The 6k run was no longer a ritual of self-improvement or a penance for my sins; it had become a desperate, frantic escape.
I was running from the suffocating atmosphere of the training ground, from the silent, resentful glances of my players, from the ghost of Lewis Grant that haunted every corridor. I was running from the man I saw in the mirror, a man I no longer recognized, a man who was losing control of the beautiful, fragile thing he had built.
The city was a blur of indifferent concrete and sleeping houses, but the landscape inside my own head was a war zone. The squad was fracturing, the hard-won unity of the preseason splintering into a dozen competing egos and resentments.
The argument between Eze and Connor over the free kick, a small, seemingly insignificant squabble, had been a symptom of a deeper malaise, a cancer of ambition and jealousy that was metastasizing within the heart of the team.
