The festive period in English football is a unique, brutal, beautiful kind of madness. While the rest of the country winds down, indulging in the gentle, comforting rhythms of a family, food, and a well-earned rest, the footballing world accelerates, the fixture list a relentless, unforgiving, chaotic blur of matches that can make or break a season.
For my young, hungry, beautiful team, it was a chance to cement our place at the top of the table, to prove that our surge up the league was not just a fleeting, feel-good story, but the start of something real, something lasting, something special.
The two home games before the short Christmas break, against Brighton and West Ham, were not just matches; they were tests of our character, our resilience, our sheer, bloody-minded refusal to be beaten. And we passed them with flying colours.
