seemed wrong with his ankle as far as he was concerned, but it was good to know that he was at risk of injury... Not high risk, but risk was risk.
"Alright, off you go," Nuno sent Jason away, wondering to himself why he had said so much.
In a way maybe he was still feeling that his job wasn’t very secure.
He wasn’t used to managing major stars either, since he had coached Wolves before this.
His job wasn’t as secure as he would have liked it to be as the pre-season results hadn’t exactly been stellar.
They had drawn quite a few games that could have been won and though things were shaping up as he could see, it might be a bit too slow for the Tottenham board.
Bringing in Jason had both strained and eased things with the management as the board were happy that they got a good player, but not too happy at having to commit to such a high wage bill for a single player.
Only with good results after the season began could he begin to feel secure, hence his hands on approach to everything leading up to the new season.
Under new management... his management, Tottenham had to hit the ground running.







