7.1 - The First Cut is the Deepest [T1] (Patreon)

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Player Manager 7

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Recap:

Max Best has been given the powers of a football manager and has used them to improve Chester FC's mens and womens team. Both are in a good position to earn promotion into a higher division. Max has added serious quality to the coaching staff, made the medical space more welcoming, and improved the culture of the club. Just as it was all getting a little too easy, his friend and footballing soulmate Raffi Brown turned traitor and left the club. Max cannot recruit another player to fill the enormous chasm left in the midfield, but he does have eight hundred thousand pounds in the bank to invest as he sees fit.

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"No one likes us, we don't care." Millwall FC Fans

***

1.

Sunday, 4 Feb, 2024

"I should be in the front," said Henri Lyons, a handsome and educated 28-year-old striker. He was not a morning person at the best of times and I had snatched him out of bed without letting him take one of his endless showers. The journey had been over two hours long and this was the second thing he had said. The first was to demand coffee.

"I'm in the front," I said. "I'm the boss. I'm the figurehead."

"You should be in the back, then, with the Brig as your chauffeur. That is how you project an air of authority."

"I also take the free kicks. That's the most important role in our team, now. So I sit in the front in the carefully calibrated seat."

"The seat that I calibrated!" he snapped. The Brig's lips moved in and out - I think he was enjoying the show. Henri smashed his skull on the head rest behind him. "I should be in the front on the way back."

"No."

"Fine," he said, before spitting out a stream of invective in his mother tongue. "Then let us go in and get this over with."

"Relax, bro," I said, turning round to smile at him. "If this comes off, it's one more tenant for your digs. I'm trying to throw money at you, here. Can you maybe try to emit some of that French charm you keep telling me you have?"

Henri tutted. "I'll be charming inside the house. Why must we wait here? It is monstrous to do this on a Sunday morning, Max! And the houses are monstrous. I don't feel comfortable here. I can't believe you brought Emma. Let us go in now. What's a few minutes?"

The Brig had an opinion on that. "It's a good point, sir."

"It's not a good point," I said. "Is it babes?"

Emma felt our eyes on her. She popped an earbud out and said, "Huh? What? What's the question?"

"What's the earliest time it's allowable for a bunch of randos to drop by your house on a Sunday morning?"

She pressed her luscious lips together. "Eleven. No, one."

"One p.m.? They'll have gone out."

"I don't care," she said, putting her earphones back in. She was watching something trashy on her phone. She wouldn't tell me what, which made me think it was the second season of the TV show The Traitors. I couldn't really blame her; I was the one who'd got her addicted. Cold, calculated betrayal was the last thing I wanted to watch or think about.

"Max," whined Henri. "It's eight fifty-eight. That's close enough! Come on. Please! For the love of all the saints."

It was my turn to tut. "There's a tradition to these things. When Alex Ferguson went to Ryan Giggs's house on his 14th birthday, he knocked on the door at 9 a.m. We're waiting till nine. That's it."

"This will be the longest minute of my life!" said Henri, forcing his hands through his hair, pulling at clumps. He looked genuinely anguished, but suddenly a look of blissful clarity came over him and he reached for the door handle. The Brig read the move and pressed the child lock button a split-second before Henri got to the handle.

The clunk noise was inordinately satisfying, as was Henri's petulant punch of the Brig's headrest. "Henri shoots!" I said. "But it's saved! Amazing reflexes from the veteran." The Brig was technically my assistant manager but was, in fact, my bodyguard. He was a former commando and now that he'd caught the bastard who'd tried to murder me, I felt safe enough but Henri was right - this was a rough neighbourhood. If the Brig was available to drive me I generally took the chance. It let me catch up on the phone calls, texts, and emails I got as Director of Football, as manager of the men's team, and as a human being in a world full of companies who don't respect the unsubscribe function. "Okay! Game faces on. Let's wib this wob!"

"Pardon me, sir?"

But I'd already grabbed my backpack and closed the door behind me.

***

The house was, to be charitable, a shit hole. It was very much like the one I'd grown up in on the Nell Lane estate in Manchester. From the outside, hideously ugly and narrow. I'd read that astronomers were freaking out over images of a new star being born right in front of their eyes, which meant that somewhere in the universe there was an actual star that was younger than the paint on the facade. (What's that you say? We're seeing the light from millions of years ago? Can it, nerd!)

We knocked and a surprised woman with bad skin and flabby arms opened the door. Henri smiled and took a step sideways. The Brig advanced into the breach. "Good morning, ma'am," he started, and ten seconds later we were walking past her into the living room. The Brig winked at me - he believed himself to be the housewives' favourite and most of the time he wasn't wrong.

The woman was Anne, the mother of the player I wanted to sign. Andrew, the father, was still in bed. The four of us tried to make ourselves comfortable in the living room while Anne went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted up. "Will! Andy!"

"What?"

"Come down! We've got visitors!"

"So?"

"Come down here right this minute!"

"Urgh!"

The Brig was listening intently. Emma seemed to find the interaction amusing - and familiar. Henri was looking at the room's decor in a very condescending way. Had it been a mistake to invite him? To be fair, I understood why he was looking like that - I felt it, too. The decorations were cheap and gaudy and there were far too many, and even I knew there were too many shapes and textures.

There were photos of children and weddings, an ornamental mirror, a TV much too big for the room, a PlayStation 4, a bookshelf with no books but lots of DVDs, a box of toys, and lots of Catholic swag. A photo of one of the popes, a crucifix, a set of rosemary beads, and a painting of Jesus petting two lambs. Blood of the lamb. That was a Jesus thing, right?

The walls had yellowed from years of cigarette smoke, but I didn't notice any ashtrays and there was no smell. That was a relief - being in a tiny room with a smoker was close to my idea of hell.

A song was playing and in the seconds before Anne went over to turn the radio off, I wondered what it was. It was an oldie. A classic. One of those men with big hair and tight pants. It cut out just before the raspy-voiced singer hit the chorus. It put me on edge. Too early. I'd come too soon after the betrayal to try to sign someone. The wound was still bleeding, still fresh. This was a mistake.

"Oh!" Andrew Roberts had come down while I'd been distracted. It was hilarious how much he looked like his son. Just the exact same face, the exact same facial expression, stretched ten percent in all directions by a talented but heartless AI.

I smiled and went over to shake his hand. "Think I can guess who you are. I'm Max Best."

"Oh," he said again. The name was familiar, but not enough for instant recall on a groggy Sunday morning.

"I'm Chester's player-manager. Your son tried to break my legs yesterday."

"Oh!" he said, smiling. But the smile quickly turned to an aggressive scowl. "That was this is about? He plays hard, like his old man."

I tilted my head, and decided to ignore the question. "This is my Fog On the Tyne. She's my Ferry Across the Mersey. She's my er..."

"Eternal Flame," suggested the Brig.

"He's trying to say I'm Emma. Nice to meet you."

"This is John Smith, my assistant manager. Next year he'll be moving up to Head of Perfect Performance. I'm not saying Jason Bourne is based on his life story, but I'm also not not saying that it isn't."

"Pleased to meet you," said the Brig.

"And that's Henri. Best striker in the league and all that."

"The pleasure is all mine," said Henri, making his teeth literally twinkle like in a toothpaste advert. Great skill to have. Inviting an all-star team to help me had been a very good idea. I couldn't do it on my own, not yet, but there was no time to waste. I wanted this signing finalised by Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest. Surely even the shittest Premier League scout would take one look at this kid and throw all kinds of money at him? I was in pole position, but if I wandered off for a little walking tour of Monaco, I'd soon find myself at the back of the grid.

"Kin ell," said the kid himself, finally joining us. "What is it? Oh." William B. Roberts, one of the hottest prospects in the country, looked around the living room of his drab old home and its increasingly glamorous occupants. Increasingly? Yes, I think so. The Brig had a certain air of class and refinement but Henri was one of France's cultural elite. It would be easy to imagine him whispering in the ear of an heiress that 'one cannot spell glamour without amour'. Emma was a staggeringly attractive blonde with a head full of brains. The most glamorous, though, was me. Max Best. No explanation needed. William had recovered from the initial shock and was able to speak again. "Kin ell," he said.

"William," I said, pointing to a rare gap between decorations. "How would you like to put a Premier League winner's medal on your mum's wall?"

His grin was incredible - it took him from ogre to gawky, dimpled teenager. From someone you'd cross the street to avoid to a stranger you'd happily share a taxi with after a night out. "Yeah, okay."

I slapped my hands. "Great! That was easy. Who wants a tea? I'm absolutely gasping."

***

It turned out not to be so simple as that. Emma and I sat across from Anne and Andy at the family's kitchen table. Henri, the Brig, and a watchful William leaned against a fridge or a wall or a doorframe.

Emma helped me ask the parents a few questions while William glanced from her to me to Henri to the Brig.

Andy worked in a coffee refinery, saying it was the biggest in the world. In Oxfordshire? That didn't make a lot of sense. But he was a hard-working guy whose priority was to feed his kids and raise them as best he could. Yeah, he'd get blasted every now and then and he could handle himself in a fight but if you left him alone, he'd leave you alone. He loved movies, too. The DVDs were his. Good guy when you got to know him. I liked him. He went to Banbury United sometimes and knew enough about tier 6 football to know I was a controversial figure.

Anne had worked in an office and quit to raise the kids - there was a younger brother and Christ I wanted to stop the whole morning so I could hit him with Playdar, one of my tools for seeing the player profiles of talented footballers. Even if he was half as good as William, he'd smash into a League One side. But Anne was still talking. Fortunately, Emma wasn't a child-snatching sociopath like me; she was making all the right noises, contributing to the small talk.

"So he's good, is he?" Anne finished, looking from me to Henri, but meaning her son.

"He is, yes," I said. "Or he will be in the right environment."

That triggered a small avalanche of questions. The parents wanted to, like, get to know me before they'd let me whisk their teenage boy across the country to live with a Frenchman. And they wanted to know why their son should leave Banbury United, his local team. And why they should trust me, since I was so flighty and erratic. And the topic of money came up again and again. Trivial shit. Easy answers.

All I had to do was pick the right tone to manipulate them. The right set of words, the right theme. Family seemed promising, with all the framed pics of cousins and second cousins and whatnot. Focusing on the financial aspect was another angle. More money, and sooner than with Banbury.

But even with my Max Best all-stars there to cheer me up, I found I didn't have it in me to bullshit this family. They'd get it straight. Warts and all.

I unzipped my backpack and took out a sheaf of images I'd printed out from my work computer that morning.

"Are you ready for the weirdest sales pitch of all time?" I said, with a slight smile. It should have been a winning smirk but that level of positivity wasn't quite in my heart.

Andy laughed. "Go on, then. This is mad, this. You play against him and drive down the next morning to try and sign him. It's already weird. What's a little more?"

"Points for being keen, though, isn't it?" said Anne.

Her husband agreed. "Oh, yeah. It's a long drive, isn't it? Up early to beat the rush of scouts knocking down our door." He laughed. "Yeah, you're a grafter, that's clear. You want summat you go and get it. That's right, that. Fair play. Doesn't," he added, scratching his face. "Doesn't fit what I've heard about you. That you're a bit of a dingbat."

"Dad!" complained William, but Henri laughed his head off. I relaxed. I realised I liked people talking shit about me because it was honest. It was the praise you couldn't trust.

"He's not a dingbat," said Emma, smiling. "He doesn't want to do things the same as everyone else just because that's the way it's always been done. I love that about him. Every day's interesting."

"Max is a genius," said Henri. "That gets him into trouble." He sighed. "I get him out."

"All right, everybody, let's all settle down. I'm not a dingbat and I'm not a genius. I'm pretty normal. I just happen to be very good at football and that puts me in situations I've never been in before." I swept my gaze around the tiny kitchen. "I grew up in a house just like this. Ours was sort of yellow brick but inside it's really similar. I was there and now I'm in Director's Boxes with the owners of football clubs and they're giving me champagne and... Henri what's that little meat stuff you make me eat sometimes?"

"Ham."

I clicked my fingers. "Right, ham!" This joke was a hit. "But seriously, they're asking me how to run their football clubs and I tell them. I don't know which knife and fork to use - "

"You do! I told you eight times!"

"I'm just trying to get from A to B in a way that makes sense to me. I can't really control if other people think it's strange or funny, do you know what I mean?"

"I do," said Andy.

"All I think is, we're top of the league, we're brilliant, the youth teams are flying. What I'm doing is working and maybe the football clubs that laugh at me should be trying to learn some lessons instead of laughing because they all end up coming to Chester to curl into a ball and die. All the things you've heard about me, there's an explanation that I think is absolutely logical."

"I think it's cool," said William. "When I saw you'd gone to Tranmere I laughed my head off. You really don't care what people think."

"I care what Emma thinks."

"What about me?" said Henri.

I pulled a face and looked away. "Awk-ward," I said. Some more laughs. "Right. I really don't like talking about myself all the time, but - "

I was interrupted by the squawk of a giant bird. There wasn't one in the room, but everyone was looking at Henri. I pressed on.

"But let's start with a bit of background." I shuffled my sheaf of papers and put down a recent photo of me and my mother. William shuffled closer and closer until halfway through my speech he was by the table.

"This is my mum. She's in a care home. Forgets things. She doesn't know I'm the manager of a football club, or even that I'm a player." I pushed my upper and lower teeth together and stared at a patterned tea towel. "I'm working hard for a better life. Buy my own house and all that stuff. People laugh at my car but I'm not exactly suffering. What I'm doing now, all this grafting, will pay off in a year or two. I can wait. So can my mum. She's in a good place, now, medically and, like, geographically. She's going to get worse and I need the money for then. What I'm saying is that I can plan two, three years ahead. For me personally, for the club, for my players. By the time I need big money to take proper care of her, I'll have it. Do you get me?"

"Aww, Max," said Anne. I'd tripped all kinds of empathy neurons even though I had tried to keep my tone neutral and factual. "That's awful. She forgets things? Aww, no..."

She was getting me worked up. I tried to laugh and it came out weird. "Look, I'm just saying, if she was sick right now I'd go and play for a big club and get rich quick. I just would. Probably loads of people going oh, make up your mind you little brat. But that's what I'd do, no question. Do you know what I mean? But it's not urgent. So I can do it the right way. Build a base, work on my skills, and reap the rewards later. Believe me, by the time I need fifty grand for some treatment or to move her somewhere nice or whatever, I'll have it. William will be in a position to get well paid by the time I'm done with him. But he doesn't need it yet. He needs to build a base, work on his skills, and reap the rewards later."

I shuffled through the sheets and took out another one. It was a collage of young players in football kits. A disproportionate number were wearing the blue of Chelsea.

"Here's a roll call of young players who got too much cash too soon and their lives went off the rails. This one’s in prison. This one got his name tattooed across half his face and was done for money laundering. It's sad. I don't want that to happen to your son. If he gets his head down, grafts, makes good decisions, and above all, does what I tell him, he'll make good money in his career. Together, you and me, we need to make sure we don't do this to him."

I tapped the paper.

"Doing this to a young person is honestly sick. That's not me being cheap; that's player welfare. If he deserves a pay rise or a bonus, he'll get one. Absolutely. But it could be a car instead of cash, or the money could go into an account he can access when he's 18 or 21. There's loads of money in football for players who are good at football. One of the reasons I'm here is a feeling that William's not going to let money distract him from being the best footballer he can be. I want players like that. I'm not looking for loyalty to me or to Chester - though that would be nice - but to your own career."

I took out another sheet made of images I'd quickly slapped together. It had two sides, left and right. The left was the past, the right was the present.

"I don't have a slick presentation, as you can see. My time and effort almost entirely goes into the football side of things. This is what we had at the club when I arrived a year ago. This is what we've got now."

"What does it all mean?" said Anne.

"Yeah, so there wasn't a women's team. That's this section here. The Everton badge is because we've got a former Everton player as manager. These names are players we've recruited. Two from Man City and one who's been in the national papers several times."

"Dani Smith," said William.

Had he been studying? "Smith-Smithe," I said, grinning at the stupidity of it. "She's brilliant. Five of these are WSL quality. This is their first full season, remember, so imagine them a couple of years down the line. Then the men's team. This big star represents me, because, let's be honest." I stood, turned slowly, and sat back down again. Henri grumbled into his glass of water. "And we've got another Man City badge."

"Sandra Lane," said William, and his mother gawped at him. "First woman to manage a professional football match. First woman to win one. What's she like?"

I eyed Henri. He supplied the answer. "Outstanding. Max was in heaven when he nabbed her. I like this word, this nabbed. Henri Lyons nabbed two goals. Henri Lyons nabbed a late winner. Henri Lyons helped himself to a second-half hat trick. Reading my notices is quite the education."

"Helpful. Thanks, mate. In answer to your question, Sandra is fucking mint. Here's a shot of the equipment we've been buying. Ball machines, cameras around the main training pitch. Next up is a kitchen so we can eat together and eat right. And I've been building the squad for next year in the National League. Henri, here, Eddie Moore, and Ryan Jack if his recovery goes well. We're going to have a good old tilt at the playoffs."

"Why not the title?" said William. "You got money now. You can buy more players!'

I laughed. "Do you want to talk about squad building, mate?"

"Ye-ah!"

"Only official Chester players get those chats."

"How have you got money?" said Anne.

I froze. Answering would have involved discussing the traitor. Henri was on hand. "Max found a player at a five-a-side match in Manchester. Max turned him into a star, got him called up to the England C squad, and the player decided to stab Max in the back. He went to the Saudi Pro League where he is now making hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. Max took the news badly, as we all did, and he was right to.

"The player spoke not a word to any of us. Not a word. Just, poof! He's gone, holding up a scarf, smiling for the camera. I tell you again, when Max found him he was nothing. Now he is something, he feels he does not need Max, does not need his friends. And the timing? Huh. The timing. That's it! I will say no more about him. The Saudis paid the release fee, so Max has some money to invest in the club."

"Eight hundred thousand," said William.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

He shrank away from the table, rubbing his arm. "Er... it's out there? You told everyone hundreds of times?"

"That's true," I said, wondering if I was to blame for this whole shit show. "I thought if I said it, someone might pay up."

"So you don't mind he's gone?" said Anne, confused.

"It was the stab in the back I minded most, I think." I returned my attention to the piece of paper where one of the images was the league table on the day I had my first match as manager to how it stood today. "What I'm saying is I've already transformed the club and it's healthy and functioning now. There's still work to do but we're on the up. Way up. Evidence: the under twelves. They won a futsal competition recently. They beat Liverpool in the final. In Liverpool."

The atmosphere had soured because of all the traitor talk, but mentioning Liverpool got William back into the chat. "Not bad."

"Not bad? It's unprecedented. What I've realised is that there's no reason I can't turn Chester into the best youth system in the country."

"The best?"

"The actual best," I said.

"Max actual Best," mumbled Emma.

I pulled out another sheet. It was three pictures of youthful Manchester United players. "I'm a Man United fan, sort of. Not really, anymore. But I still love the youth players. They haven't found a way to ruin that for me yet. The last time Manchester United didn't have a youth team player in a match day squad was... 1937."

"What does that mean?" said Emma.

"Some kid from the youth system, like Benny or Tyson or someone, has been in the starting lineup or on the bench in every match. Since 1937. Thousands and thousands of games in a row. William, do you recognise any of these players?"

"Course. Neville, Beckham, Scholes. This one's Pogba and Jesse Lingard. That's Garnacho."

"I'm the manager of Chester Football Club. We're not going to win the Premier League. We're not going to win the FA Cup. Not in the next two years, anyway. These three United teams won the FA Youth Cup and became superstars on the back of it. I want to win the FA Youth Cup."

The proclamation was met with dead silence. Four of the people in the room had very little clue what I was talking about. Henri wasn't interested. That left William. "That's pretty... pretty impossible. You're non-league."

"Nope. I've got two shots at it. First, I have a crop of 15 and 16 year olds who are abnormally talented. They've got two goes, next year and the one after. Right? Second, I've got under twelves who are crazy good and I keep finding more. They will eff up every team they play, guaranteed. So we have a tilt next year, but really we're looking at the year after for the real go. And five years from now, the second lot step up. If I'm Chester manager in ten years I'll have won the Cup twice. At least. I want it. I'm going to get it."

Henri came over and shook my shoulder. "Max is crazy about developing young players. It's how we met. When he is low, he goes to the young players. My first mentor was the same."

"I love progression. What I see from you, William, is a hunger to win and a never-say-die attitude. You'll add some pace and intensity to the group but the best best thing is you're willing to learn. You made mistakes in the match yesterday but you put them right. Players who want to learn like that are players who need to come to Chester.

"If you join us I'll make finding a couple more players a priority but we're already pretty close to having a team that can be the best in their age group. I can feel it. We'll give it a good go, anyway.

"Teams like United, City, Arsenal, they've got good kids who've never tasted action. I've got a 15-year-old who scored in the FA Cup this season against a bunch of grizzled veterans. He's not going to be afraid of some fucking prima donnas from an academy. Ooh, I don't want to play today, it's raining. Ooh, look at this pitch, it's all muddy. What about my Instagram? Ooh, these other boys are tackling me. That's not allowed! Don't they know I've got a personal brand consultant?"

Andy loved this. "Bunch of pampered princes, right?"

I nodded. "They're talented. It won't be easy. But they don't ever have to suffer. We talked to two girls who got cut from Man City. They came to have a look at our training and they whinged and whined about the facilities. Like, sorry we don't have golden toilets but there's a pitch and a fucking net. If you want more, help me pay for it by winning matches. Know what I mean?"

This was pretty unfair on the City girls who'd turned me down and I was surprised by how easily the bitterness and contempt came into my voice. Andy was nodding hard, and that emboldened me.

"Here's what we've got - heart. Team spirit. Real proper team spirit. And cold showers. I'm probably gonna turn the heating on next season... But I really don't think it hurts to have to suffer a bit. To have to work for it. I tell you what, when I get home on a Saturday night I have a hot shower and I feel like I've fucking earned it. That's the God's honest truth. Our youth teams play like that. And by the way, they're quality, too. Yesterday I told my assistant we were moving four of those kids into the first team squad."

"Who?" said Henri.

"Lucas Friend, Benny, Tyson, and Dan Badford."

"They're so young."

"I don't give a shit. They're good and they're going to get minutes. The youth teams from United and City might be more talented - I have my doubts, tbh. But my lot will all have experience in professional football matches. Some will have been battered in the National League North. Next season, they'll get knocked around in the National League. You think playing some soft academy lads is going to worry them? No. We've got a shot at surprising a lot of teams. A real shot, I reckon.

"Winning the Youth Cup isn't a big deal to most managers. There are probably five in the entire league system who have thought about it in the last week. Why would they? There's no money. Just glory. News just in - I fucking love glory. Football first, money second. I want my glory and I'm going to work at it. I've got Sandra to step in and manage the first team if I need to go and scout a match or take control of the youth team.

"But winning it is not just for me because I've had a mad idea. The players who win the Youth Cup get noticed. They go onto big things. Beckham! Pogba! Imagine playing the Youth Cup final against a team with future stars like that, except you've played 20 league games and they've never even been on the bench. I'll give you every advantage."

William's eyebrows had risen slowly as I'd spoken, jerking up when I'd said the word glory. "If I sign for you, you'll play me next season?"

"If you train and eat well and all that shit, yeah."

"What position will I play?"

"Chester’s secret weapon is tactical flexibility. We can switch between seven formations with no drop in cohesion."

"Seven formations?" He frowned. "On Soccer Supremo if you switch between formations too often you play them less well."

Oh. Was that a game mechanic I hadn't encountered yet? That was worrying, but I'd never seen any evidence of it. I shrugged. "We switch seamlessly and I'm preparing for the next one."

Henri was interested. "What's that one going to be?"

"Sweeper."

The Frenchman looked at me like I was a wall covered in a mis-mash of cheap tat and bric-a-brac. "Sweeper is dead."

"Reviving dead things is my speciality. Exhibit A: your career."

His expression took on aspects of amusement and wanting to kick me. "It's stupid."

"I can make it work."

"You can’t. It negates the offside trap and draws teams onto us."

"That's what I want."

"Who in our squad can be the sweeper?"

"Me."

Henri exploded. "No! You can’t. Be serious."

"I can."

"Against a weak team. To make it interesting because winning every week has become boring and you need to increase the challenge."

"I've been thinking about doing it against Kidderminster."

Henri closed his eyes slowly and all the heat left his voice. "I won’t play. I refuse. It’s a guaranteed humiliation."

"Yeah," I said. "For them."

I remembered why we were there and had a pang of annoyance at being dragged so far off-topic, but the interaction between me and my star player had done something to William. He looked hungry and I realised what I had with Henri was what he craved - detailed, passionate conversations about football followed by detailed, passionate matches. I decided to press that advantage.

"I think we were talking about eating well," I lied. "Henri has a big house that's our unofficial digs. If you sign you'll be living with Pascal and Youngster. You can talk tactics to your heart's content."

"I'd be living with Youngster? And Pascal Bochum? He was lit against Salford!"

"And the triplets. It's football heaven."

"And Henri Lyons," said Henri Lyons.

"Yeah, right. Him too. He'll teach you how to chop vegetables and all that."

William didn't let the idea of adding vegetables to his diet put him off joining us. We were offering him wall-to-wall football. "What about Banbury?"

I shoved my printouts back into my backpack. The kid was in the bag. "I'll be back here to talk to them tomorrow."

"Sir, you have the meeting after training."

"Urgh, right. I've got to interview someone who wants to do our marketing and PR." I sighed. "I just want to do football. You know what's fun? Football. You know what's not fun? Everything else.

"Right, Banbury United. I'll call them. Truth is, I could take you for free but that's not my style. Not in the slightest. I'll give them upfront cash with add-ons. Twenty grand if we win the Youth Cup, stuff like that. I've dealt with them before and trust me, they'll be happy with their side of the deal! They absolutely rinsed me on the Chris Beaumont loan, but it's working out for both of us. Win-win. Wins are what we want. Sometimes we even get it. So Banbury will be happy. I'll be happy. You'll get a total footballing education. It's going to be amazing. Are you in?"

"I think I'm in."

"Before we shake on it... Three things. One, we need a better nickname for you."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Prince William. B-Boy. It'll come up, won't it? Just don't mention the current one."

"What is it?" said Emma.

I gave her an exasperated look. "It's gone. We're looking for a new one. Jesus."

"It's WibWob," said William, the idiot. "What's wrong with it?"

The problem was that WibWob was a game mechanic from Soccer Supremo and the name of a perk I needed to buy. Having a player with that nickname was messing with my head. "Let's just say the exact match domain name is taken. It's bad for your brand, long-term."

"Robbo," said Henri.

"We've got one of those."

"Rob," said Emma.

"That's... sorry babes but that's awful. Rob?"

"Wrob. W-R-O-B."

"Huh. Wrob. Wrobsy. You've been Wrobbed! Maybe."

"WibRob," said the Brig, and we all fell quiet as we considered it. It felt pretty good.

"What's the next thing?" asked William, whose patience was running thin - he wanted to know what the other obstacles to him getting his move were.

"What? Oh, I'd like you to stop playing football here. You can if they need you, if there's an injury crisis or something. But no disrespect to Banbury, that's not the football that's going to get you to the Premier League. I don't want you learning bad lessons." Or using his massive PA to put points into useless attributes. If I had my way, I would optimise the shit out of this kid. "I know you want to play loads of football, which is why you'll stay in the digs as often as poss depending on school. For now until you're officially a Chester player in June, you'll train with the 16s and the 18s and play friendlies and stuff. You'll play football, don't worry about that. But it'll be Max Best football. Good?"

"Do I have to?"

"Do you want to play in front of 400 at Spennymoor or 40,000 against Aston Villa? It's not rocket science, WibRob."

"But... you signed Chris Beaumont. Banbury football can't be that bad."

"We don't use him like Banbury do. We've turned him into a work of art. A masterpiece with Henri as the sculptor."

Henri smiled. "I'd normally be happy to take the compliment but it was Max's idea. Max's genius."

"What is it?" said William.

"Tomorrow night I'll be on the same side as him for the first time. It's up Birmingham way. Walsall or somewhere. We'll pick you up, take you to the match in Chester's VIP seats. And you'll see for yourself what Max Best football looks like. I'll put on a first half show for you. If you sign."

"Why the first half?"

"Efficiency," I said, simply. "And we need you to control your aggression. That energy you've got for kicking people, redirect it to winning."

"You went psycho yesterday!" complained William. "Bullied our left back."

"That's different," I said.

"How is it different?" asked Andy.

"He came after one of my kids. I need people to know if they do that they're gonna get smashed. So he got smashed. You send one of mine to the hospital, I'll send one of yours to the morgue."

"Untouchables," he said.

"That's right. Everything I do on the pitch has a purpose. What really made me get up at 5 a.m. today was that you made a mistake, William, and you learned from it. You kicked the best free kick taker in the league in scoring range and your team got punished. But you were controlled, after that. You'd learned. I need smart players. So that means I need you in my system with my coaches who do things my way.

"Look, I know when I was your age I only wanted to play, play, play. Tyson and Benny are the same. I promise to keep you busy. If you're still itching for more we'll get you a private coach to teach you the skills I want you to learn. That doesn't include taking long throws or hoofing the ball to a big man up top. Right, last thing."

I put my hands on the kitchen table and stared down at my knuckle wrinkles.

"I'm going to turn you into the best version of you as a footballer. The Brig's going to look out for you as a man. Henri will teach you the difference between two identical hams. The squad will try to guide you and help you and all that good stuff. We're going to bring you into our family and treat you like one of us."

I looked up at the yellowing ceiling.

"These meetings are all about trust. It's me trying to get a player or their parents to trust me. But I've been building a club brick by brick every day since I got the job. I don't think I need to prove anything to anyone. There's the league table, there's the trophy we won, first of many. There's the players looking better than ever, there's elite coaches who want to work with me. This isn't about you trusting me. It's about me trusting you. I'll do everything I can to help your son but the more I do that, the more parasites are going to turn up trying to leech him away. Make him go before he's ready so they can get paid. I'll let him go when the time's right, but..."

I shook my head and bit my bottom lip. With an effort, I tucked my sadness back inside me. I chose to look at Andy. When things got intense, he'd be the rock that decisions would be made on.

"If you're going to leave, will you look me in the eye and say it to my face?"

He didn't shift. Didn't budge. "Yeah. I'll do that if you'll do the same to me."

"Fair."

"So you look me in the eye now and tell me why I shouldn't talk to other clubs."

"You shouldn't talk to other clubs because you'll like what they have to say and you'll go with one of them."

"How's that bad?" said Anne.

"It wouldn't be bad. It would be okay. It would be fine. William will do well wherever he goes. He'll have a good career." I got up and tucked my chair under the table. I put my palm horizontal and as I spoke I lifted it. "But there's good, better..."

"And best," said William.

I smiled. A proper smile, at last. "Exceptional students need exceptional teachers. Let us take you to the match tomorrow night. You'll see."

***

Monday, 5 Feb

Before training I called the first team squad, the coaches, and the physios into the big meeting room. At the start of the season, I'd outlined my masterplan for the coming months - win enough cup matches so that some of our league matches would get postponed until the spring when our training would have kicked in and our young players would have kicked on.

"Everyone recovered from the steakhouse? Yeah? Round of applause for the Brig for using his winnings to take us out." There was a burst of applause. The Brig and I had collaborated to rig a bet that Donny 'D-Day' Dorigo was running in the dressing room. "I just wanted to update you on the Maxterplan."

"Sorry, what?" said Aff, an Irish winger who was almost as good defensively as going forward. "What did you call it?"

"The Maxterplan. There. It's out in the open, now. That's what I've been calling it in my head. Anyone with a better name for a masterful plan devised by a person called Max, please go and fetch your Nobel Prize for Literature. You'll have to get in line behind Henri. I heard SILK! is getting nominated this year."

That got some laughs. SILK! was an insane Christmas play my star striker and best friend had written. As my friend, Henri sometimes said things he thought the other players would want to say but were too afraid. "The disasterplan had one flaw, Max. Fixture congestion. Many games, not much rest."

"And now there are less of us," said Tony, my third-choice striker.

"Wrong," I declared, pointing to four fresh-faced youths. "Lucas Friend will train with us. Tyson. Benny. And... what was your name again? Bad Bunny?"

"Dan Badford," said the last one with an easy smile. He was wearing a clean, cream hoodie under a leather jacket, white trainers, and black jeans. So far, so cool, but he'd ripped enormous holes in the middle. If there was a culture where showing knees was taboo, Dan would be first against the wall. The other three were nervous and excited to officially 'join' the first team squad, but Dan didn't seem to give a shit. "Bad Bunny flows okay but me? I don't need autotune."

"Wow. Badford's coming for your Bad Boy title, Pascal." The German gave a half-hearted smile. He was still depressed. "Right. It's wall to wall matches, now. Start of February to the end of April. Time to take stock. First of all, I'm proud of you all. You've done extra in training, you've slapped in matches, and you handled my absence exactly how I knew you would. We're top of the league because you've trained hard and pushed yourselves and each other. Amazeballs." I paused. "Time for a new plan, I think."

I went over to my flipchart, pulled it forward, found a clean page, and picked up a marker.

"I've been looking around the leagues and there's this little-known team called Newcastle. They have a good coach who improves players and gets them motivated but the way they play is very demanding. Lots of pressing, counter-pressing, lots of running, lots of sprints. It's exhausting to watch. Obviously, when they get it right it suffocates teams. Top.

"Seems like a smart guy, right? I mean, absolutely no morals of any kind, but at least he's good at football. Oh but wait. He plays the same eleven every match. Doesn't rotate. Five-nil up and they're still running around like their arses are on fire. His players drop like flies and every now and then there's weeks where they can't buy a win. If he'd gone hard in three Champions League matches and chilled in three they'd have gone through.

"Maybe it's confirmation bias because I don't rate him as a person but I think he's a great coach and a bad manager and we're not doing it like that.

"As you know I'm happy to rotate the team. Before, it was to give you time to go hard on the training pitch. It's so frantic now we can't all train at a hundred percent. We’re sliding that down to ninety but we're still going to rotate. I'm going to shuffle the deck twice a week and trust in you to get results. Sam? Glenn? Henri? Do not fucking come whinging to me about being dropped. I am not in the fucking mood for that, okay? We're in the shit and we've got to come together, harder than ever.

"Remember all that storytelling stuff? Every match is a chapter, every season is a book? Fuck that. That's over. There's no story now. We are going to win every single match and make the rest of this season so boring that if there was a documentary crew filming all this, they'd chuck the footage into a pile and burn it.

"If we put the effort in now and win our next five games, we'll break York, Kiddies, and the other one. Once we've vanished into the distance, they'll start conserving energy for the playoffs. And then we can do the same. Does that make sense? So we're going hard in our next few matches because it'll save energy. I want fast starts. Sandra? That's the plan now. Twenty minute blitzes to start every match. Then massive efficiency.

"I don't care if it's low blocks, sitting back, 3-5-2 to play keep ball, whatever. The fans don't come when we play fantasy football. Maybe they'll like it turgid and dull.

"I'm taking your set piece training off the weekly schedule - I'm on dead balls now - and giving that sesh to Vimsy. Shuffling, sliding, working on your spacing. Boring, I know, but it's a way to save energy in matches where we're ahead. Which, I remind you, will be every match.

"When matches are all but won, we're going to put one of these kids on. Give them some minutes. That's an investment in next season. That's right, we're doing that already. If you've got complaints about that, remember that Benny's got more first-team goals this season than most of you."

This got a jeer. Benny's goal owed nothing to skill and everything to him flinching when a goalkeeper tried to clear the ball.

"So in summary. Play, rest, play. Teach the kids how to be pros. Off you go."

***

We got changed and when I was in my training kit I code switched so that I acted more like a player - an obedient herd animal. Sandra, Jude, and Vimsy were the coaches and they were allowed - encouraged, really - to bark at me like I was just one of the sheep. They never did because they could never be sure if me dogging a drill was because I was thinking about some strategy for the next game or managing my own calorie reserves or focusing on what the other guys were doing so I could tear them a new one.

It wasn't a tough session - we had an away match the following night - but I was enjoying it. Sometimes after all the stress and worry and planning and scheming it was nice to jog around and surround myself with low-stakes background chatter and mild banter.

The vibe suddenly changed. Collectively, the lads stood taller and the session became more intense. Sandra noticed it even before me, and by following her gaze, I saw the issue.

An obscenely attractive blonde woman was by the side of the pitch, watching us. She had long wavy hair, a maroon sweater covering her neck, and a soft-looking velvety overcoat that invited thoughts of touching and hugging and the series of steps that might lead to the item's removal, perhaps by a fireplace in the Swiss Alps.

I sighed and walked over. "Are you Brooke?" I said, probably not all that friendly.

"Yes. You're Max," she said in what I believe is called a Texan drawl. Up close she was pretty flawless. Naturally beautiful and tastefully enhanced.

"You're quite early."

She looked away, briefly, and tried to chuckle. "I was nervous."

Bullshit. No chance she was nervous. I already knew I couldn’t trust her and virtually the first thing she’d said to me was a lie. I mentally awarded her a demerit. "Er..." I said, thinking through my options. MD was due to come but she was here, now. Why not get it over with? "How about we start in five minutes? I'll have a tiny shower. You can wait in my office. I'll show you the way."

"I don't mind waiting out here. It's interesting. I don't know much about soccer."

More demerits. I nodded. "No, it's good. They don't need me for this. I'll just go talk to the coach."

A few strides took me back to base camp. Sandra rolled her eyes. "Another blonde? Max. I'm honestly disappointed."

"Yeah, Max," said Jude. Like most of the men he couldn't stop gawping. "Don't be so selfish."

"Take a good look, mate. She won't be here long."

"Why? Who is she?"

"She's come for a job that doesn't exist that she's completely unsuitable for. All right? If you want to make your move, do so now or forever hold your piece."

Sandra sniggered. Jude flushed around the cheeks. "I couldn't. She's out of my league."

I put my arm around his shoulder and gave him a supportive dig. "It's my job as your mate to tell you not to put yourself down. That you're a top catch, that you're mint, you're money, you're a triple threat: singing, dancing, and the other one." We both turned our heads to the newcomer. "But you're dead right. She's way out of your league. You wouldn't know what to do with her."

"Thanks, Max. Good talk."

"Get back to work, you slacker."

***

In the shower, my thoughts drifted back to the FA Youth Cup. Aiming to win that felt good and I suspected we had a chance. A slight chance, an outside chance, but if we got WibRob we’d have a star every bit as good as anything the other teams had. But even if we fell short, the project was a good excuse for why I was splashing the traitor cash on youth prospects. What I didn't want was other clubs to think that if I was rich they could charge me more for players I wanted. I'd told MD to put it out there that most of the money would be used paying debts and installing self-cleaning toilets.

And what I also didn't want was for William to get so arrogant he forgot to put the hard yards in. Yes, you're talented and one day in the distant future you might play in the Premier League, but for now your target is the FA Youth Cup. Trying to keep his head on the ground while keeping him ambitious.

When I'd explained my thinking in the car on the way home, Henri had agreed I was on the right track. The Brig didn't understand the sport enough to have an opinion, but he appreciated the sentiment. He responded well to William - said he'd do well in the army.

Emma approved of me talking about growing up in a house like William's. She said the parents had liked that, and they’d melted when I'd talked about my mum and grafting today to get your rewards tomorrow. And, she added with a little bit of distaste, Andy had responded great when I'd talked about the soft academy boys and taking retribution on the guy who'd hurt one of mine.

I was drying my hair when I strode into my office to check something on my computer. I sat and moved the mouse and clicked and nearly screamed when someone coughed. "Jesus!" I said, scrambling away from danger while laughing - an odd combo.

"I'm sorry," Brooke said. She'd been over near the chess set, reading the backs of my football books.

"No, it's fine. I just... yeah. Lost in a tiny dreamworld."

"There's one missing. Did it fall?"

"One what?"

She took a few steps towards the wall opposite the door. The wall to my left as I sat at my desk. She was pointing to a large space between two of my classy and tasteful decorations. Sometimes it is obvious a painting has recently been taken down because the wall behind is a different tone, but I hadn't noticed it. "Okay, that's perceptive. There was a framed football shirt hanging there until recently. It belonged to a person who got a better offer and jumped ship without telling us. The irony being that the shirt represented all the time and effort I'd invested in him."

"So you took it down."

"Not me, personally. I wouldn't want to touch it. I suppose I could have left it up as a reminder never to make the same mistake." I gave her a level stare. "But I don't need a visual reminder of that."

She returned my gaze with a blank look of her own. Not that smart, then. More demerits.

"Do you want to do it here?" I pushed my chair back towards the table, sat, and picked up a glossy CV. She took one of the two chairs in front of my desk. "Brooke Star," I said, reading. "27. From Texas. Nice. Great weather there. You must miss it."

"Sometimes I get kinda homesick, sure."

"Back to the ranch. 40 hectares. Cowboys and line dancing on tap. Luke Combs and cold lemonade under a blood-red sun. Yeah. Perfection." I ran my finger down the spine of the glossy sales brochure then dropped it onto my desk. "Business school. A string of jobs in massive corporations. It's very impressive."

She'd finally cottoned on to my mood and a couple of spots of red appeared on the tops of her cheeks. "You don't sound impressed."

"Because I'm not hiring someone to sit in a skyscraper all day sending out emails about what soup is allowed in the staff canteen. We don't do seven-course networking lunches where we talk about synergy and touching base and looping in."

"Do you wanna wait for Mike Dean to join us?"

"No. I don't. Because he'll fall for you in an instant. He's gullible."

"Gullible? I'm tricking you. Is that why you're givin' me sass?"

I picked up something I'd printed out. "Your dad is Gerry Star, right?" She nodded and something happened with her eyes I couldn't fathom. "Creator of the No Fussin' chain. Massively popular, big hit. I've got his net worth at three hundred million, but that was two years ago and the markets have been on a tear. Ten years from now he's a billionaire.

"You've been to the most expensive schools, you grew up riding horses, you've worked at the biggest companies in the history of commerce, and one day soon you'll wake up and think, you know what, I want to live on a superyacht for the rest of my natural life. I have no idea why you want a sixth tier soccer team on your resume but even if I thought you could do the job, you'd be the last person I'd hire. I need someone hungry and driven, same as me. I don't have a billionaire dad getting me into schools and I don't have a superyacht."

"In a job interview it's traditional to ask questions, not make statements."

"We don't do tradition round here."

"Can I speak now?"

"Hit me."

Her jaws were clenched together and there was fire in her eyes. It looked good on her. "Is there even a point? Have you made up your mind?"

I gave her a wide, relaxed smile that I knew would be infuriating. "My heart is an open book."

She fumed some more. The heat had made her steely. "I've never had any advantages. I've worked for everything I've ever got."

"Oh," I said, sadly. "But that's not true, is it? You're friends with Ruth so you got this interview. If you're so confident about yourself, why are you sneaking to the head of the queue before the position's even been advertised? Think you can't beat one of the gap-toothed yokels who live round here?"

The red on her cheeks was deepening. "I didn't ask Ruth to do that and I didn't know it wasn't out there."

"You didn't ask her but she did it. And that's the cool thing about being a billionaire baby. You never have to ask!"

"I'm not - "

"What it is, right, here's the thing about me. I'm pretty fucking abysmal at most things. I thought I was good at connecting with people, but I'm not. I thought I was someone who could - well, you don't need the details. But there's one thing, I think, where it's fair to say I get it right. Absolutely right, all the time. My little world, here, my little kingdom, is a meritocracy. Everyone in their position is the best I can get. The best I can afford to hire and keep. If someone recommends a player to me, or a coach, I'll take a look, but that person's value is one hundred percent based on their skills."

"If that's true, then you should beg me to take the job because I'm the best you're ever going to meet." Feisty! I was starting to like her. She still had a snowball in hell's chance, but I was having fun, at least.

"Are you sure?" I picked up her CV. "This is a work of art. It reminds me of Patrick Bateman. Look at the paper! The tasteful thickness of it! The fonts, the spacing. It's absolutely gorgeous. Now look around. The flipchart. I'm using a biro on it because my last marker went dry because some twat didn't put the lid back on. This building. It's owned by a credit card company and we're tenants. We don't own our own stadium. We own a ball machine and some boxing gloves. We are poor. Do you get it? This," I flapped the CV around. "This feels like it cost more than my car. Surely part of your job is knowing your audience?"

She inhaled and tried to stay composed. "I'll accept that was a mistake. That's fair. That's right. But Ruth told me you were a star player and you're not easy to impress. I worked extra hard on it. Played up the sporting angle."

"This competitive riding stuff?"

"Western riding."

"Yeah. I googled that. It's dressage in a cowboy hat, right? Horses. Stable fees, vets, lessons, long discussions about where to buy the best hay. I know from Ruth how expensive it all is."

"What's that got to do with anything? It's hard. It's competitive. You need to be driven."

"You need to be driven there in a Rolls Royce. I'm talking about my Head of Marketing and Public Relations being more at ease in the world of superyachts and, fucking... horse auctions than dealing with the everyday common-or-garden variety working class Joes who make up our fanbase. You want to go from writing wanky corporate brochures to sending out tweets about Steve Alton's groin. I just don't get it. You're completely unsuitable for the role. It's a bad fit."

She took those words, smelted them into daggers, and shot them at me via her eyes. "You need a marketing expert. You need public relations. It's the same work whether it's a Fortune 500 company, a tech start up in Fresno, or a soccer team in Chester."

"No, it's totally different. Totally different. And most of the things you'd want to do, I wouldn't want you to do. The more I think about it, the more I want someone local. Someone who gets the area, is good with people, and doesn't know the first fucking thing about PowerPoint. Someone who'll do it the way I want. And," I said, glancing in the direction of the empty slot on the wall and feeling a pang of absolute fury, "someone who'll stay longer than six months."

"With you as boss, you'll be lucky someone stays six minutes."

I laughed and checked the time. "You're nearly at six minutes. Why are you still here?"

"Do I still have a chance?"

I appraised her. "You have more of a chance than when you walked in."

"I would like to be judged on me and my person and not who my father is."

"Impossible. Next."

She swallowed back the fire she was about to breathe. She rubbed her mouth and looked down. "I work hard. I bust a gut every day to get what I want. I cannot be deviated from my task. The word all my teachers and bosses use to describe me is relentless. If I have a prey I'll hunt it down. I break complex tasks into small pieces and devour them.

"I'm a workaholic. I didn't get into business school because of my father, I got in because I had perfect test scores. I had perfect test scores because I'm smart and I apply myself. I got through school because I'm smart and I apply myself. Weak people love to blame their failure and my success on external factors but in here," she tapped her head, "It's just me. I've earned everything I've got. These clothes? My car? I paid for them. Those skills?" She pointed to the CV. "I got them. I thought about what I wanted to be and I became it." She paused for breath, then added in something of a mumble. "And I've never been on a dang superyacht."

"Mate!" I cried. "You're American; get to the meat. Why do you want to work here? It's shit and we've got no money."

She folded her hands and looked at them, just as I'd done down in Banbury. "I woke up one day and realised I had no passion for my job. I shouldn't say that since loyalty is such a big thing for you. But all of a sudden, it didn't excite me, didn't interest me. For a long time I was trying to prove myself, trying to outperform everyone.

"But when I did that, I looked around. When I joined the firm I was excited. It was a chance to make a difference. It does good things, makes good products that I believed in, but we could have done more. We never did. So, I thought, what am I doing here? The bosses there were content to keep making money, keep expanding, keep the shareholders happy. It's simply... not enough. I need more."

"You'll always need more. That's your nature."

She considered that. "Possibly. But why shouldn't I try?"

"So you left that job."

"I travelled. Did the American girl finding herself thing. Paris, China, Australia. You probably think it's so cliche."

"I think you're the first American woman I've ever met. I understand you want to travel. Who doesn’t?"

Unexpectedly, she got shifty. She coughed. "You've got me all wrong but this is the bit you really won't understand."

"You started writing letters to a convicted murderer."

"What?" She laughed, once. "No. My old performance coach, Dahvide, was giving a workshop in Chester. I wasn't so far away, only in London, when I heard about it. I booked a place and then it was a question of borrowing someone's horse. There's a riding school in Cheshire with some Western saddles and using my exceptional skills and charm that I've perfected over many years of hard work and application, they agreed to loan me a saddle and a horse. That's not typical, by the way. That's a huge point in my favour, if only you knew it. Long story short, it's my dream horse. It's an unbelievable horse. Like riding a cloud. He's my soulmate; I'm in love. Scotty. Short for Biscotti."

I inhaled, paused, and exhaled slowly. I thought I was on safe ground with the no-billionaires thing, but this was from a world I was only tangentially familiar with. "You need to live in England for five years so you can marry a horse."

She laughed again, much warmer this time. "No! They won't sell him, but I can ride him if I muck out and help them with their marketing mix. So I need to be here. In Cheshire. To stay in the UK, I need a work visa. They've just changed the law to make it so that I need to earn forty thousand pounds a year."

"That's peanuts compared to what you used to get."

"I know. It's not about the money. I'll freelance. Work online doing interesting projects. I told Ruth all this and she said that you, here, were building something. That it was like a mad startup and they needed some professionals in the room. But that I'd be building something meaningful. Something I'd be proud of."

"Why didn't you say all this right away?"

"Because you started beratin’ me as soon as I sat down!"

I gave her a cheeky grin, which was partially effective. "What's funny is that Ruth was the one berating me for hiring people without a process. I have to open this up and see what else is out there."

Her eyes flickered left and right. "And how long will that take?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Till next season."

"When's that?"

"See, the person I hire will have to know that. And the person I hire will know that while I don't personally give a shit, many people in this country find the word soccer annoying. They're idiots, but they're our fans and our stakeholders. It's part of knowing the audience."

I saw her making the calculations. Am I willing to learn about soccer in order to spend more time with this horse? "What else?"

"What?"

"What else do I need to do?"

I smiled and let some warmth come into my voice. "Brooke. Turns out, I like you. I like people who instinctively dislike me. If I was going to hire a marketing person, maybe it'd be you. I love a bargain and getting your skills for 40K is a no-brainer.

"But I don't want a marketing department. My goal here is to avoid having one for as long as possible. I can build this club on my own with my own skills making money from trading football players and making a massive profit. Dead simple. No Fussin'. No social media garbage, no fake beefs with Ryan Reynolds, no documentaries, no fucking introduction videos set to stirring music, none of that fake, fake shit.

"What we do on the pitch is kinda stupid, I know that, but it makes people happy and when you're in that stadium, it's really fucking real. The joy and despair is authentic. I could spend 40K on you and you'd be fantastic at scheduling meetings, or I could buy a 15-year-old star player for 40K and three years from now, sell him for five million pounds. Do you see the problem?"

"You want me to show I can be a good return on investment?"

"Brooke, please take a breath. I'm trying to be honest here and I'm sorry about the meeting jibe. That just slipped out because I'm a dick and I can't help it. I'm saying, there's no position. I'll tell Ruth and MD that I blew this meeting and when they hear your version, they'll be mad at me but they'll say 'oh Max'. And that'll get me a month without having to talk about it. And then I'll say I'm busy with the end of the season and blah blah blah. I'll kick the can down the road pretty much in perpetuity."

"You must have some marketing challenges. You have sponsors. Are they happy with the lack of effort from your side?"

"My lack of effort is some other person's greatest ever output. Seeing your company's name ten inches below my chin is a pearl beyond price."

"But..." She inhaled. "Please tell me something you'd employ someone to do for you. It could be anything." She saw me open my mouth and added, "Apart from playing... football."

I pushed myself away and had a tiny think. Most of the thoughts were already there and it would feel good to say them out loud. Help me to clarify my own thinking, if you follow me. And obviously, I'd never see her again so I could be honest about my struggles for once. I pointed at the empty space on the wall. I vowed to get that covered up pretty darn quick.

"The traitor fucked off to get his thirty pieces of silver. But I got thirty pieces of silver, too. I've got quite a lot of money for the first time in this job. Using it properly is the difference between the success and failure of what I'm doing here. It's critical. Here's where my mind's at."

I looked out of the window, then leaned my back against it.

"The club's electricity bill is bonkers. It's outrageous and keeps going up. That means we have to put ticket prices up and the fans don't like that. And if the costs get too high, I have less budget for staff salaries. So I was thinking about solar panels and batteries.

"I got a back-of-an-envelope estimate from a solar guy in a pub and he said putting panels on the roof of the stadium to cover our needs with some excess and whatnot would be four hundred and fifty thousand pounds. But we'd save, like, ninety thousand a year. These aren't exact numbers, you understand. I might even be misremembering because a five-year return on investment seems too good to be true.

"But if we put solar panels up we'd have more wage budget, there'd be less pressure on our ticket prices, and we'd have done something for the planet that I would like to live on for a long time. 450 K is a staggeringly painful amount of money to think about losing right now because I could seriously improve the team with that."

"Right."

"There must be grants and subsidies all over the place for that kind of project. I reckon if we win our next five or six league games, we'll have so much distance between us and the next best that they'll sort of give up and take it easy until the playoffs. So then I'll have time to get stuck into all this grant shit."

"Is that a good - "

"If we can get the cost down, or even a low-interest loan or something, I don't know, that'd be compelling. That's one project. The other idea is similar.

"We need to buy some land to start putting down our own facilities. Now, if I dump a ten million pound campus and then, like, die or whatever, the club will go bust trying to maintain it so it needs to be done step by step and all that. The first step will be a 3G pitch or two. Those are artificial grass pitches. They're nice to play on and you don't lose days to the weather. What's good is that when we aren't using them, we can rent them out. Demand for good football pitches is really high and for small clubs the income can be life-changing. Right?

"So I'd buy some land and make a community facility with it. We have disabled teams here that we take seriously, we're big into women's football, our youth teams are exciting. There's got to be all kinds of money to help us. I want to put two pitches down and have, like, grants coming in from eighteen places and they all think they're the only ones paying. Or whatever. A legal version of what I just said. I need a spare fortnight to look into it."

"So the first two projects would decrease the business's costs and increase its revenues?"

I held up a hand. "This isn't a business. You need to be a billion percent clear on that. This is not a business."

She flushed again, very slightly. "Gotcha. Not a business. But that's..." She scratched under her chin. "That's smart."

My phone pinged and I checked the screen. It was a message from the Banbury manager. I blinked. WibRob! Why was I still in this meeting? "Brooke, it was amazing to meet you but I need to kick you out now. I hope you find your dream job to go with your dream horse. It would help if you told Ruth I was mostly polite so she doesn't kick me out of her house. All right, how do Texans say goodbye?" I did an amazing accent as I closed the door behind her. "Catcha later, pardner! Yeehaw!"

And then Brooke was gone and out of my life forever.

***

Me: Bit of an odd request for if you're ever going near Manchester. I've had an idea for the empty space on my office wall.

Brig: Unfortunately, I am often going near Manchester. What would you like?

Me: A giant photo of one person in the world I trust maybe more than anyone else. I think it'll make me happy.

Brig: Then I shall make it a priority.

***

Tuesday, 6 Feb

Match 29 of 46: Rushall Olympic versus Chester

I was quiet in the dressing room and let Sandra give the final reminders of what the plan was. She projected her usual air of authority but I knew she was nervous. The team was weak. When I'd pitched the starting lineup to her, I thought she had mumbled 'weak as piss' under her breath, and she had a point. The average CA was 43.6, excluding myself of course. Still better than Rushall's 36, but our team was lumpy - some strong blobs, some, yeah, weak as piss ones.

"As you'd expect from a team called Olympic, these guys are quick and athletic and they like to start fast. We have to match them for work rate and intensity. If they get a lead, they'll be ferocious in defending it. We score first we can pick them apart."

"The first cut is the deepest," I said.

"Yeah, thanks, boss. Very vivid. Love a bit of morose imagery before a must-win match. Really sets the tone." She laughed. "Bloody hell, Max. So it's mad intensity, lads. Mad intensity. It's been pissing it down all day so the pitch is nice and slick. Zip the ball around. Let it do the work. You know the line up and we've got a strong bench but remember, the point is to rest key players. Get that first goal."

We were doing our usual 4-4-2 with Robbo between the sticks behind a decent back four of Magnus, Gerald May, Steve Alton, and Carl Carlile. D-Day was on the left, Bark on the right, me and Youngster in the middle. It would have been a perfect day for Pascal - positionally indisciplined opponents and a 3G pitch, but his morale was still in the toilet. Henri and Chris Beaumont, AKA Goliath, were the strikers.

One platinum, one gold, and a whole heap of silver and tin.

The bench, though, was very strong. Too strong for my liking but we could only name five and Sandra wanted some security. We agreed on four big names and one development guy. Ben as the backup goalie. New signing Eddie Moore for left-sided cover and key players Glenn and Aff ready to come on if things spiralled out of control. We also had Tyson on the bench and if things went well he'd make his professional debut. Sandra had tried to talk me out of telling Tyson's dad, Bulldog, that he should come down. She looked around the pitch and saw too many weak spots that would buckle if Rushall put us under any pressure.

But I wasn't worried about the match, apart from a nagging thought that I should have put out a strong team to impress William into signing. The Brig had picked the Roberts family up and used his briggy charms on them all the way to Walsall. The Bulldog family were very much in attendance, and I also spotted two very blonde heads of hair near MD in our VIP seats. Hmm. Was Brooke continuing her poverty safari?

No, my strange mood had little to do with the match and a lot to do with The Traitors. It was the TV show I'd become addicted to while I was immobile in hospital. The moments where 'the faithful' realised they've been deceived by their closest friends were electric. I watched the tears, the wobbling lips, the sadness in the eyes with glee. Jubilant glee. In retrospect, my reaction sickened me and I wanted a follow-up episode where we spent half an hour with the people who were so thoroughly tricked. I wanted to know they were all right. I wanted to know how they'd recovered. Had any of them forgiven their betrayers? It was just a game, after all. Why did -

"Max!"

"What?" I mumbled.

"It's our kick off. You ready?"

I blinked and looked around. There was a football match ready to happen. "Hit me."

Goliath passed to Henri, who passed to me. The Rushall guys stormed at me. Very slowly, like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, I turned backwards and shaped to pass the ball to a defender. An oppo striker stretched out to block the pass, but I'd already turned more, a full 360 in slow motion that took four guys out of the game.

So long, suckers!

I sprinted ahead and there was immediate panic. Gleeful mayhem. Goliath lumbered straight ahead, dragging three defenders with him. Henri zoomed left, bringing another one. Bark and D-Day were in motion, bringing aggro on them. That didn't leave many coming at me.

I turned my sprint into a - what's faster than a sprint? - and sped into space. One of the centre backs realised I was about to shoot and left the line to throw himself into a block. His mates tried to shuffle to fill the space but when I played a diagonal pass towards an empty hole outside the penalty box they didn't know what to do. It made no sense, and just for a second, they relaxed. The danger was gone.

So then why was I running harder than ever?

Henri had sprinted back into the hole and latched onto my pass. He took one touch, paused, and played it in front of me. Too far for me to shoot, but that was intentional.

I caught up with the ball and as I looked down at it, focused on my technique. How much clip? How much spin?

I think...

This much.

As I kept my forward motion, but now running backwards - what? - off the pitch, I watched my cross sail onto Goliath's head. He didn't have to jump. He didn't have to sprint or adjust his body. The defenders clinging onto him deflected him not an inch from his purpose.

He headed the ball, as he had been doing for his entire career, exactly where he wanted it to go. This time, it was straight in front of him, far to the goalie's left. One-nil. First blood to us. Thirteen seconds? Unlucky for Rushall. The celebrations happened around me in front of a line of shocked home fans. They watched me embrace Henri first of all. He was babbling, delirious. Morale maxed out. Goliath came next, laughing, saying "I knew it! I knew it!" Then Youngster, eyes wide and laughing. Our celebrations lasted three times longer than the actual football and by the time I got back to our half, something had changed.

It looks like Rushall are adopting a more defensive approach.

The rain started again.

I lifted my chin and let the droplets splash onto my stupid, gullible face. Football is full of uncertainties. Was that handball? Did the foul happen inside or outside the penalty area? Did he mean to kick him?

But at non-league level, if you score a goal, that's a goal. And if you win, you win. Simplicity in a complicated game. Certainty in a bewildering world.

Yes, mate.

As Rushall kicked off, I forgot about our travelling fans. I forgot Bulldog, Brooke, WibRob, MD, and whoever else was in the stands. I strode around, analysing the match. Analysing the match ratings and the strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and threats. I didn't need a business school girl - I had an MBA of my own - Max Being Awesome.

When the ball next came to me there was a hilarious and deeply satisfying moment where three banks of yellow-shirted opponents retreated five yards. I grinned, feeling, for the first time since the fans forum, something like the person I wanted to be.

I exchanged passes with Youngster to see how they'd react - watchfully.

I pinged the ball out to Bark to see what they'd do - they stayed goal side.

When it was cycled back to me, I glanced left and nodded at D-Day. We both started a sprint - mine rather faster than his - and when I shaped to chip the ball forward and left, there was palpable panic in the Rushall defence. The goalie thought he had the best shot at clearing the danger and rushed out in that direction.

So from ten, soon to be five yards inside my own half, I sorted my feet out and launched a high, looping shot towards the open right-hand side of the goal.

As the ball looped towards its target, I thought about the hurt I'd suffered. The first cut was the deepest, but there were many more. It hurt that people didn't believe in me. It hurt that I'd added a million in cash and assets and people thought I was only interested in taking money out of the club. It hurt that I'd done something genuinely good - saving Tranmere Rovers from relegation - and people only saw the bad. Every doubt was a dagger.

But this, here, on the pitch, this was my release. Watching the action play out according to my godlike design was the ultimate in therapy.

The ball bounced two yards to the right of the penalty spot.

With me in this mood, it was a bad fucking time to be a National League North goalkeeper.

This one raced across and leapt, despairingly, towards the ball. The stupid idiot nearly misjudged the bounce from the artificial pitch - the last thing I wanted was to score a 60-yard belter and go viral. Fortunately, he got a palm to it and slapped it away. He jogged after it, got hold of it, and with no-one anywhere near him flopped to the ground so he could catch his breath and let the horror of the moment wash over him.

All in all, it worked like a charm. The keeper stayed in his zone for most of the rest of the match, and I instantly read this in the match commentary:

It looks like Rushall are adopting a more defensive approach.

They'd gone full low block and the rest of the half would be played in and around their penalty box. We'd save our legs and I'd show William how a proper team used Chris Beaumont.

I looked up and let the rain smash into me some more, spreading my arms and trying not to shout what I was thinking.

I was so fucking good at this game!

...

Thanks for your support and the corrections on my data in the epilogue!