7.2 - Beating the Block [T1] (Patreon)

2.

Rushall's low block was pretty effective in slowing us down - for a while. We were leading, so we had no incentive to force the issue and were content to stretch the play left and right, probing, looking for gaps.

The problem was that we were weak down the wings. On the left we had Magnus Evergeen, who was a solid, dependable guy with low creativity, and D-Day, a flair player who was weak defensively and preferred dribbling to passing. In a normal team they'd have been a good combo, but not much about my Chester team was normal. Suffice to say that my famous Art of Slapping - combinations of passes that would put us in great goalscoring positions - didn't suit those players.

My style did suit those on the right. Calabash 'Bark' Barkley was a young talent I'd rescued from the grim north-east, getting him a transfer to the grim north-west. His current club, Tranmere Rovers, had loaned him to me for the rest of the season on condition that we helped his development.

Behind him, Carl Carlile was a physically impressive defender with endless stamina. His on-the-ball skills and positioning had improved a lot since he had decided to commit - really commit - to playing football. In a year or two, this would be an absolutely dynamite partnership at this level, but right now Bark was so, so raw.

He had a bravery attribute of 5, which meant he wouldn't jump into a 50-50 tackle. I was fine with that - he couldn't help the team if he was injured. But it seemed to also make him reluctant to take other kinds of risks. He was playing the game pretty safe. That was understandable - he was just a kid trying not to screw up, but no risk, no slap.

In the centre of midfield, I was buddied up with Youngster, an 18-year-old superstar in the making who made crazy numbers of interceptions. Again, not a creative type.

I had options on the bench - I could bring Aff on and play him at left back instead of Magnus and then our left-sided overlaps would be absolutely deadly. But it was important that we won games with our rotation players.

So much of the burden fell on my shoulders.

And what shoulders they were!

Youngster harries Gooch and knocks the ball away.

Evergreen is fastest to it. He knocks it to May.

May hits a long ball in the direction of Beaumont.

The striker wins the header and knocks it back to midfield.

Best looks up. He has two men approaching.

Best plays a one-two with Youngster and checks his options.

Lyons makes a run.

The ball is slid into his path. Lyons shoots!

But it's blocked. He was crowded out.

When the move was over, I paced towards Gerald May. "What the fuck was that?"

He looked shocked. "What?"

"You hit a long ball to Chris! Why? We don't do that."

"He was just - " said May, but the fury on my face made him shut up.

I swallowed my anger - partially, anyway, and turned my back on him. We played some more and Rushall cleared the ball into the middle of our half. Robbo jogged out of goal - he was little more than a spectator at this point - and launched it long to Chris. The ball sailed out of play for a Rushall goal kick.

They would take their sweet time restarting the match, which today I was fine with. But I wasn't fine with Robbo. I stormed all the way to the penalty box and jabbed my captain for the day in the chest. "Do that again this'll be the last game you ever play for this club."

"Max!"

"Shut the fuck up. Play like we train or you're done." I walked off, seething, going through every swear word I knew.

Rushall had set up a block, and these morons were running straight into it, head first. The stupidity was excruciating.

The problem was English football DNA. Apart from kids who got into academies at a young age, we grew up surrounded by route one football. Route one is where you kick the ball as far as you can down the pitch. As you might imagine, if you're playing route one football it helps to have a big, strong lump to aim these long balls at. I'd put a big strong lump into our team and our less talented players had instantly regressed.

Why hadn't I known this was happening? I needed to have a word with Spectrum. He'd edited this shit out of the match footage he'd sent me.

It was infuriating, especially because I'd explicitly told WibRob that we were using Chris as some kind of aesthetic marvel. In fact, we were no better than Banbury. I walked over to the dugout. "Ben! Get warmed up." I narrowed my eyes. "And if you pull that shit, too, you're out, too."

"Then who's going in goal?" said Sandra.

"Me."

I went back to midfield and found I couldn't control the rage. White spots appeared in my vision, even when I closed my eyes. I'd worked so hard to get the team playing Max Best football, high-percentage football, winning football, but they would use any excuse to revert to caveman shit.

The ball came to me and I flicked it up and wellied it high into the sky. It went into fucking orbit, never to be seen again.

I turned around, clapping myself quite sarcastically, screaming, "Yeah! Yeah! Fucking brilliant, that! Get in!"

The more I fumed, the more everyone's morale dropped, but I couldn't get a grip. I was melting down. There was exactly one area of my life that I was supposed to be in complete control of and these stupid fucks were betraying me. Henri came over and put his hand on my shoulder. "Max. What troubles you?"

"Life, man," I said, defeated. My energy was spent. Gone.

"Yes. Life. You know, I was shopping for decorations for my bedroom and I came across a wonderful quote painted onto a piece of wood. It simply said: Live, Laugh, Love. Those are words to live by."

He kept a straight face for at least five seconds, but then I detected a twitch around the sides of the eyes. I tried to smile. "How do I stop these twats going route one? We've trained it endlessly."

Rushall kicked off, but Henri and I stood still a little while longer. "You can't. They are English. It's what they do. You didn't correct them in January. I assumed you were okay with it."

"Drop into midfield a minute."

I swapped our roles on the tactics screen. While Henri scampered off to join our midfield line, I walked towards Chris Beaumont and put one hand on his lower back and one on his elbow. "Chris, I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"I didn't know they were doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Using you as a target man."

"I am a target man."

"You're not. You're a perfectly-engineered cog in a sumptuously elegant mechanism designed by a floating megabrain."

"Is that you?"

"Yes."

"What are you doing?"

I was trying to push him and he was letting me but even then, his enormous bulk was too much. "Change of plan. You're going to start our moves from here."

"What?" He tensed and I couldn't move him, but then he decided he trusted me, relaxed, and walked on his own. He glanced behind us, where a football match was happening. Rushall had taken the opportunity to move up the pitch. "Here? I'm offside."

"Bit more." We kept walking, past a bewildered goalkeeper, right up to the goalpost. "About here, I reckon."

"Tempted to say the O word again, in case you forgot the laws of the game."

"Instead of starting at the half-way line and running this way, you'll start here and move backwards. Not too far. You only need to be onside when the last pass comes. Right?"

He shook his head. "This is to stop them playing long balls to me?"

"Mate, if I see one more, careers are going to be ended. I am livid. I know it's not nice but they need to fucking recalibrate. All right?"

"You're the boss."

I left him there chatting to the other team's goalie while loads of the home fans shouted jokes at him. When I got to midfield I swapped places with Henri. I played a few one-touch passes to help me return to some semblance of mental equilibrium and Rushall retreated bit by bit until they were back in the low block and we were surrounding them. We hit a lot of safe, sideways passes, left and right, right and left, wearing the oppo down.

Finally, I saw the opening. Bark was on the right with Carl starting an overlap. I sprinted in the direction of the corner flag and used the tactics screen to swap places with Bark. He touched the ball to Carl, who passed it into my feet. I stopped it with my right and helped it sideways with my left. Bark was moving that way. He rolled it back to me.

"Go!" I shouted.

Carl overlapped me and I shaped to hit the pass on the outside, towards the touchline, where Carl would have the chance to hit a cross that would probably be blocked by the defender. Instead, I hit it to the left of the defender, what we call the 'inside', and Carl burst past the guy.

The defender made a decent attempt at sliding to the ball but Carl just about got there first, shook off the foul, righted himself, and hit a solid cross to the back post.

Chris had waited until the move was almost fully ripe before jogging onside, and he had a simple job to power the ball into the bottom left. Two-nil! The home fans weren't laughing, now, and Chris loped away, hugging Henri and the others on his way to the corner flag to do some inane celebration.

I fell straight back into a grump. "Fucking bunch of useless pricks," I mumbled as I walked back down the line. "Gonna fucking savage them." I remembered I'd swapped places with Bark and undid that change. "Rip them a fucking new one. Load of bullshit."

I fell to my haunches and stayed staring straight ahead, unblinking, not responding to anything or anyone until the match was back on. The action flowed around me, avoiding me, and when I got the ball I played it to Youngster. I wanted him to step up. Take responsibility. They couldn't rely on me all the time - I'd smacked a football into a journalist's face and I would get a ban. If I knew the Football Association, the ban would cover our most difficult and important games. We couldn't play like this against anyone good. We had to break the habit.

To his credit, Youngster realised what I was doing and with me anchoring the midfield, he got more progressive. He tried his idiosyncratic dribble past one opponent and tried to link up with the guys on the left. Then he did it on the right. He hung around being the corner of various triangles.

It was all very ragged - against a low block we needed more cunning, more smarts, more deception - but we were starting to get somewhere when one of D-Day's dribbles ended with a foul in a dangerous position on the left of the pitch, not far from being in line with the penalty box. The Free Hit option came up. It slightly increased my team's chance of scoring from a set piece. The angle was good and there were plenty of ways we could score, so I smashed the button.

I thought about shooting, but not for long. If I scored too many goals myself, I risked attracting the attention of a hellish entity known as The Sentinel who would be mad at me for using powers I should never have been given. In this case, it wasn't much of a restriction; I had Chris, Henri, and Steve Alton as targets, with Gerald May as a good decoy. How about a left-footed cross? I was still mostly sticking to using my right foot so that opponents would be surprised when I broke out my equally-strong left.

I placed the ball down and maximised the Masterpiece Theatre section of my vision. This was something like a mini map with my teammates marked as blue circles. I wasn't totally sure of the rules, but I was able to move some of them around to various amounts. Rushall didn't have anyone poised for a counter attack, so I tried to throw everyone forward. Youngster and Bark wouldn't budge from the halfway line, but I was able to move everyone else to the far post.

An idea came to me - blockers. A lot of teams had very complicated set piece moves where certain players would run to spots with no intention of trying to head the ball. Their job was to stop defenders from challenging the intended target of the cross. Could I approximate that now?

I sent Henri to the near post - closest to me. A defender followed him. With everyone else on the far post, it seemed pretty obvious where I would aim. I mean, it was always obvious - Chris Beaumont. He was so massive that if the cross was on target the defence could do virtually nothing about it. The ref blew his whistle and I swapped the circles.

Chris and the tall defenders ran to the front post, Henri to the back. The defenders followed in confusion, trying to stick to the players they were marking but getting in each other's way. Blocking each other!

The concept didn't work perfectly, but it was good enough.

The goalie took two steps towards the near post, towards Chris, and I hit a hard, fast cross into the space in front of Henri. He bullied his solo defender, rose, and scored.

Three crosses, three headers, three-nil, and I turned my thoughts to the absolute half time bollocking I was going to give these twa - Argh! They were all running in my direction. Even Henri. Masterpiece theatre was still open, and I tried sliding the player icons away from me. Away! Shoo! I'm mad at you!

"Max! Yeah!"

"Whoo!"

"Chester!"

"Get in!"

I was wedged in the arms of Chris Beaumont and Henri and couldn't escape - a prisoner of joy. Henri was doing the manic nodding thing he did when he'd scored a goal that fit the concept I'd laid out. "What now, Max? More?"

"No. Efficiency. The game's dead. Kill it."

"Illogical, but yes. Understood."

"Can I stop humping the goal post, please boss?"

I laughed and rubbed my forehead. "Sure. Come on. Energy saving mode on, lads."

***

Shortly after the ref blew for half time, I was wondering how tonto to get in the dressing room when I spotted a familiar foe standing behind the goal we had been attacking. It was pretty easy to pick out individual faces - there were only about five hundred in the whole crowd. I had a sudden burst of inspiration. I waved at Bulldog to make his way to the front so I could talk to him. Then I looked around, shielding my eyes from the floodlights until I picked out Andy Roberts. I waved him over, too.

"Andy, this is Bulldog. His son's on our bench today. Going to make his debut. Bulldog and I have had a few scraps in the past. Bulldog, this is Andy. I'm trying to sign his son. He's the same age as Tyson. Would you do me a solid and tell him what it's really like being the father of a young player at Chester?"

Bulldog's eyebrows rose. "Are you sure that's a good idea, Max?"

"Sure. You can be honest."

"If he's here, he's probably close to signing. You shouldn't sell past the close."

"Do you know what that means?" I asked Andy. He didn't. "What's that mean?"

Bulldog explained. "If you've got a deal, don't keep talking. You can only blow it."

I nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. But it's his son. He deserves to know. Anyway, you'll be watching your kids play together a lot. You could help Andy get to know Chester. The city, I mean. Give him some tips. Best pubs. Where to park. All that."

"Happy to, yeah!"

"I'm gonna go scream at these idiots, now."

"Max, hang on." Bulldog put his hands on the simple black fence that separated us. "You're winning three-nil. It's one-sided. I'm not telling you your business but as a manager you have to be careful not to ask too much."

I gave him a confused smile. "I don't want perfection. I just want them to do what I want. It's dead easy." I blinked as Rushall's tactics screen changed from 4-4-2 to 5-4-1. Huh. But then it switched again, to 4-5-1. So their manager was spitballing some ideas. I shook it off; there was nothing he could do to turn this round. "Er... Tyson will get five minutes at the end. It's just for a bit of match day experience," I said to Andy, but he was looking at Bulldog, who was tearing up, holding onto the railing even harder.

That, I thought, as I pottered back to the dressing room, couldn't have gone any better.

***

As I entered the dressing room, I decided not to go all guns blazing. It had struck me that the players who'd reverted to long ball had two things in common. One, their CA was low. Two, their contracts hadn't been extended. If their low CA made them more likely to panic and go long, it was unfair of me to ask them to play any different. No, it was fair to ask, but unfair to go nuts if they simply couldn't help it.

And the Machiavellian side of my brain had lit up. If I used this as a reason WHY they wouldn't get a new contract, it would scare the shit out of everyone at the club. They'd know the consequences of defying me on issues that mattered.

Hmm. Seemed a bit explosive, that. A softer version, perhaps, where I simply said they didn't fit my style of play. That would be enough. The rumour mill would quickly fill in the details.

"Max?" It was Sandra Lane, by some metrics the most successful woman in the history of football. I found myself with my arm resting on top of the tactics board. "You okay?"

"Did they spend the whole of January lumping the ball forward?" I whispered.

"Not often. Not everyone."

I nodded, and still in a low voice, added, "I've had my tantrum. They'll think about it. We'll talk it over before the next game. Something like that?"

"Yeah, perfect."

"The women are off the pace, too. Complacent."

"Give them a kick up the backside. Surprise them in training tomorrow."

Yeah. Good call. In a more normal voice, I said, "Any thoughts?"

"If we're still changing to 3-5-2 it's just a question of who comes off. Carl or Magnus?"

"What do you think?"

She sighed. "I think you were right. They don't really have the weapons to hurt us. We can rest Carl."

"What's up?"

"I should have listened to you. This would be perfect minutes for Andrew H. We don't need such a strong bench."

"Come on. Maybe we're winning because we've got such a strong bench. Who knows?"

"We're winning because there's no way to block you."

"Block us," I said.

"You."

Vimsy eased his way into the area. "Erm... boss. Bosses. Just checking if there's going to be any shouting you need help with?"

"Not angry shouting, no. I'll get the lads in my office tomorrow and talk to them. But," I said, to cheer him up. "We're doing 3-5-2 defensive, second half. It's all about spacing and discipline and we'll have two kids out there. You can stand on the touchline and yell instructions at them, if you want."

He grinned, rubbed his hands together, and fished in his pocket for a throat lozenge.

***

The second half kicked off and, as I'd thought, Bulldog was nowhere to be seen. Off buying beers with his new mate.

I pottered around the centre circle, barely involved in the match apart from a few crisp passes. Then, yes! The clans had collided and formed a new supertribe made up of Bulldogs and Robertses. Half were carrying pints. I gestured at Sandra, and shortly after, Tyson came to the touchline, stretching his hamstrings, touching his toes.

"Substitution for Chester. Replacing number 2, Carl Carlile, number 29, Tyson."

Another player from the formerly-neglected Chester youth system was making his first team debut. From one point of view, it was a couple of years ahead of schedule. From another, it was thirty-five minutes ahead of what had been promised. I'd lied to his dad so that this moment would be even more rewarding. For me.

While I used my hotkeys to rearrange us into a defensive, energy-saving 3-5-2 (no forward runs, no through balls, no dribbles, Tyson the right-most CM, me right-mid so I could look after him), Bulldog burst into tears.

Andy was first to hug him, while Anne very clearly mouthed the word 'aww'. William looked at Tyson - lining up next to the great Max Best - with envy.

I had absolutely nailed it. Absolutely smashed every obstacle out of their path. What objections could they possibly have left? Truly, I was history's greatest mastermind.

***

A ridiculously youthful midfield of Bark, Youngster, and Tyson struggled to compete with their far more experienced opponents, but anytime they looked like cracking I whizzed across to help out. With surprisingly diligent support from D-Day on the left, Henri dropping from the front, and knowing we had a solid defence, a three-goal lead and top players on the bench just in case, there was little jeopardy.

Vimsy shouted instructions like we were losing four-nil and down to seven men. That was good. That was right.

Tyson left the pitch all smiles, with forty minutes of professional football to his name. We can skip past his four out of ten match rating. That was almost completely irrelevant.

This match was one of our rescheduled ones, and our three closest rivals hadn't played. That put us six points clear at the top with four very winnable matches coming up before the big one against Kidderminster.

Team P W D L [F A GD] Pts

1 Chester 29 22 2 5 [78 27 51] 68
2 Kidderminster 29 18 8 3 [51 20 31] 62
3 York 30 16 11 3 [49 30 19] 59
4 Darlington 29 16 10 3 [45 28 17] 58

***

I was pretty deep in thought as I walked, head down, through the weird stadium into the small portacabin that housed our dressing room. It was just about the least glamorous location of my entire football journey, but I didn't mind it. I took some perverse pleasure in the roughness.

But there was a surprise waiting for me before I got there.

A little table had been set up outside, and Ruth and Brooke were there holding large umbrellas to keep it dry. Ruth didn't seem angry at me for how I'd treated Brooke in her job interview, which was unexpected.

"What's this?" I said.

"Come out of the rain," said Brooke.

"What rain?" This innocuous question made her laugh - a warm, sunny, exotic laugh that didn't match the location. I did as she'd suggested while our players - and a few curious ones from Rushall - formed a semi-circle, unbidden. They knew something was happening.

MD, Secretary Joe, Bulldog, and the Roberts family arrived under umbrellas of their own. That was my first glimpse of Adam, the younger brother. People naming the second brother Adam annoyed the shit out of me, but I had heroically kept that opinion to myself. Joe laid out some papers and while my heart tried to beat itself out of my chest, WibRob signed a four-year contract.

"Is that it? Is it done?" I said.

"It's done," said Joe. "William B. Roberts will be a Chester player on June the first."

My fists were clenching and unclenching of their own accord. I needed to let out some emotion. Needed a release. I looked from Brooke to Ruth to MD. "Someone's gonna get a kiss."

"How about me?" said Anne, WibRob's mother.

I laughed and gave her a peck on the cheek and a big hug. The watchers applauded.

"Is that how I get a new contract?" shouted D-Day. "Give you a kick up the arse?"

I laughed some more, and William blushed as he remembered our first ever interaction. "That wasn't a kick. That was an assist. William shot us to the top of the league!" Our lads cheered. I watched Joe putting the documents into a folder and into a briefcase. "So it's proper done? Like proper done?"

"Yes, Max," said MD. "All done. There's no backing out now. From either side."

I tightened my abs and did a primal grunt. Come on! I took in a huge breath. "Holy shit. Best day ever. Okay. It's done. So, William. I have a confession."

The hubbub died down. "Oh-oh," said Tyson, who was at the front of the semi-circle of players. It was only Chester guys left, now. We had that hot glow of victory; we didn't feel the rain.

"Don't want you hearing about it later and getting annoyed. Thing is, when I was negotiating with Banbury, I suggested an add-on and, fuck me, they leapt at it."

"What was it?" said Andy, worried. Had he been scammed? Bulldog sensed his doubts and moved closer, putting his arm around his new mate. Andy relaxed - most of the way.

"Yeah," I said, giving it my best cheeky grin. "Will, I did say I didn't want you playing for Banbury for the rest of the season but I kind of got the cheeky feeling that you might, sort of, ignore me or whatever." The kid's eyes flashed - busted! "So me and their manager talked about it and if you don't play a single minute for Banbury until the end of the season, I'm going to give them ten grand. Their faces lit up, mate. That's free money. That's a lot of self-cleaning toilets. So... Banbury's done. You're with us, now. Soz not soz."

There was dead silence as a rainbow of emotions crossed the kid's square-round face. It was a rainbow with two colours, though - the red of anger and the black of resentment.

Tyson pointed at him. "You got Maxxed!"

The team jeered and cheered and pulled William out from behind the table and into their midst. He couldn't help but laugh as they bounced around shouting, "William! Top of the league! William William top of the league!" He was swallowed by the group and deposited into the dressing room where he got his first taste of what winning a professional game feels like. And smells like.

I turned to his parents. "That look was scary. Is he gonna forgive me?"

"Yeah," said his mum. "He's got a temper but it doesn't linger. Doesn't hold grudges."

Andy was giving me a strange look. "Do you always get what you want?"

My cheeky grin came back. "Right now I really want a hot shower." I looked at the portacabin. "Something tells me I'm not going to get one." I stepped towards it, but Bulldog made a little noise. He held his arms wide. "I'm soaking wet," I said.

"Don't care," he said, wrapping me in his thick arms. He slapped me on the back a few times, pushing the air out of my lungs and making me realise just how drenched I was. "My son played for Chester. Thank you. Thank you."

I thought about trying to say something funny, but decided that silence was golden. I double-tapped the badge on my chest and went inside to dangle the prospect of training with the first team in front of WibRob. He'd been Maxxed, but if he was smart, he'd realise that was a good thing.

***

During the shower, the usual post-match fatigue hit me in an awesome wave so when the Brig suggested I should go home with Ruth while he dropped off the Robertses, I agreed.

We watched the team bus pull away - the party bus, based on the youthful dancing I saw in the middle - and I went round to Ruth's passenger seat and settled in. I realised, too late, that my landlord was going to take the opportunity to yell at me, but my situation grew even more precarious.

The back doors opened and MD got in behind me, while Brooke got in behind Ruth.

Oh shit.

I was going to get yelled at from three sides. It had struck me after Brooke's interview that maybe, potentially, I hadn't handled it with one hundred percent class and tact, and I'd imagined multiple tellings-off. Ruth's would have been short but explosive, while MD's would have been measured, professional, and damning. 'Speaking with perfect candour, Max, the tone and content of the interview you ran, as they have been reported to me, are nothing short of unacceptable, blah blah blah, do you truly understand the position you have placed the club in yadda yadda yadda require an acknowledgement from you of your missteps in this case and so on and so forth.'

I was so tired. This was so unfair! If they pushed me too far, I knew I'd snap. 'Don't talk to me like I did anything wrong! I just brought a SECOND one-hundred-million-pound player to this shitty little club! The third if you include me!'

The problem was, of course, that I knew anything they said about me, against me, would most probably be true. I could have gone through the motions with Brooke and told MD it was a dealbreaker she didn't know the sport. Easy. Why did I have to get all Max about it?

"So that's some kinda whizzkid?" the Texan was saying.

"Max wants me to sign him to my agency," said Ruth. I noted she didn't say 'our' agency. I looked at her, sharply. She didn't fully trust Brooke. Why the fuck should I? "So he must be pretty good. Although I note he signed William to a four-year deal before I was allowed to get involved."

MD grunted. "We'll end up smashing our transfer record to smithereens with that boy. The deal is stratospheric. For a fifteen-year-old who has played twenty minutes of first team football."

"Twenty shit minutes," I said, helpfully.

MD leaned forward and rubbed his face. "I just hope it works out or I'll get all kinds of abuse."

"Max knows best," said Ruth, with a smile.

"How much is the deal worth? Did you give up a good draft pick?" There followed a silence that that Brooke misinterpreted. "That was a joke, Max. I've been reading up on football."

But I was still staring at Ruth. Max knows best? MD amiably worrying about my maverick decisions? The tone was wrong. All wrong. Where was the heat? Where was the anger? Slowly, I turned to Brooke and narrowed my eyes. What had she done? My tiredness was lifting. Something was afoot, here. My mouth went on autopilot as I sketched out the terms of the WibRob deal.

"Twenty K base. Twenty K after eleven league matches. Twenty K after twenty-two league matches. Ten K if they don't use him the rest of this season. Ten K if we get to a Youth Cup final. They've got two chances on that before he ages out. Ten K if he gets called up to an England under 21 or the full England squad while he's with us. Plus a ten percent sell-on clause."

"One hundred thousand total," said Brooke. Fast maths!

"The record buy for this league is seventy thousand," said MD. "That was for the best left back going. Left back means a defender," he added, but I got the feeling Brooke was deadly serious when she said she'd been doing her homework and the explanation was deeply unnecessary.

Ruth shook her head. "I'm disappointed. You get some cash you start splashing it around like there's no tomorrow. It's very lottery winner, Max Best."

MD came to my defence. "Ah, the structure of the deal is interesting. The headline figure is twenty thousand. That's a lot but not enough to heap pressure on the lad. Max was keen to avoid that. Some of the elements won't come into play. We won't be getting to any Youth Cup finals! That was clever, Max, dangling that in front of them. And England under 21? I mean, if it does happen it won't be next year or the year after."

"What's with the strange appearance add-ons?" wondered Ruth. "It's normally after ten, twenty, thirty games, right? Round numbers?"

A question I was happy to answer. "He's registered with Banbury for the rest of this season. Next season, he'll be ours and we can use him in ten league matches, plus all the cups if we want. He'll get his league winner's medal - if we win it - but we won't have to pay Banbury. The season after, the first league appearance will trigger the payment, but we should have sold more players by then. Twenty grand will be a drop in the ocean. But just in case, it's the same deal. We can defer one payment to the season after. Banbury are happy to get the cash whenever. They can't believe their luck."

"What's the ten percent thing?" asked Brooke.

"If we sell him for a million, we have to give them a hundred thousand."

She nodded.

And again there was this strange feeling in the car. I looked from face to face and the vibe was... good. We were top of the league, we'd nabbed a hot prospect...

No-one was mad at me!

I eyed Brooke again. "I was surprised to see you there tonight."

"Why?" said MD, more confused than I could explain.

Brooke blasted past it. "That was my first football match since high school."

"Did you like it?"

"Almost completely not," she said, with refreshing honesty. "It was fascinating to watch you work, though. Real quarterback energy. Dahvide said you were better than the level and even I could see that. One thing none of us understood, not even your new player, was why you raised all that hell. It kinda put me in mind of someone treading their muddy boots all over your shiny clean superyacht."

Okay, now there was a dig, but neither Ruth nor MD so much as blinked. "Standards slipped," I said, then turned to face the front. I bit my nail. What was up? "What did Brooke tell you about the interview, Ruth?"

"She said you were mostly polite."

I turned again, but Brooke's face was blank. Completely blank, like a doll.

"I wish you'd waited for me, Max," said MD, with just enough disapprobation to trigger my flight or fight reflex.

"Yeah, well, I just signed the best youth prospect in the country for twenty grand so maybe you'll end up forgiving me." Fuck! Had I said that out loud? This fucking Brooke chick was messing with my head.

"The best? That's... Even for you, Max, that's optimistic."

"You're right, he's shit."

"Max!" laughed MD. "What's up with you?"

"It's the match," said Ruth. "Player-manager for ninety minutes. It takes it out of him. John told me the squad know to treat him like a helpless baby after games and we must, too. Although," she added, "they also use this time to ask him for days off and the like. So, if you have any requests, now's the best time."

So! That was it. All a big scam! But in which direction?

"We don't have a request, but an offer. Isn't that right, Brooke?"

An offer. We? What we?

"I wanted to surprise you, Max, but MD is too excited. You see, after our talk yesterday I happened to bump into MD in the car park." Awooga! Hang on. The timing didn't fit. MD would have been exactly on time, which meant she'd waited for him for over half an hour. Stalked him like prey. "We went to have lunch and we talked about your exciting ideas and how I could help you achieve them."

"Hang on, did he take you to a Portuguese restaurant?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

I knew because like almost every male employee at Chester Football Club - and many of the women, too - he had a huge, agonising crush on a waitress at Tiny Tino, a business so successful it was no longer tiny. MD taking a hot blonde there would be a great move to boost his social value. He was delusional, though. The waitress was utterly resistant to the charms of anyone in the football industry - she hated it with a passion that made us all weak at the knees. Us? Them. I meant them. The other employees. "I know things."

"We had such a nice lunch. So productive! Your ideas are so interesting, Max, so unique and refreshing. We did some brainstorming around the topics that interest you and I've started researching the club's options. You know, grants, funding, resources, planning permission shortcuts. I'll be ready to show you my initial findings on Friday."

"Friday's fully booked."

"Thursday, then," she said, a little too sharply.

I allowed myself a tiny grin. I didn't know what this game was, but I knew how to score points. "Actually, Friday's fine. I just remembered." I turned to watch her reaction - nothing. Her self-control was amazing.

"Mike and I talked a lot about growing the, ah, financial well-being of the club and some of the challenges you face beyond those we discussed."

Brooke and I hadn't discussed anything. We'd had a quick bicker and I'd kicked her out so I could focus on what was important. But then... instead of going to MD to complain about me, she'd told him we'd gotten on great and... and what? Max and I agreed the relationship was one we needed to explore further. Something like that. And then, basically giving him the impression she'd gotten the job, she'd pumped a very willing MD and he'd spilled the beans. He would have told her anything. "Is that right? What topics came up?"

"You'd like more fans in the stadium. That's a marketing challenge. I've begun researching and we need to target our message to the six types of football fan."

"The six types? What are they?"

"Max, you're tired. You're woozy! Let's talk about it on Friday. I'll have handouts for you. Very small print on cheap paper to show how frugal I can be. The main takeaway is that you can't adopt a one-size fits all approach. You have to tailor your message to each individual recipient." She meant that she'd told Ruth what Ruth needed to hear, and told MD what he needed to hear. She was smiling now. Awfully pleased with herself. "We talked about overdelivering for our sponsors so we can increase that revenue stream over time. We talked about what kind of social media presence would satisfy your definition of what is authentic."

"The most authentic would be deleting our accounts."

"Haha, you're so funny! I love British humour. At first MD and I were rather down on your, ah, rampant idealism. But we got excited, didn't we Mike? What about building a brand that was truly authentic? Truly connected to its community? Truly admired? Yes it would be hard. Slow. At times frustrating. But in the end, so worth it. What a challenge!"

MD spoke in the voice of someone remembering the perfect first date they'd just been on. "We were thinking of all the things we might try to do that you'd shoot down and we wondered what it was, deep down, you objected to and I told Brooke some stories about you and what you believe in and we ended up having a deep conversation about marketing and PR, the pros and cons, and why you think it's phony and how it's strayed from its original purpose and what could be done to restore it to its proper place and Max! It was just like being in school again! I could have talked for hours!"

With my head on the headrest, I turned very very subtly, just enough so that I could side eye Brooke. She had absolutely done a number on MD. He was eating out of her hands. I could just imagine how the conversation had flowed, steered to this place of first principles where MD could fall in love with marketing all over again while she stared at him dewy-eyed and beautiful, making him feel like the centre of the fucking universe.

The corners of my lips got tugged upwards. Girl got game!

MD was still blabbing.

I stared at the road again. I'd told Brooke that Chester was my kingdom, and it was. I had unbelievable power. I'd just signed a kid and put the club on the line for a series of terrifying bills. I could tell one of my players to stand by the goalpost and I could hand off the duties I didn't want - like speaking to the media - to my underlings and no-one would bat an eyelid.

I had vetoed her, raised all sorts of fundamental objections to her getting the job, and kicked her out. And she had - with ease - worked around all that and, to all intents and purposes, got herself a second job interview. Yeah... It was crystal clear, now. I'd put up a block and she'd done to me what I'd done to Rushall. Gone round it with style and imagination. Gone over it. Gone under it.

I'd been well and truly Maxxed.

Truth be told, she could have asked MD for the job right then and there and he would have said yes. Million percent he would, and he would even have stood up to me if I had tried to stop him. The job was hers. For some reason known only to herself, she'd got herself a desk, a security badge, a username and password, and a parking space, but she wouldn't sit in the chair. Not yet.

She wanted me to want her there.

What kind of person gets what she wants but then blocks herself? That kind of self-sabotage made no sense to me. The car was making low, repetitive thrumming noises as it chugged along the motorway. MD and Brooke were renewing their marketing love-in. I closed my eyes and thought about the week ahead. Give the long-ball merchants a telling-off, give the women's team a reminder in standards, re-interview Brooke, beat Scarborough, win the cup semi-final.

Only one of those would be any sort of a challenge.

...

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