12 - Wishlist [T1] (Patreon)

12.

***

XP Balance: 5434

Debt repaid: 332/3000

***

Spectrum set the 14s up in a daring 4-2-4, which took us to a two-goal lead. The other team knew Tyson was our danger man, so they overreacted every time the ball went near him. Helpful, but Tyson was still making the same runs. I wanted him to adapt his game to his new de-fanged circumstances. I wanted him to make dummy runs, lead defenders astray, create overloads. Huh. I wanted him to play like Pascal.

Meanwhile, Sullivan, the kid who was too conservative, didn't respond well to being used high up the pitch. I was starting to wonder if his problem was his dad yelling at him or if he was really just that cautious.

Shortly before half-time I asked Spectrum to switch to a 3-5-2. More Max weirdness, he thought, but he did it and I took over during the break. I'd asked him to make the change because I couldn't. I had access to 4-4-2, 4-4-2 diamond, and 4-3-3. The next formation would be 4-5-1, which was in the curse shop for 400 XP.

Of course I wanted to buy it, if only to see what the next one would be. More formations meant more flexibility which meant more fun. But by my reckoning, 4-5-1 was the seventh most desirable item in the curse shop (out of fifteen). I wasn't managing enough matches to justify spending XP on in-game upgrades.

The same went for Match Stats 3: Action Zones. That was 300 XP and would add a little bit more data to the Match Overview screens. Fine, but I didn't need it. It was ninth in my rankings, but it was only that high because it was in a chain and sometimes it was the next one in the chain that was the killer app. Maybe the curse knew about expected goals, expected threat, and heat maps. If it gave me data like how far players had run in a match, I could save real-life money buying GPS vests.

"Guys, nice job," I said, as the kids gathered around for half-time drinks. We were much fresher than our opponents - we'd been letting the ball do the work. "Spectrum's letting me do the second half. I want to get weird with it. Who's ready to get weird?" One hand went up - the goalkeeper's. "One vote? Fine. Not weird, then. You guys are bor-ring. 3-5-2, then. Sully, you're left-mid. You're allowed to pass backwards but I'll be counting how many passes you make in either direction. They should be about the same by the end of the half, right? Tyson, you're right-mid. When I shout 'Go Go Gadget Legs', get forward and smash the ball square as hard as you can. Cause some havoc out there. When I shout 'Tiny Dancer', give me some tiki-taka. Hundreds of tiny, short-range passes. All good?"

He rolled his eyes. "What do you really want?"

"You know what I want. I want a team. Here's what we do. Every time we get the ball I'm going to start a timer. If we get to one minute of passing without that lot touching the ball, you get a bonus."

"What's the bonus?"

"I don't know. I'll think of something. Maybe I'll let you clean the boots of the best player in non-league." There were some groans and more eye rolls. "Ungrateful little shits. What do you want, then?"

Tyson knew. "Next goal you score for the first team, you have to do a dance we teach you."

I scoffed. They thought they were being clever, but Old Nick was going to stop me playing the rest of the season. By the time I scored for Chester, most of these kids would be out of the system, and the ones who were left would have forgotten this conversation. "Fine. One minute of passing them to death. Passing to the goalie and back doesn't count. Impress me."

They ran back onto the pitch, full of beans. As soon as they'd turned away, my mask slipped. No goals this season. Which meant my first goal for the club could be in August. In the seventh tier of English football.

***

I spent Sunday evening with Henri at Raffi and Shona's place. Henri had also invited Glenn Ryder, our best defender and the player he liked to spar with in training matches. At first, I felt weirdly jealous. Or maybe it wasn't weird, I don't know.

Raffi was in great spirits. His career was on the up and he could feel it. Ryder was a very solid guy. He knew he was one of our better players, he knew we relied on him, and he knew his value. That made him confident and relaxed. Good company.

Henri, meanwhile, was very charming, very funny. But I knew him quite well. He was trying too hard. Reaching. Every time he thought no-one was looking, I checked him out. I never caught him sighing or staring into the abyss, but something was off.

And the worst part was, the curse shop was selling a perk called Morale. The description went like this:

"In football the moral is to the physical as three is to one." Winston Bogarde

It said that, then it said the price. 2,000 XP. Big time. My guess was that it would reveal how players were feeling. Obviously a stunningly important thing for me to have. I mean, if it said something like:

Henri Lyons. Depressed. Lovesick.

That would be incredibly useful, right?

God, imagine if it told me how long he'd be depressed for! Maybe there'd be another perk that would tell me how to fix it!

Henri Lyons. Depressed (3 weeks). Lovesick. Buy flowers and tell him you envy his hair.

Yeah. Morale was number two in my wishlist. I wanted to spend time with Henri, but being with him was hard. I nearly bought the perk a thousand times. What was wrong with him? What could I do? I had to be rational. I needed Playdar first.

***

I slept at the stadium so I could go to training in the morning. It was my first day learning to be a goalkeeper.

At first I wasn't really into it. I'd had the idea when everything was going great, but now that the walls were caving in my flights of fancy seemed... silly. Small.

Another reason I lacked motivation was that I knew I had 20 in all my attributes and the letters GK were included in my list of positions. I was probably one of the best goalkeepers in the country. Why train?

Angles had prepared an Introduction to Goalkeeping session for me. In my experience, most pros would have made the drills super hard to put me in my place. The objective would have been to finish the session by saying, 'Not so easy is it, Max?'

But Angles wasn't like that. He'd really put some thought into it. His goal was to take me through all the skills in a ninety-minute session, so that I'd know what the goalies were working on and how hard and varied the job was.

He started with some light shots that I was supposed to 'basket catch'. Easy. Then diamond catches where you jump up and catch the ball above your head. Then we ran into our first problem - shots along the ground. He wanted me to bend, get my knees behind the line of the ball, then let the ball roll into my gloves.

"Angles, mate. It's like you're passing to me. I'll just stop it with my foot."

"What if it bounces away? You'll give up a shot."

I smiled. Most goalies don't have good ball control. "Tell you what. You ever see a ball bounce off me, you can make me do a dance next time I score." The 14s hadn't made it to a full minute of keeping the ball, but I suspected they'd be extra motivated by this week's passing and technique drills.

Angles, Robbo, and Ben fired low shots towards me, but I controlled each of them. Dropped the ball dead every time.

"But Max," whinged Angles. "What if the ball bobbles?" He meant, what if the ball hits a hole or a bump and bounces weird.

"Then I'm going to look like a dick," I said. It happened sometimes that a goalie would go to kick a ball and it would run under his foot, or bounce over, and because that could lead to a goal it was more noticeable than when it happened to anyone else. I was bored of this drill. Just because I bought some gloves didn't mean I wanted to wriggle on the ground like a worm. "Let's move on."

"Well," said Angles. "You'd give me kittens every time you stopped a shot like that, but if it works, it works. I guess we can skip the long passes and dropkicks and so on? Okay. Lads, corners and crosses."

Robbo and Ben stood on either side of the penalty box and fired high, curving balls into my zone. I had to catch the ball, or punch it away. With no strikers bothering me, it was easy. "Angles," I said. "Go over there."

"Where?"

"Way out there, like you're Aff."

"You want me to coach you from left-midfield?"

"Yes, please."

He didn't want to, but I was his boss. I got ready. Robbo fired a cross in. I shouted 'keeper!' because that was the most fun part of the job, leapt, and punched the ball, letting it continue from right to left but redirecting it forward 35 yards. It bounced a couple of times and rebounded off Angles's shin.

"Fuck me," he murmured.

"Let's try the other side!" I called out. I expected it to be much harder as I would be going against the grain, so to speak. Ben hit a cross and this time I doubled-fisted it to make sure the direction was good. "Yeah!" I yelled, as Angles took a few steps to the side to gather it. The ball hadn't gone quite so accurately, but in a real match situation it would probably have been good enough. "Right onto the counter-attack. Glorious!"

"Let me try," said Robbo. I swapped places with him and hit a cross. He punched it, but couldn't get enough distance.

"Go again," I called, sending in another.

This time, he really swung his arm at it, punched with all his might. The ball spurted away behind him, spinning madly, just barely missed going into the goal.

"Er... veto!" I called out, laughing. "I got lucky, I guess." We all knew I hadn't, but I didn't want them doing mad shit in games to impress me.

The next section was fascinating. Angles placed the ball on the edge of the D, 22 yards from goal. He told me to watch the shots as they travelled. "You'll learn to tell where the ball's going based on how far it is from the penalty spot."

I watched as the guys took shots from distance. I started to see what he meant - if you had a good mental map of the six-yard box and penalty spot, you could tell where the ball would go. That one was too far from the spot, so it would go wide left. That one was going to be close.

It was good to know, but I had a question. "But you have to dive anyway, right?"

"Yeah," said Angles. "But my coach taught me that tip and I think it helped me save a lot of shots down the years. If you're running side to side, you can get lost. Training yourself to spot the spot is like someone's took your blindfold off."

I nodded. "Got it."

"Have you, now? All right. We're going to take shots from all sides. Save, recover, reset. Ready?"

"I was born re - hey!" Ben had taken a shot when I was halfway through my retort. "I was born ready. Fucking hell. Now you can start."

They took shots from the left, the right, the middle. They got closer and closer, until I was fending off shots from three opponents across the six-yard line.

A few minutes later, I was on my back, sprawled like a dead cockroach and feeling like one, too. "Fuck," I said. "That's brutal."

"It's not supposed to go on that long, Max," said Robbo. "You're er... you're pretty good!"

"Pretty good," said Ben. "He's better than us!"

"Come on," I said.

Angles was thoughtful. "If you weren't better used as a winger, I'd say you could make it as a keeper. You've got the reflexes, the anticipation. Obviously you're great with your feet."

"Handling," said Robbo. "Jumping."

"Yeah. The only thing I'd worry about is your positioning. I think you'd be too aggressive. Trying to play as a sweeper, trying to stay involved in the game. Mad Max, right? And your concentration, maybe. Would you get bored if you had nothing to do for five minutes? You seem the type."

Reflexes. Anticipation. Positioning. Concentration. Those sounded like attributes I would find on the completed player profiles. Attributes 4 was in the shop, available for 1,567 XP. I had it as fifth on my wishlist. The more I knew about a player, the better. I had all my eggs in the PA basket. But what if I found a high PA goalie and later found he had bad reflexes and concentration? Would he still be useful?

My phone beeped. "I've got a meeting. Thanks a lot, guys. That was awesome. Enjoy the rest of your sesh!"

***

We had a quick planning meeting. Me, MD, Joe, Ian Evans, and Vimsy.

Items on the agenda: Ian's thoughts on the team; my news.

Ian said he was happy with how the lads had been training and playing. I asked if he wanted to discuss the incident with Trick Williams and his injury.

Evans was clearly still pissed about it, but knew he didn't have a leg to stand on. "He was injured. Better for him to come off before it got worse." It wasn't convincing, but it allowed us to move on. Fine by me.

I asked if they'd talked to Carlile. They hadn't. I pulled a face before I even knew what I was doing. Control came too late. Vimsy noticed and promised he'd try this week. I didn't want to push it too hard, because I was asking Vimsy and the coaches to do extra.

"Right," I said. "Spectrum has quit. I'll be looking for a coach to replace him. And I'll need another one for the women's team. We got the financing."

"What!" said MD.

"Yeah. That's happening. There was something else... Oh, yeah. I'm going to Swindon tonight. I'll check out that left-back. I'm going to Newcastle tomorrow to schmooze a lawyer. That'll help with the FA situation. I'll be out and about in Manchester checking on some potential summer signings. And I want to sign a German kid."

Evans spoke. "Cutter told me about the kid. He's too small for the English game."

"He's a great prospect we can sign for free. Beggars can't be choosers."

"He's too small."

"Ian, we had this conversation. You said Lisandro Martinez was too small and he won the World Cup a few days later. If Pascal's too small for you, you don't have to pick him. He'll train with the first team and play for the under 18s."

Evans looked like a bull about to start snorting, but he was much better at dialling the aggression down than me. "What's the hurry? I heard you can get him in the summer."

"Yeah," I said. "I want him now. Because of Chelsea."

"Chelsea?" said MD, his voice rising in surprise.

"You know they're buying every 22-year old star in Europe? They're all getting eight-year contracts." Since the dinner with Ruth, I'd been a bit more diligent in tracking what was going on in the wider world of football. There was so much news! But Chelsea's latest spending spree was attention-grabbing. It was like watching a slow-motion car crash where the drivers were paying hundreds of millions of pounds to be in the middle of all the collisions.

"Eight?" blinked Vimsy. "Eight year contracts? Is that legal?"

"It is for now. No-one's ever thought to do it before. It's madness, or genius." Everyone in the room understood the issue. A lot could happen in eight years. Your mediocre non-league player could develop into Jamie Vardy and you'd be able to sell him or keep him depending on your needs. Or he might decide he doesn't like chasing balls around and you're stuck with a demotivated player for almost a decade. The longest football contracts were normally five years. Six was newsworthy. The new American owners of Chelsea were doing things their own way. The main benefit of the extra-long contracts was Chelsea being able to bend certain financial rules. "UEFA are already talking about closing this loophole. So if we want to sign Pascal to a long contract, we need to move."

"Why do we want that, Max?" said MD, his voice neutral. I got the sense he didn't like this plan, but that he'd reserve judgement until he'd heard more.

"Brexit. Work permits. If we sign him right now, I don't think he'll need a work permit. He's here because of his parents, right? If I understand the rules, we can sign him before he's 18, no problem. But if we did a 2-year deal, when we renewed his contract, the government would say no way, this guy hasn't played enough games for the first team. It's going to be a hassle. So if we want him, and we do, we sign him on a long contract."

"Long?" said MD.

"Eight," I said. Evans scoffed.

MD sighed and looked at the floor. "Can I at least see him play?"

I found my mouth being pulled into a cheeky grin. "If you see him play, you'll say no. Better if you just trust me."

"Kin hell," mumbled Evans.

That was too much. To be fair, I'd lasted longer than normal. I got to my feet and paced around. "All right," I said. "Hold your horses. I know I'm putting my neck on the line with this one. He's a player that most people in England won't get. He doesn't win headers, doesn't make tackles, doesn't score goals. But Vimsy, you'll love him. He's a coach's dream. You won't want him in the team, but you'll respect what he can do. Ian, this is your type of player! You want determination? Resolve? Fight? Fuck me, this kid's been fighting every day since he landed here. We're going to train him up and sell him for a profit. It's free money. All we have to do is hold our nerve when people start laughing. And who'll they be laughing at? Me. So what's the problem? I want him. He's going to pay for our training ground."

MD had his tongue playing with the side of his lips. "We've got budget for two first-team players and you want to use half on a kid who definitely won't play?"

This comment reminded me of another perk I could buy. Finances, it was called. It promised to show me some basic information about the club's income and expenditure, plus our current team salary and such data. Very nice to have all that in my head, but I could just ask MD or Joe and save the 2,000 XP. It'd be very useful to buy that if I ever thought the guys were lying to me. But for now it was near the bottom of my ever-expanding wishlist.

I tried to remind MD and whoever wanted to listen that talented players could be sold for money.

"MD. Guys. Think of the squad as a meal releasing energy at different speeds. For energy, think money. Raffi Brown's a dollop of ketchup. The sugar hits fast. Mmm! Eight hundred thousand pounds, yes please, as soon as poss. Carl Carlile is a slice of buffalo meat. We need to learn how to cook it, but when we do, mmm! That'll bring in a few quid. Medium-rare, medium-term. And then, oops, what's this? Bowl of muesli. Bochum-muesli, as they call it over there. I don't really want this for dinner, not with a steak, but it's slow-release calories. Four, five years from now, ooh, look at all the money. Guys. We went through the squad. They're fucking old. There's about four knees and five hips between them. We have almost no assets. Who can we sell for money? Meaningful money? Almost everything you do is short-term. The next Tuesday, the next Saturday. I need to plan ahead. Signing a tiny German who might not play for three years is long-term thinking. That's why we should sign him. That's why we have to sign him."

This speech, one for the ages, was met with a stony silence. I'd get what I wanted, but no-one would be enthusiastic about it.

***

I hung around to watch the 16s and 18s. More kids brought more kids, and there were more successes: a PA 43 left-back, a PA 39 centre-midfielder, a PA 36 centre-back, and a PA 30 goalie. The problem was, only one of these was the right age. I hadn't said how old the visitors should be, so guys were bringing their little brothers and cousins and whatnot. Anyone who had some moves. It didn't help much with my quest to win a coupon code, but anything that brought the average PA up was most welcome.

The left-back was already the most talented one we had in the entire Chester system. He was eleven years old, so by the time he made it to the first team he wouldn't be good enough for the first team. But did I make a fuss of him? You bet your fucking ARSE I did.

And I met Vivek's sister. She was intrigued at the idea of her little brother playing football, and I made sure to twinkle at her. She agreed to work on her mother, if any problems arose. I felt like Vivek's future was in good hands.

There was an unexpected problem, though. After two sessions, his CA was still one. Normally, anyone with high-ish PA, like Vivek's 66, got an increase in CA in the first session. James Yalley's CA had risen after a few seconds of a Jackie Reaper masterclass.

Odd, but I didn't dwell on it, because I got cursemail. The curse awarded me an experience point for unlocking the achievement 'Overbearing Boss'.

Overbearing Boss (formerly Benevolent Dictator). Watch 100 training sessions.

As you've noticed, I'd almost completely given up on the achievements system. The rewards were virtually nil and it was all geared towards management, which I'd done precious little of. So this was an eye-opener. Because when I got this one, another perk became available in the shop.

Staff Search. 500 XP. Easily find assistant managers, coaches, scouts, and medical staff.

Finally a purpose behind the achievements system! It signalled why certain things were happening!

Right there at the start of the 18s session, I rushed to one side and pretended to be on a call. In fact I was thinking through the possibilities. I soon decided this was the seventh most desirable item. On its own it had the potential to be useful - it was always hard to tell exactly what new screens and features would come. But what really excited me was the possibility that this would finally help me unlock the staff profiles. If I could turn all those question marks into numbers before Spectrum left the building, I'd be able to beg him to stay if he was a genius or boot him up the arse if he wasn't. And I really, really needed those numbers before I invested 25K in a coach for the women's team.

That thought convinced me it had to be higher on my shopping list, but the more I thought about the alternatives, the more Staff Search got nudged back down into seventh.

I needed a lot of XP, and I needed it soon.

***

That night I drove to Swindon. Three hours. Three hours to watch part of a reserve team match to scout a left-back we could get on loan. No transfer fee; we'd just need to cover part of his wages. John Thickes was his name.

I pulled into the car park of The County Ground. A proper stadium, 15,000, with covered terraces everywhere except the away end. The four corners were empty; there were plans to extend the stadium into two of them. Progress at Swindon!

I'd missed half an hour. The attendance, I would later learn, was 35.

Some guy in the car park asked who I was. "Oh, you're here to see Thickes?" he said.

"Yep. Is he not playing?"

"He was in the starting line up, I know that," the guy said. "Go right in. Sit where you want. Most prefer the Don Rogers Stand. We're attacking the New Town End, so you'll want to sit right of centre to get a good view of Thickes. Enjoy it, laddie!"

I did as he suggested and settled in. Thickes was a beefy boy. Obviously from good farming stock. But he was surprisingly good. I'd expected this to be a wild goose chase, some kind of joke arranged by Evans. Thickes had CA 33, but PA 47. He really could come in and do a job for us, especially if Evans had negotiated a deal on his wages.

I slipped into a pleasant daydream about this guy shoring up our left side and letting Aff be more adventurous.

Thumping challenge from Thickes! The winger bounces off him.

Thickes plays a simple pass forward to Aff.

Aff slips past his marker and presses forward. He speeds up.

Aff looks up and spots Lyons darting to the far post. But the move is a feint! Lyons charges to the near post.

The cross is delightful. Lyons leaps...

GOOOAAALLL!

Chester have done it! In the last minute!

It's twenty-nil against whoever their local rivals are! Warrington maybe!!

Yeah, I was pretty tired. But no sooner had I thought all this than someone raced to the dugout and whispered in the reserve team manager's ear.

Within seconds, a substitute started warming up, and at the next pause in play, Thickes came off the pitch.

What. The. Fuck.

I sat there, dumbfounded, until half-time.

I'd driven three hours - one-way - to see less than two minutes of my boy. No manager would willingly sub off a left-back after half an hour. He wasn't injured. This manager had been instructed to do so. Why? Maybe that was Evans's revenge. Showing me what it felt like to lose a left-back early in the game! But that was way too poetic for him. He wouldn't have thought it. So what was the point of asking me to watch a player and then making sure I couldn't see him? None of these clowns knew I only needed a moment to know everything about a player. This was... this was a plot.

I got up and wandered around to see if there were any kebabs lying around.

"You Max?"

I turned. A guy with question marks over his head was eyeing me. The name matched that of Swindon's manager. "Yep."

"You got a good look at Thickes, then? Half an hour under his belt. We're keeping him raring to go for you."

"Oh, thanks." I almost left it at that. Let the guy think I was stupid. "Actually, I just got here. There was a lot of traffic. I was lucky the chap was still in the car park."

"Simian? Yeah, he's a good lad. Looks after us. So apparently you need a left-back up there. Do you want to talk about it?"

Do I want to talk about the player you literally ripped from the pitch the minute I turned up? You're fucking right I do! Whatever this game is, I want to learn the rules. "Yeah, course," I said, doing my best simpleton face. Which some people would probably say is my normal face.

We went to his office - clean, calm space, no view of the pitch but very nicely decorated - and chatted shit for a while. He was actually complimentary about my brief playing career. I'd done some research about him but nowhere near enough to maintain a conversation - I hadn't expected to meet him.

"So," he said. "John Thickes."

"Does he?"

The guy chuckled. "I know Ian is very keen to bring him in. Very keen, and that was before you got your first-choice left-back injured."

"I've played against half the left-backs in my division, and believe me, none of them are first choice."

That shut him up. For a second. But the guy was old-school. They were born looking down on people. He couldn't help but feel superior to me despite all evidence to the contrary. "Very keen to bring him in. Now, Thickes is on big money here, obviously."

"Obviously," I said. Swindon were in League Two, a couple of divisions higher than us. I reckoned the average wage was about a thousand a week. Twice what I was getting from Chester, but a third of the offer I'd had from League One Sheffield Wednesday. Thickes was almost certainly at the lower end of the salary scale.

"But we'd be willing to let you have him for half-price. 900 a week."

"You would?" I said, faux-ecstatic. I jumped from my seat and paced around. "Wow!" I rubbed my mouth to stop myself from laughing. If Thickes was on 1,800 a week I'd eat a hat. Then I realised my position. Yes, people were dicking me around, trying to take advantage of me. But I was still a representative of Chester FC, and it was possible I'd have dealings with Swindon as an agent.

As a player, even!

So I excused myself, saying I had to make a phone call. I went outside and found a dark crevice. I hid there until my rage and sarcasm meters had dropped to zero. I went back to the office and tried to be pleasant to the guy. I asked if I could talk to Thickes.

"He'll be getting a massage and he needs to be switched on for the post-match debrief and all that. He's a good lad, though. Don't worry about that. Wouldn't normally drop down to National League but for Ian Evans, he will."

"Fair enough," I said. "We'll let you know." I shook the guy's hand and pretended to leave. But I snuck back up into the back of the stand and watched the rest of the second half. The place suddenly seemed vaguely sinister, but I needed that XP. It was only one per minute, but I'd driven fucking miles. I wanted every drop of the stuff.

I'd decide what to do about this John Thickes debacle when I had a clear head. But I knew one thing. Someone was going to get dicked on this deal, and it wasn't going to be me.

***

On Tuesday morning, I slept in. I needed it. Lying in Henri's incredible bed helped me see the light. I really, really, needed to unlock the Contracts tab. A perk called Contracts 1 would do just that, and the tab would show me a player's basic wage, bonuses, and clauses, but only for players from my team. And I already knew all that. But, and this was always the hope, if Contracts 2 told me what other teams were paying their players, that would be worth almost any price. A trillion XP? Yeah. I'd start saving up.

What was John Thickes being paid? If the curse told me he was on 1,800 a week, then Ian Evans had really got us a 50% discount. And I'd almost be tempted to go for it and fundraise for the money. The guy could help us prevent Scenario B.

But if John Thickes was actually on something like 500 a week, as I suspected, and we were being charged 900, then Ian Evans was party to a monumental rip-off that Chester couldn't afford. What was his cut? A hundred a week? With five months of the season left, that'd be about two grand for Evans. Would he rip us off for two thousand pounds? I suppose he thought there was no way he could get caught.

I squirmed around on the freshly-washed sheets. Conspiracies felt far away. The soft mattress, the barely-there pillow. I felt like a king.

That's when it came to me. I could use this Thickes fiasco to put a noose around Ian Evans's head. And if I got Contracts 2 fast enough I'd knock the stool from under his feet. I could get Evans fired while keeping my promise not to interfere in the first team.

I stretched like a well-fed cat.

Come at the king, you best not miss.

***

Tuesday continued with a tiny trip to Darlington's training ground. I'd invited Bingo from the local newspaper and he took a photo of me and David Cutter. I was holding my Player of the Month trophy for December - a small glass disc with the sponsor's name above my own.

I wanted Cutter in the pic because he'd given me my chance, and because I'd earned the award playing for Darlington. In public I'd say it was a team award, but fuck that, it was all me. Still, it never hurts someone like me to be classy... when the option is available.

"A few years from now," I said to Cutter, who was really delighted I'd set this up, "when you're in League Two and you've emptied the rest of your boxes, you'll hang this photo up. Behind that plant, maybe."

"I'll put it behind my cactus," said Cutter. He pointed. "Right there. You and me in pricks corner, where we belong."

***

I went home and did some work for my coaching courses. I was sailing through it all - the only obstacle would be doing the practical work, since I'd signed up in Durham and my main opportunities for coaching were in Cheshire. This happened quite a lot, though, since footballers and coaches got moved around like military families or diplomats. It wasn't going to be an issue.

Once I'd done what I could, I rested. I needed it.

I'd suggested to Emma that if her dad got us tickets to see Newcastle United vs Leicester City in the EFL Cup that evening, I'd try to be nice to him. And the guy had come through - of course. It seemed I'd be spending my evening with Emma's dad. Trying to smile and not get sucked into controversies. It should be a rich source of XP, but it was going to take a lot of social energy.

While I watched mind-numbing daytime TV, I checked the perk shop and my wish list rankings.

Rank - Perk - XP Cost

1 - Playdar - 8000

2 - Morale - 2000

3 - Injuries - 3000

4 - Contracts 1 - 1000

5 - Attributes 4 - 1567

6 - Condition - 2000

7 - Staff Search - 500

8 - 4-5-1 - 400

9 - Player Profile 3: Nerdlonger - 500

10 - Match Stats 3: Action Zones - 300

11 - Bibliotekkers 1 - 1000

12 - Live Tables - 1000

13 - Live Scores - 500

14 - Form - 500

15 - Finances - 2000

16 - Player Comparison - 630

Playdar was top because I needed to find players, fast. Like, six team's worth of players. That had to be the absolute priority.

In second place was the Morale perk, because I wanted to check on Henri. Carlile, too. From a cold, hard, business perspective, getting the most out the players we had was crucial. I couldn't have them moping around the place. Being moody, sulking, and making everyone walk on eggshells was my prerogative.

Similarly, Injuries would tell me what was ailing my players. It could help me spot small problems before they turned into big ones. Across the course of a season it could easily be worth five to ten points, with obvious benefits for when dealing with Physio Dean... or his replacement.

Attributes 4 was way up there. I needed to flesh out those player profiles.

Condition said it would tell me how fit players were. Very, very desirable, probably, but primarily useful for the first team. And if I asked Ian Evans to rest a certain player 'because he looked a bit peaky', well, you can imagine. Still, I wanted it very much.

Then came Staff Search, mostly because I wanted to unlock the staff profiles. 4-5-1 was another formation, and I always wanted more formations. Nerdlonger extended a player's history page, so I wouldn't only see what they achieved last season. I mean, nice, but Wikipedia exists. Action zones was an extra bit of data I wouldn't say no to. It seemed very slightly more useful than Bibliotekkers, which would show me the last twenty match reports from a team I was about to play. If it showed me the last twenty from any team, it would shoot almost to the top of the list. But with that narrow scope, I was able to wait for it.

Live Tables and Live Scores came into play when I was managing a team in a league - it would show me the 'as it stands' league table and what other teams were doing. Not that urgent. Form was intriguing - it would add a field to a player profile that showed a player's last five match ratings. For example, on the profile of Max Best it would say 10-10-10-10-10 to reflect my flawless exhibition of all facets of the sport, while for Henri it would probably say 7-6-6-5-4. I knew some of the numbers because I'd seen the matches. Form was interesting and good to know but would it change my behaviour? I mean, I might pick Messi in good form over Mbappe in bad form, but I'd never pick Tim in good form over Aff in bad form.

Finally, Finances and Player Comparison were quality of life improvements. I could get the same info with a little elbow grease.

All these perks would cost me 25,000 XP. Over 400 hours of basic grinding.

That XP would come naturally as I did my job. But time was running out for Chester's season. I needed to accelerate my XP income, and I needed to make good decisions. Rational decisions. Long-term decisions.

And above all, I needed to stick to my plan and not deviate from it. Under any circumstances.