Monday, November 13th, and Demien walked into St George's Park like a man returning somewhere familiar rather than somewhere he needed to prove anything about.
Staff greeted him by name without needing a second look. His kit was already hung and folded before he'd found his room. Nobody treated his arrival as an occasion anymore.
The league table followed him in anyway.
"One point," a Liverpool midfielder said at breakfast, not quite hiding a grin behind his coffee. "Don't get comfortable up there."
"Two behind," a City player added from the next table over. "Means nothing in November."
"Feels like something to me," Demien said, and left it at that — no need to argue a point that thirteen more matches would settle better than breakfast conversation ever could.
