Chapter 495 - 101 — Fulham Away (I)
Saturday, November 4th, and the hotel moved through its routine without drama — breakfast, pre-match meal, activation work with the rest of the squad, nothing that hadn’t already been covered two days earlier.
At the final short meeting, Ten Hag confirmed the eleven.
MANCHESTER UNITED (4-2-3-1)
Onana.
Dalot — Maguire — Evans — Shaw.
Eriksen — Demien.
Garnacho — Bruno — Antony.
Højlund.
"When we attack, you can go forward if the structure allows it," Ten Hag told Demien, one last time before they left the room. "But somebody stays connected to the center. Case isn’t there to clean it up if it goes wrong. Palhinha will try to disrupt our central possession. Robinson will try to hurt us in transition the moment we lose it. That’s the match."
Nothing Demien hadn’t already heard on Friday, just said once more so it sat fresh in his head walking out the door.
He wasn’t nervous about Palhinha.
His body had long since stopped asking whether he belonged on a pitch like this — ninety-three overall now, ninety-nine in acceleration, sprint speed, vision, short passing, long passing, ball control, composure, balance, strength, stamina, Press Resistant sitting underneath all of it like a foundation nobody could see. Whatever question Palhinha posed physically had an answer built into him before kickoff.
The real pressure sat somewhere else entirely.
He could make his own decisions correctly, every time, without fail.
He couldn’t make anyone else’s decisions for them.
The drive to Craven Cottage ran short and quiet, London traffic thinning as they got closer, a small crowd already gathering outside the away entrance despite the early kickoff. The dressing room smelled the way away dressing rooms always did — fresh paint over something older, kit hampers stacked along one wall, United’s own branding pinned up over whatever had been there for the home side during the week.
Warm-up passed in its usual shape, short passing, movement patterns, a block of finishing that ended with Højlund smashing three in a row past the reserve keeper and pointing at his own chest afterward like it proved something.
Then the teams walked out, Craven Cottage tighter and louder than its size suggested it should be, the away end already singing before either side had touched the ball.
Demien took his position in midfield.
Palhinha settled a few yards away, saying nothing, not even a glance in his direction — just a man doing his job, waiting.
Fulham came out aggressive rather than sitting deep, and inside the first minute Demien understood exactly what they intended.
The first central pass reached him with Palhinha already closing from behind, Andreas Pereira drifting to cut the forward lane before the ball had even arrived.
Demien checked both positions in the half-second he had.
Palhinha made shoulder contact right as the ball reached his feet.
「TRAIT ACTIVATED」 「Press Resistant」 「STATS ACTIVE」 「Ball Control: 99 | Balance: 99 | Strength: 99」
He absorbed it without breaking stride, turned across Palhinha instead of away from him, and carried the ball straight into the space Pereira had just vacated trying to cut the wrong lane.
Palhinha didn’t dive into a second challenge — he pulled up and recovered instead, choosing not to gamble twice in the same phase.
Demien saw two options ahead of him: Garnacho starting to break outside Fulham’s right-back, and Bruno dropping between the lines to offer the safer central route.
He chose Bruno, the pass reaching him clean.
Bruno’s first touch was good, his combination attempt with Højlund a beat too ambitious — Fulham’s center-back read it and cut it out.
The whole sequence in miniature: Demien had solved his own problem in half a second. The attack had still died three passes later, somewhere entirely outside his control.
Fulham adjusted almost immediately.
Palhinha stopped chasing him around the pitch and started protecting the central lanes instead, content to concede Demien some deeper possession rather than keep gifting him space behind a midfielder who kept losing the individual duel.
Marco Silva’s message from the touchline was easy enough to read even without hearing it — stop pressing the one player who couldn’t be pressed out of it, start closing everyone around him instead.
United began controlling more of the ball as a result.
Whenever Fulham’s block shifted too far toward one side, Demien slowed the tempo and moved it the other way.
「LEGENDARY SKILL ACTIVATED」 「Toni Kroos — Metronome」
One switch released Garnacho into space down the flank. He attacked the fullback, got to the byline, and won United a corner that turned into a genuine chance.
In the eighth minute, United thought they’d scored.
Eriksen’s delivery curled into the box. Maguire attacked it from a position that looked marginal even in real time, getting a touch on the original ball. It ran through to Garnacho on the far side, who cushioned it back across goal for Højlund to finish from close range.
Old Trafford’s away end erupted — except it wasn’t Old Trafford, it was Craven Cottage’s tiny corner reserved for United’s traveling support, and for a few seconds it didn’t matter.
Fulham 0 — 1 Manchester United
Højlund was still mid-celebration when Demien noticed the delay before anyone else fully registered it — the referee’s hand rising to his ear, players slowing rather than sprinting back to halfway.
VAR.
The replay ran twice on the big screen: Maguire, fractionally beyond the last defender, reaching for the original delivery before it ever got to Garnacho.
Offside interference.
The goal came off the board.
FULHAM 0 — 0 MANCHESTER UNITED
No shouting, no protest thrown at the officials — Demien simply turned and called the midfield back into shape, already thinking about the restart rather than the decision that had just erased it.
Fulham grew more conservative around him after that opening exchange, tightening their own distances rather than letting Palhinha step out of position again and again.
That created a different kind of problem.
Demien was receiving comfortably now, seeing every forward option laid out in front of him with total clarity.
The options themselves weren’t always making the right decision.
Højlund peeled off the shoulder of the center-backs on one sequence, timing his run well.
Demien saw it instantly.
「LEGENDARY SKILL ACTIVATED」 「Mesut Özil — Eye-of-Needle」
The through ball split the defense before it could step up as a unit.
Højlund got there, but Leno had already closed the angle down hard, and the shot from a narrowing space went straight into his body.
「MATCH MISSION PROGRESS」 「Clear Chances Created: 1/2」
Demien clapped once, acknowledged the run with a raised hand toward Højlund, and reset without dwelling on it — not every pass like that turned into a goal, and he’d stopped expecting it to.
A few minutes later, he found Antony out wide with Robinson caught slightly higher than he wanted to be.
Demien immediately started drifting inside, expecting either the overlap released or the ball worked back into the space he was creating.
Antony took another touch instead and went at Robinson directly.
Robinson won the duel clean.
Fulham broke forward off the turnover.
That one belonged entirely to Antony, and Demien didn’t waste a second being annoyed about it — he was already sprinting back.
「LEGENDARY SKILL ACTIVATED」 「Gareth Bale — Galáctico Surge」 「STATS ACTIVE」 「Acceleration: 99 | Sprint Speed: 99」
He recovered the central lane fast enough to take Pereira out of the equation as an option.
But Robinson was already beyond him on the outside, Willian dropping into support, and Fulham simply played around the one lane Demien had managed to close.
Robinson carried it down the left and put a cross into the box.
Maguire got there first and cleared.
He’d repaired one route. Fulham had simply used another.