The Aston Villa players did not envisage, of course, that midsummer would entail 1am match debriefs and team barbecues at a Birmingham hotel, or hours in the video room analysing how Lazio and Liverpool defend.
Nor that those hours in each other’s company would put them in control of their own Premier League destiny on Sunday.
The table did not look pretty for them before football restarted. Second bottom, with the most porous defence and no firepower to speak of.
But a win by two goals at West Ham on Saturday will probably be enough to keep them up and a draw would do the same, should Watford fail to win at Arsenal.