The afternoon sky is azure blue in south west London but the chill in the air permeates every corner of Motspur Park, the one-time athletics ground which is Fulham's base.
Training would be done by now, had the season taken its anticipated course, but there have been double sessions all week. There's a restless, nervous energy. It's 1.30pm and Andre Schurrle will soon be heading back to the gym.
The German has brought Fulham the full technical component you would expect of a World Cup winner these past five months, such as the goal at Burnley last Saturday — a 30-yard high pass brought out of the sky with his right boot and immediately hammered in off the upright.
Fulham winger Andre Schurrle has admitted that he's not used to losing so often
However the team are second bottom and struggling: for points, for leadership, for any material sense of a plan.
Schurrle, who was setting up Germany's World Cup winner for Mario Gotze in Rio a little more than four years ago, does not deny that he is in alien territory.
'That's true. That's true,' he says, taking a chair in one of the warren of rooms in the elegant 1920s building. 'It's not easy to adapt to losing a lot. This didn't happen in my career yet. It's a completely new situation for me. Completely new pressure.'
He pauses, raking through his mind for some kind of symmetry between his early days at little Bundesliga club Mainz, a decade ago, and the experience of facing Tottenham Hotspur at Craven Cottage this weekend, in a team who have won one game in 10.
Schurrle set up Germany's World Cup winning goal for Mario Gotze in Rio over four years ago
'Maybe it is quite similar, it is quite similar,' he says, warming to the idea. 'You go as a little team playing against the big teams not expecting to win big. You always have this little thing in your head that if everything goes right you can make a big surprise.' But Mainz, managed by Thomas Tuchel, finished ninth in Schurrle's early season.
'It hasn't come off for us yet this season,' he says. 'We've struggled big time against big teams. So it's all new. And new things can bring something positive.'
The problem for Fulham is that too much is new. Schurrle arrived as part of a £125milion whirl of transfer activity last summer, which blew away some of the cornerstones of the side who had won promotion.
Now, as Claudio Ranieri settles in as manager, another round of buying is under way. Ryan Babel, last known here as the Dutch prodigy who failed to make good on promise at Liverpool, has arrived from Besiktas, aged 32.
'It hasn't come off for us yet this season – we've struggled big time against big teams', he says
No one really knows if anything other than his hairstyle — shaven eight years ago, bright red now — has changed. He has wandered the world since Anfield.
Lost in this frenzy seems any sense of a Fulham old guard, leaders or players who can tell the rest what makes Fulham tick.
'Yes that's fair,' Schurrle says. 'That's fair. It's like we had a little bit of a struggle, maybe still have a little bit of a struggle, to find a hierarchy in the team. The few players everybody looks up to and the rest can follow.
'I think it's quite normal with a team that lost a lot of games and has been in a rebuilding process. They had a very good team spirit and it's not easy to build this back up.'
There have been moments when Schurrle, who is on a two-year loan from Borussia Dortmund, has assumed that mantle. His candour at Burnley, where Fulham conspired to lose to a team who did not manage a shot on goal, was welcome.
Schurrle, and more recently Ryan Babel, have been brought in to secure Fulham's safety
'We are deep, deep, deep in trouble,' he said late that night. Yet he does not claim to possess the leadership qualities which seem to be a requirement if Fulham are to drag themselves out of the state they're in.
'In my previous clubs, there were players who were there a long time, the leaders of the club,' he says. 'So you come in and try to fit in. Obviously with my experience there's an expectation of me leading a little bit.
'But I wouldn't say I'm the big leader who shouts a lot. I'm the guy who tries with my qualities to help on the field. Obviously, I talk to young players and help them a little bit with my experience. But it's not that I'm this figure
