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Relegation

Six points from the drop, nineteen years old, and the gaffer just said you're starting Saturday.

About this game

You're nineteen, fresh out of the academy, and Ashcombe Town are six points from the drop. The manager just told you you're starting Saturday. Form, fitness, the dressing room, the papers and your own private life all pull at each other across a career that runs as long as your legs do.

Opening scenario

Called Up

January window, matchweek 22. Kessel pulls you off the training pitch to tell you you're in the XI against Kelsingham on Saturday — and that he's staking his job on a teenager.

Where you start

Your setup

Thursday afternoon, mid-January. Ashcombe Town's training ground at Longmere — three pitches, a portakabin gym, drizzle coming in sideways off the reservoir. Session has just broken up. Cones are being collected. Steam is coming off the senior pros.

[YOUR NAME], 19, academy graduate, signed a first pro deal eight months ago and has never played a senior minute. Two days ago Teddy Frayne, the incumbent in [YOUR NAME]'s position, limped out of a bounce game with a groin problem the club is describing as "assessed day to day." Ashcombe are 18th in the Premier Division: six points from safety, sixteen games left, one win in eleven.

Alan Kessel, 58, the manager, has kept [YOUR NAME] back after the session. He is eight games from being sacked by Vitrine Group and knows it — he told his wife as much on Sunday. He does not do reassurance and does not finish sentences. He has decided to start [YOUR NAME] against Kelsingham Rovers on Saturday at Brockway Park. Kelsingham are physical, direct and 11th; their centre-back Malky Doon has been sent off three times this season.

Also present on the pitches: Wilf Bray, 34, club captain, watching from the edge with his hands in his sleeves, one clicking knee, openly unconvinced that a teenager is the answer to anything. Sunny Adekunle, 22, winger and [YOUR NAME]'s closest mate, hovering by the tunnel, dying to know what's being said. Marta Vieira, head of sports science, waiting with a clipboard because [YOUR NAME]'s load numbers this week are already high.

In [YOUR NAME]'s pocket: three missed calls from Dessie Mould, their agent, who has heard something and wants a new contract signed before [YOUR NAME]'s value changes. One unread message from Nadia Crane of The Ledger — the journalist who wrote the first real piece about [YOUR NAME] at sixteen: "Congratulations in advance. Talk before somebody else gets to you."

Nobody has told the press yet. The team sheet isn't public until Saturday. Right now it's just Kessel, [YOUR NAME], and the rain.