6.
Football glossary: assist. The pass that leads to a goal.
***
From Chester Online, Monday, 27 November
It's Sandra Who?
Confusion and Questions as Chester Unveil SECOND Assistant Manager
Chester FC have announced the identity of their new assistant manager - and it's a woman. Sandra Lane, 36, had previously been working with girl's teams in the Manchester City academy system.
At a press conference held this evening, an unusually happy and talkative Max Best believed he had secured a coup. "Sandra is three things. She's top. She's class. And she's mint. Getting her to leave one of the most desirable positions in world football was not easy, but in the end she found the idea of working with me irresistible. I am buzzing. Absolutely buzzing. I feel like I just signed Messi. No pressure on Sandra, but she's better than Messi. No, that's crazy; cut that. She's better than Pep. Ah, no, cut that, too. She's better than two hundred other coaches, I can say that for sure."
When asked about the challenges of working with men, Best laughed. "I think you're coming at this from totally the wrong angle. She doesn't have to prove herself to this mob. They have to prove themselves to her. We employ three people who have worked for a Premier League club. Sandra Lane is one of them. If I was one of the players - and guess what, I am - I'd be buzzing. She's an elite coach. I think she can help me get closer to my old levels and that's worth the wages alone. She's also great on tactics. Oh, man! I feel like going hang gliding or something. Where's the nearest aerodrome?"
"I'm very happy to be here," said Miss Lane. "Max challenged me to step outside my comfort zone and I'm really looking forward to getting started. I was unsure at first, I must confess, but he wouldn't give up. Frankly I haven't been pursued this hard since I was an extra in a zombie movie."
Initial reaction on OhNo!, formerly known as Twitter, was positive.
A user named Cliff Daps wrote: "Getting a coach from Man City is like buying land where you know there's going to be a new tram line. It's so clever it almost shouldn't be allowed."
Chester coach Spectrum was quick to add his thoughts. "Max has done it again! Such a positive development. How on earth has he managed that?"
Well-known fan J, who hosts a popular Seals podcast, wrote, "Absolutely bonkers but you know what? I say give her a chance. He's obviously planning to let her manage a couple of matches so he can take a break and if we want to win the league we have to back the team extra hard those days. It's as simple as that, really."
Not everyone was so keen. There were plenty of confused faces outside the Liverpool FC shop in Chester.
"It's awfully strange," said Regina Dwight, 57. "I thought they had that army fella as assistant. He's awfully handsome. What's his role, now?"
"How much are they paying her?" grumbled Eric Bishop, 55. "Man City wages in the sixth tier? He'll be the ruin of us all, that man. Mind you, if she can remind Youngster of the way he's supposed to be passing, she'll be well worth the dough."
"More Max Best chaos," said John Stephens, 53. "He's had a couple of weeks where everything's been smooth sailing so now he wants to muddy the waters. He's always up to something. He's like a naughty toddler. If it's too quiet in the other room you have to go and check on him. How can you have two assistant managers?"
Max Best himself appeared surprised when the question was put to him. "Of course I need two assistant managers. John Smith manages my assistance and Sandra assists me by managing. What's the confusion?"
Time will tell if this latest move is fruitful or folly.
***
Tuesday, 28 November
We got the lads into the meeting room before training, along with the physios and coaches. MD popped in for the big moment. Jackie had dragged himself out of bed before 11:15 (when Bargain Hunt starts on BBC One) for the first time in months, which says everything about the level of interest.
The guys sat on the cheap plastic chairs very much like schoolboys, with the staff leaning on the wall to the right. Jackie took a position to the left, near the front. Sandra hovered nervously and awkwardly behind me. Where would she end up in this little jigsaw puzzle of ours? Probably where Jackie was, I reckoned. From there, she'd be able to chime in on football matters, but wouldn't be the focus.
"Okay, shut your gobs," I said. "We're here to meet our newest member of staff. Everyone paying attention? I've got us a class gerbil. He's called Nibbles. Midfielders, I want you to get together and organise yourselves so that you feed him every day. Strikers, change the water. Defenders, you clean the tray. Goalies, bedtime stories."
"What's a gerbil?" said Pascal.
Magnus spoke. "It's a cute little pet often used in schools to teach children about caring for animals. Max is making a joke about how we have a new teacher."
I gave him a Maxy two-finger guns. Some memory threatened to come into focus. To Sandra I said, "You were a teacher, right?"
"Yes," she croaked, and I was reminded of how nerve-wracking these situations could be. I was also reminded of how little interest I'd shown in her other than what she could do on and around a football pitch.
"Okay, playtime's over. Let's get serious. I've hired Sandra. She's a top coach and I am very, very smug that I've been able to pull this off. And let's cut the crap - if I came here saying I'd nabbed one of Man City's coaches and his name was Sandro, you'd all be buzzing. Wouldn't you?" That hit home. "Good. Here's the plan. She's going to settle in. Take it slow. She has to get to know you as players, so there's a solid fifteen minutes of hard graft. Then she wants to get to know you as people. And some of you have... Henri, what was that phrase?"
"Rich inner lives."
"Right. Some of you have rich inner lives. Some of you have bankrupt inner lives, but that's fine. She'll get to know you, you'll get to know her, and boom, you'll realise our season just got afterburners. What I'd like, I suppose, is for everyone to be supportive, especially in the first weeks while Sandra's moving house and there's this media interest. Be chill. Relax. Come with an open mind."
"Can we ask questions?" said Glenn.
"In a bit. Here's why I've been, what did you say, pursuing? Here's why I've been courting Sandra. She's an elite technical coach. She's a floating tactical megabrain of Max Bestian proportions. And she's brave."
Jackie spoke up. "I was Max's assistant when we played against Sandra's team and I remember thinking, I want someone to look at me the way Max looks at Sandra."
Sandra looked down - I don't think she was used to this lavish praise. "Mate," I said to Jackie. "I'm doing a team meeting for the men. The manager of the women's team shouldn't be talking."
"We're the same level in the hierarchy," he said.
"We're the same level when I'm the men's manager, but I'm also above you when I'm DoF, and below you when I'm a player. That means I envelop you."
Jackie simply kept smiling. "Okay, Max."
"I'm just saying that I don't go round interrupting your team meetings."
"No, no. You'd never do dat." Some chuckles from the lads.
"Sandra. Couple of words?"
She cleared her throat. "Hi, everyone." She inhaled. "I'm dead nervous. This is weird." There were chuckles up and down the room. Me and Jackie fake-bickering with each other had helped everyone relax. "As you know, I've been coaching at City. Really enjoyed it. Done my badges up to UEFA A. All with the girls, of course. I've never coached men." She gave the room a worried look.
I laughed. "Am I the only one who thinks that's an advantage? If you can manage twenty teenage girls you can cope with these guys. They're a load of gerbils. What about your background?"
"Well, I'm from Manchester." Her eyes flickered, wondering if being from the world's greatest city would perhaps not go down well. The players didn't have time to react, though, because I burst into applause and Youngster, Raffi, and the two Triplets followed. "Okay. Ha. As Max guessed, I taught Sports and Exercise Science in college. Um... I'm single - it's complicated - I like dogs, Netflix, beach holidays. Er... look, I just like football." She thought it was a lame finish, but it was fucking perfect. Right in the top corner.
"Max?" said Glenn.
"Go for it."
"I'm asking all the questions from the group so you don't get mad at anyone in particular."
"Oh, much better that I get mad at everyone. Yeah."
"Sandra, what do you want us to call you?"
"Sandra?" she said.
"Like, we call Max boss or gaffer. The Brig calls him sir. Some of the lads were thinking we could call you Miss but we don't..."
"Miss? Like in school?" She had a quick think. "Why not?"
"What's the difference between you and the Brig?"
"That's a question for me, I think." I pointed. "Brig's fitness, conditioning, standards. Sandra's football. Technical stuff. Passing, formations. If you have a question about beating the press, Sandra. If you need someone to scream in your face from five inches away, Brig. All good?" I switched to an annoyingly sarcastic voice. "Now, if you have any special boy problems that you don't feel comfortable talking to a woman about, you can talk to the Brig or Vimsy. All right?"
Glenn ignored the last part. "How did you meet Max?"
"I was coaching the under sixteens. On Friday nights we used to play seven-a-side indoors. We did passing drills, movement. The score wasn't that important; it was all about player development and getting experience against real people in real situations. One day, Max turns up. He was... courting... one of the players from Manchester Metropolitan University."
"Whoa! You don't know that."
"You were," said Youngster.
Argh. I forgot he was there at that time. I shrugged. "I was merely interested in women's football. I might have spent more time with one of the women than the rest but that's because she was the organiser and, I have to say, quite knowledgeable about the growth of the sport and its standout characters. It's a big leap to infer any sort of relationship from that."
"You kissed her full on the mouth in front of everyone," said Jackie, the traitor.
"That was before kissing women full on the mouth without consent was considered bad. Can we please get on with the story?"
Sandra nodded. "Max was there to watch his girlfriend, sitting on the benches at the back, and suddenly he's on his feet, managing the team. It happens, sometimes. A guy gets it into his head he's the next Pep Guardiola and it's only women so how hard could it be?" She shook her head with a wry smile. "It was different with Max. It was like there were invisible tendrils all over the pitch. Our moves stopped working. It was strange."
"Wait," said Steve Alton. "He just made himself the manager from one second to the next? Bossing them around?"
"Yeah. The referee complained. Said he couldn't manage because he hadn't filled in the forms, so he said he was the nutritionist."
"Max was telling them the best place to get pork," said Trick, which a lot of people found very funny. The intensity of my glare meant Trick was the first to stop laughing.
Sandra didn't know Trick was the 1970s reborn. I planned to spend plenty of time telling her about the squad and wondered if I should start with Trick to get an unpleasant task out of the way, or save him till last like a treat. For now, she continued her tale. "We played twice and the second match was the only defeat we ever had. Four-nil. Their goalie scored twice but it looked meant. They battered us on counters. That's when I met Max. And Jackie, though Jackie wasn't jumping around singing songs about himself. A couple of weeks later Max appeared at a City match on crutches, battered and bruised, high on painkillers, and he did my half-time team talk and tried to give me a player for my team. I haven't been able to get rid of him ever since. And now I'm here."
"Let me tell you a couple of things from those times," I said. "As I said, Sandra was a brave manager. Fearless. She played with no centre backs for a few minutes in response to one of my changes. It's easier with rolling subs but she made more in-game changes than any manager I've played against, and she spotted my changes fast. Her players improved noticeably in the weeks between our two games. Those attributes alone would get her in this room. But what I liked most was that when we won, she got the match ball and gave it to our goalkeeper, and instead of shouting at me about my dirty tricks, she thanked me for pushing her players and giving them a wake-up call. She's got the perfect mentality - train hard, play hard, win and lose with class. When I'm throwing tantrums and refusing to shake hands with twats, Sandra will be representing Chester with grace and dignity."
Pascal put his hand up. "What's your favourite formation?"
"4-2-3-1," said Sandra. "Switching to 4-2-2-2." Pascal and Youngster looked at each other and their eyebrows shot up. They were biiiig fans of that answer, the nerds.
"We won't be using a double pivot," I said, before they got too excited. Football hipsters often called defensive midfielders 'pivots' because they were the point that all the passing moves went through. "We have two DMs who can do the job of, well, two DMs. So we only need one."
"We do?" said Sandra, wondering which players could do the job of two.
"Youngster. Or me."
"I've seen Youngster play. There are times he could use support."
"That's just because he's learning. He can do it on his own."
"What if he goes forward to join an attack? We're left with nothing."
"So? Either an opponent tracks him, so they have one fewer in their transition, or he's left to roam in which case we have a high-probability chance of a goal."
"It's very risky."
"No risk no fun."
"Pep likes a double pivot."
"Pep is a hack."
"You promised to stop bad-mouthing City."
"Seriously, though. I would smash him at non-league level."
"Sorry, Miss," said Trick. Invoking the name of His Holiness Pep G the First had made him realise exactly how far Sandra had dropped. "Why have you come here?"
"Er... Max persuaded me." She scratched her head. "I'm not sure how." Good laugh on that. "Charlotte said I'd love it."
"I'll do this one," I said, and something in my tone made everyone prepare for an extended rant. "There are ninety-two teams in the football league, and at least ninety are owned by what we might call penis people. The weird thing about penis people is that they get scared when they meet someone who doesn't have one. They like to appoint managers who have dangly bits. There are precisely two female managers whose achievements in the women's game are so enormous that I think they'd get jobs managing a men's team at a pretty big club. Sandra would have no chance. Zero. She wouldn't even get an interview. It's nice being part of the Man City industrial complex, but if you're ambitious, how far can you go? She'd have to be unbelievable to end up as the women's team manager. You with me? Now check this out. Loophoooole. The loophole is me. Me? I don't give a shit who you are. If you can improve my players I'll drive to Manchester three times a week for a month to sell you on my vision. What I've offered Sandra is the chance to manage some games. As it happens, I desperately need a break, so I'm more than happy. And to be honest, there are plenty of matches now where the fake Jackies could stand on the sideline and get wins on their CV. And what if we've got a big match coming up and I want to scout that team? If they're in this division, we almost always play on the same days so I can't. Well, now that Sandra's here, I can. By the end of next season, Sandra will have been the manager for ten wins in men's football. That's ten more than any other woman in this country. With that on her CV, she'll be the first name that comes up when there's any managerial vacancy in the Women's Super League, and I can imagine there will be a few progressive clubs who'd consider her for the men's team. You with me?"
"You'll only give her the easy matches, then?" said Glenn.
"No. She's mint. She's miles above any other manager in this league - er, one exception - and there isn't a single doubt in my mind that she'll be able to step in. Holy shit, guys, it's such a relief to me. Such a relief. So that's the deal. Do you get it? She's going to coach the shit out of you, help you achieve your goals. And in return, we're all, collectively, going to help Sandra achieve her goals."
"Sir," said the Brig. I checked the time. We needed to get onto the training pitch.
"Okay, that's it. Any other questions you have you can write them down and put them in the nearest bin. Just get the fuck on with it. One thing, though. In the next weeks we'll be playing the usual 4-1-4-1 and 3-5-2 in matches, but I've got a new formation for you to work on in training. 4-4-1. Henri, I need you to train like a support striker. Lots of sideways movements, making triangles with the left and right mids. Okay, get changed and out on pitch 1 in five. Big game tonight!"
They filed out, with a few of the men coming over to shake Sandra's hand or fist bump her. When the last players had gone, MD came over. "4-4-1, Max?"
"Yep."
"That's er... that formation's Pep approved, is it?"
Sandra smiled. "The only thing I don't understand is why none of the players commented on it."
Jackie gave her a pat on the back. "Because it's a madhouse. Welcome to Chester."
***
I watched as Vimsy, the Brig, and Jude took training. I asked Sandra to supervise. It was only a light session because we had a match that evening, but it was good to see that her attributes hadn't changed when she'd been put in charge of men. I had thought there was a slight, tiny possibility that the curse would reassess her skills based on working with penis people instead of women. But nope - she was who she was and that meant my pool of potential employees was double any other manager's.
Sandra Lane Adaptability 4 Coaching Goalkeepers 5 Coaching Outfield Players 17 Determination 14 Judging Player Ability 8 Judging Player Potential 8 Level of Discipline 13 Man Management 15 Motivating 12 Tactical Knowledge 18 Working with Youngsters 18 Coaching Style
Technique-based
Preferred Formation 4-2-3-1 Preferred Style
Prefers an attractive attacking style of play
Other
Likes her players to close down the opposition
Her coaching outfield players score was really high - surely high enough to raise our ceiling and to be a kick up the arse to Youngster, Pascal, and the Triplets. And her tactics score had given me confidence that she'd be able to run matches without me. Would I have given her the men's team job if I was sticking to being a Director of Football? I mean, I'd have preferred Jackie but she was a legitimate contender. She wouldn't do well in a club where she had to make decisions about transfers, but with me giving her talented players, she'd smash it.
She'd agreed to come cheap - 500 a week for the rest of this season, which would double next year. The Brig's salary would at least double, too, and I planned to double my own salary. That was all needed, especially my bit, but I was already mentally burning next year's increased, tier five budget. Hopefully Sandra would improve the squad the way I expected and we'd be able to nail down promotion, start selling players, and get their replacements up to speed.
There was the small issue of the twin assistants thing. Even as I watched, Sandra stepped forward to offer some instruction, but then stopped herself and looked to the Brig for 'permission'. That particular moment of awkwardness was met with good-natured smiles, but I'd have to keep an eye on it. Make sure they were both happy and both doing what they were best at.
As happy as I was, anxiety was starting to bubble up. The better I kept my end of the deal and gave Sandra an impressive CV, the sooner she'd get poached by a bigger club and I'd be back to square one. I knew I shouldn't worry about it, but I also knew that I should.
She'd only been at the club for ten minutes and I was thinking about how I could possibly replace her.
***
Cheshire Senior Cup Second Round: Cheadle Town versus Chester
We had been drawn to play away in Cheadle, which was pretty funny, really. Cheadle is right next to Didsbury, and Cheadle Town actually played in the same division as West.
"Basically a home game for us, isn't it?" I told Sandra on the team bus.
"I guess," she said, trying to smile. She was really nervous. It struck me, then. Did I have another Jackie situation on my hands? Would every super coach I hired flame out in some way?
I gave her some space while I thought about some other things. The Brig had asked me for three thousand pounds in cash. I took it to mean things were moving apace in the manhunt. Great.
We'd had another bid for Raffi Brown. Second bid from the same team. I'd instructed Secretary Joe not to reply to the offer of 50,000, but I suppose he must have done, in secret, because they came back offering 70. Seventy grand for a player of that quality? Maddening. 400K was the minimum, and that would only be a consideration if I wasn't his agent. But I was. I'd talked to him and he assured me he was happy at Chester and happy for me to keep thinking about his long-term career. So there. Stick your seventy grand where the sun shineth not.
I checked the job vacancies screen - ten of the 72 managers in the EFL - the three leagues below the Premier League - had been sacked and not yet replaced. Ten clubs looking for managers! Some good clubs, there, too. I noted, unhappily, that James O'Rourke at Tranmere was listed as 'slightly insecure'. I couldn't really blame Mateo - Tranmere were flirting with relegation. I just hoped James got a full season. He'd never had a full season as a manager. After all he'd done for me when I was recovering, I sincerely wished him the best.
This game against Cheadle, then. It'd be a cakewalk. Pretty boring, really. But it would feature one enormous personal milestone - I would pay off my God Save the King debt at last!
With all the matches I'd been managing, plus using free Sundays to watch Man City women (and seduce Sandra), plus the women's teams from Blackburn and Sheffield United, I'd smashed past the three thousand I needed to buy Parasight. Now I'd be able to see agents like I could see players and coaches, and the ten percent being siphoned off my XP income would soon be a thing of the past.
XP balance: 1,180
Debt repaid: 2,966/3000
Thinking about XP made me think of the ways in which I had an unfair advantage over Sandra. This match would be a good chance to review those, while teaching her about the players and what I wanted from her when I was away.
***
The match kicked off and I repeated what I'd told her in front of the Brig, but with more detail. When the Brig was my on-pitch assistant, I could do all kinds of crazy shit, like control players telepathically, and he wouldn't notice. Sandra would, which meant I had to explain my thought processes more, and cook up a plausible explanation about why players were switching positions so fluidly. I felt the benefits of her coaching plus getting pushback on my ideas outweighed the infinitesimal risk she'd think I was actually telepathic.
"Okay, Cheadle Town. Pretty much as weak a team as you're ever going to be involved with." Average CA 8.
"Except the Met Heads."
"Relatively speaking, the Met Heads were much closer to your girls. Okay, so we're doing 4-1-4-1. I lied when I told that lot it was the best formation for this match. I'd have done 3-5-2 if I wanted to run up the score."
"You wanted me to get familiar with it."
"Right. Keep an eye on Youngster. He sets our tempo. I divide players - mentally, this is private - into bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. This lineup today is really weak, but it's still about as strong as Chester when I started." Our average CA for the day was 40.8. "I'm pretty proud of that."
"I was impressed by training. They work hard."
"I told them I was judging them more on what they did in training than in matches. Ben's in goal. He had a bad match but he's back in contention for the number one jersey. He and Robbo are both silvers, but Ben can go platinum."
"I might write this down. Don't worry, I'll be subtle."
She got her notebook and made some squiggles. "Okay," I said, scanning our back four. "Trick is a low bronze. He's got a decent left foot but obviously I'm looking to upgrade there in a big way. We have a good left back but he's sixteen. When you're settled I might let him train with the first team. See what you think. See what we can do to fast track him."
"Okay."
"Centre backs. Steve Alton is a low silver. Gerald May is a high bronze. Right back today is an experiment. Andrew Harrison's a midfielder but I reckon he could play right back in more games like these. It lets me rest Carl and will be a bit of a shock to Andrew's system. I learned from you that giving minutes is crucial for development."
She smiled, then returned to her notebook. "Carl's gold? Silver?"
"Gold. He's almost as good as Glenn, now. I reckon we focus on this eleven so you don't get overwhelmed. DM today is Magnus. Silver. Seems to improve slowly but surely. I don't know his limit. He's a strange one. In midfield we've got D-Day left, Pascal right. Both high bronze. Pascal you know has a high ceiling. We've got to give him minutes to develop without wasting him on shitty pitches. Let me worry about when he plays. I think I know what I'm doing, there. There's Ryan. He's class. Platinum. I'll give him the first half. Sam's gold."
"Only gold?"
"Yep. High gold. He's near his limit but he's fantastic. You'll love working with him."
"And Tony's up front on his own." She added a sceptical twist to her tone. Tony lacked any outstanding qualities.
"He's silver. Perfectly fine for this season."
She nodded as she finished her note-taking. "Five bronze, four silver, one gold, one platinum."
We watched in silence for a while. Ryan was running the game, making it look like a different sport to most of the other players. He was spraying passes out to Pascal, who was giving the defence kittens with his speed.
After D-Day dribbled past his marker and crossed for Tony to score our first goal, I checked if Sandra had any questions about my rankings. "Not now. I think I broadly see the outline. Ryan's platinum for sure. You know them better than me. I think if you gave me your ratings for the whole squad that'd be very helpful if you get sick and I have to do it on my own."
"Sure. We'll have a chat before Walsall. After you've worked with them for a few days. Let's talk formations. At the moment we can easily switch between seven."
"Seven?"
"I know, it's shit."
"It's more than we do."
"Yeah, well. We can't always win on talent; we have to get funky. We've got 4-4-2 and diamond, plus 4-2-4. We don't use those too much, but as you know, we will if we get the new striker in."
"Goliath."
"Right. It's going to be a big shock for you."
"I don't know. I'm almost excited by it. Charlotte was saying you and Jackie are maniacs about technique, passing, just like a real club."
"She said that?"
"Yeah. No offence."
"None taken. It's just the phrasing was unexpected."
"But to knock it long to a big man." Sandra laughed. "It's like you're on non-league safari, Max."
"We still need to agree terms with the club and the player. But we won't be knocking it long. No chance. If anything, we're getting more sophisticated. Okay, we've also got 4-3-3 but we don't use that because Aff is our best player."
"Aff? Not Henri? Ryan?"
"You'll see. He's incredible. He makes everything work. He's number one for assists, which is amazing if you think Ryan takes all the set pieces. The last three options are about dominating midfield. There's 4-5-1. I'm thinking about that for the Walsall game. But mostly we use either 4-1-4-1 with overloads down the sides, or 3-5-2 if we're not expecting much from the opposition."
She made notes of the seven. "It's pretty good. You must have worked hard."
I thought of the months of grinding. Watching Sunday League while sipping from a thermos. Kebabs with no onions. "Yeah. But changing from one to another could be the difference in a match. Right? And from game to game it lets me use the whole of the squad. I've very slightly squashed their tendency to think that minutes on the pitch is the only measure of their self-esteem, and they can all see what I'm doing when I name the teams, but still, they want to play. Is it the same with the girls?"
"Oh, yeah. Totally. Tears and tantrums if they're not starting."
"Did you ever drop the Butcher of Burnage?"
"Not often. You know, she was shocked the first time you called her that. Upset, I think. Now she loves it."
I smiled. "She's great. You're going to help me get her to Chester, right?"
"Nope."
"Ah!" I said, pointing up as though I'd solved a crime. "You want her still there for when you're the Man City boss. I get it... I get it."
***
At half-time we were two-nil up. I did a semi-serious team talk, mostly for Sandra's benefit. Not that she needed it for her own skills, but to show a sort of model of what I thought should happen at half time. As well as calmly talking to the players, I asked the Brig and Vimsy if they had any thoughts, and asked Dean to report on players who'd got knocks in the first half.
It was very Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek, and there were some puzzled faces from people who were used to me being more Willy Wonka.
"Sandra," I said, to finish. "If you wish, you can nominate a player and choose either Vimsy or the Brig to scream in their face. Some players find it very motivational."
"Er... not today. Everyone's playing well."
She'd mentioned it casually, and I barely noticed she'd said it. But morale went up!
"Captain," I said.
Sam Topps got to his feet and yelled, "Come on!"
***
I suggested to Sandra that she might want to make observations for ten, twenty minutes, and she could suggest the first substitutions. While she concentrated, I watched her in my peripheral vision. The curse told me she was perhaps not as good as Jackie, but she was better than most. Giving her and Jackie two similar teams in the same division would have been fascinating - Jackie would very slightly outpace her in terms of coaching, but she'd pick up more wins through in-game management.
But they were both limited. They were both human.
A little over a year ago, I'd been bitten by a radioactive spider and now I could do all sorts of superhuman things. I'd suggested to Old Nick that I wanted the powers of a top manager and had even named Sandra's very own Pep as a point of comparison. Where did I stand?
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My very first power was the ability to see player profiles. This had been bolstered every time I'd bought an Attributes perk. Sandra could definitively tell if someone was better at heading than someone else, and she could have a good stab at filling in numbers like finishing or positioning. But having them all instantly appear and be reliable was staggering. There had been matches where I'd been able to leverage information about a player I'd never seen before to turn draws into wins. I had no doubt Pep would be able to do something similar, acting on instinct alone, and he had access to as many data analysts as he wanted. The data would come from scouts and data companies from all over the world - I was limited to what I could see with my own eyes. Advantage Pep.
I had the advantage, however, when it came to making tactical tweaks. While Pep seemed able to make drastic changes mid-half, I could do it at the speed of thought. Like most managers, Sandra would normally need to wait for an injury break or half-time if she wanted to do something significant. The curse also told me when opposing managers changed things. Today, against Cheadle, it was a basic 4-4-2 all the way through, but my perfect knowledge of my opponent's tactical instructions had saved me from disaster on many occasions.
Super Scout. It let me see how good players were and how good they could be. Incredible. It had led me to Ziggy, Raffi, and dozens more. Now Raffi was a 70,000 pound player, according to the market, and Ziggy was earning a living wage from the sport. Sandra had no such skills. Pep was good at spotting elite players who would fit into his system. It was rare that he made a bad buy. Still, I wouldn't swap my skills for any team of analysts.
"Why don't you let Aff take corners? He should be amazing."
"His delivery is too slow. He likes to chip to the near post. It winds me up. I like arrows into the six-yard box."
"Huh."
"Feel free to test it in training. If you can get Aff to put some pace on the ball, great."
Sandra tapped this into her phone. Why it didn't go into the notebook along with everything else was a puzzle for another detective.
What had come next from the perk shop?
Fantasy Football had been another monthly perk, priced so as to keep me grinding. But it had paid off, big time. I never would have beaten Man City or Salford without the Triple Captain and Bench Boost perks, and the Free Hit had probably given me three or four extra goals in my time as manager. Buying the perk that extended the use of Fantasy Football from once per season to once per competition per season was another buy I was very happy with. Sandra had nothing of the sort. Pep? Maybe he could lift his players for a certain match against Liverpool or Arsenal, but he couldn't, for example, make his superstars run like crazy against Salford City. He almost certainly wouldn't want to, but that wasn't the point. The point was I could. And as I got more mature and experienced, maybe I could lift my players for key games, too.
"Andrew's blowing. We should sub him off."
"Go for it."
I watched with interest as she made the change and it happened on the tactics screen. I'd had a vague worry the curse wouldn't let my assistants change anything. It was much better this way. Maybe I could even get her to tweak the team in ways I couldn't. I'd have to use it carefully, but... But that was a thought for another day.
"Why are they playing high balls for Tony?"
"Panic. Habit. I'm hoping the more we train technique, the more they'll play simple passes as their default."
"They're just giving the ball away." Her face was set. Hard. I'd seen this look before, when the Met Heads were turning her world upside down.
I smiled. By raging and cajoling, I'd been able to greatly reduce the frequency of these aimless, almost cowardly punts, but there were still so, so many. But now I had an ally on the training ground. If there's one thing City didn't do it was kick a high ball to a short striker.
God Save the King had been expensive. 3,000 XP for a boost to one attribute for one player every season. I'd used it on Ziggy last season, and Henri this. In retrospect, I'd have been better off unlocking two more attributes, but at the same time I knew if I had the option to double the use I'd pay double the price. Especially now that I better understood the relationship between attributes and CA. I could use the perk to turn CA 98 players into CA 100 ones. Probably... Sandra and Pep were fantastic at turning PA into CA, but they couldn't create PA like I thought I could.
Anyway, improving players with one click was fun. Fun was underrated.
"What's Youngster doing?"
"He's lost concentration. Normally Glenn spots it and yells at him. Sam will do it in a minute."
"Can I tell him?"
"Yes."
Sandra did just that. Youngster's eyes boggled and he spent the next thirty seconds checking his position and glancing at her.
"If he's playing DM he needs to be able to concentrate for ninety minutes."
"I agree. So does he. But it's his first full season. If he stops improving, we can push him hard. Tell you what, though, if he shoots from outside the box you can go absolutely tonto."
"Bad, is he?"
I closed my eyes. "I think it might be my least favourite thing in the world."
One monthly perk I'd skipped had been Shocktober. It had offered me loads of pun-based advantages, especially against stronger teams. I was right not to buy it, but if there was ever a more serious, less complicated version I'd be interested. Such a perk would be useless for Pep, since his team would always have the higher reputation in any match. Me? I would spend most of my career managing the underdog, and the more we progressed, the bigger the underdog we'd be.
"I thought the other bench always tried to rile us up."
"I think they don't know what to do with you. Yelling at women doesn't fit their version of masculinity."
"Oh." She stood like a teapot. "Is that good or bad?"
"I don't care. Your job is to ignore it and make sure everyone else is ignoring it. Come down hard on anyone who retaliates or gets involved."
"Clear the bench, you said. That's funny. In baseball it means the opposite of what you want."
Clear the Bench would be a good name for a perk. What would that involve? I blinked the thought away. I was in the middle of analysing my actual purchases, not dreaming up imaginary ones.
Some perks had given me more info in my match overview. Match Stats showed things like how many shots each team had taken. Fine, but nowhere near as cool as getting the match ratings. If you didn't pay one thousand percent attention, you might not notice that a player on the far side of the pitch was putting in a five out of ten performance. Seeing the match ratings let me fix my weaknesses while exploiting those of my rival managers. Sandra and Pep had to do this by their personal feelings, which would sometimes be wrong.
Not always, though. She'd been frustrated by Andrew Harrison's shift at right back, and he was on five out of ten. She tried her best to hide her annoyance at Tony, who had been on five before his goal. I thought about asking her to rate the players at the end of the game to see how well they matched what the curse thought, but it seemed a bit cold. I'd try to be more subtle about it.
She said, "This system would work much better with someone like Michail Antonio as the lone striker."
Antonio was a very powerful, hard-working player who specialised in winning duels and holding the ball up. "He started in non-league. Did you know that?"
"I didn't."
"From non-league to winning West Ham's first trophy in 40-odd years. My ears prick up every time I hear about a Premier League player who started in non-league."
"I bet." She looked at me. "I notice you've changed the subject."
I shrugged. "We've got what we've got. When we play well, we get to the byline and do cut backs. All Tony has to do is kick the ball two yards in a straight line, and he's absolutely capable of doing that."
"I know this will be frustrating, sometimes." She nodded to herself. "I have to learn patience."
I'd unlocked the History tab on a player profile. That showed me a summary of the player's career, such as which team they'd played for, how many yellow cards, their average rating and so on, but so far I only had the data from the previous season. It would be very cool when it was fully unlocked, but that whole thing was quite far down my wish list. I felt that this perk chain would prove most useful when trying to recruit players. Being able to quote their stats from past seasons would make it seem like I'd been tracking them for years. Flatter them. Pep didn't need such a perk - players wanted to play for him.
Staff Search was a database of every coach, physio, and assistant I'd ever met. It was pretty top. A couple of times a week I scanned through to check if anyone had lost their jobs - coaches were often sacked along with the manager who had brought them in. Pep had his own retinue that he took with him from club to club.
"Sandra, how do you really feel about having the same title as the Brig?"
She pulled a face. "I like him but it's a football club. I'm the football assistant. Primus inter pares."
I pulled a face of my own. I'd had no choice but to give the pair of them the assistant manager title. First because the Brig's salary was so huge, then because Sandra wouldn't drop so far to be a mere coach. Two assistants was one too many, even in my distorted reality field. What was that phrase someone had taught me? Nothing odd will do long. At some point I'd have to find a way to normalise having two senior employees who needed senior titles. Get rid of the weirdness. "First among equals. That's me, though. I need you both."
"What do we do if there's a dispute? Like if we're disagreeing on what training a player needs."
"Do what's best for the player."
"What's best is what I think." She shook her head. "Why's he here, anyway? Charlotte said Henri said he could make a killing... oh. Bad phrase. He could, you know, get rich as a mercenary."
"He could. I'm not a hundred percent sure why he's staying. I think he's got the same mania as you and me. We'd call it improving players. He'd called it improving young men. It's not what he's used to, but I think he's realising here he's got the best part of his old job without the... dark mode bits. The three of us want the same thing. I don't mind if you disagree from time to time. I'll think about the hierarchy and get that a bit more serious. I didn't really expect you to come. Sort of didn't let myself believe it was happening." I thought about the amateurish way I'd gone about checking her profile and convincing her to leave her golden cage. "How does Pep find new coaches?"
"Women's youth team matches, mostly. Don't worry, you're doing it right."
I smiled. Having a cocky edge would serve her well. Well, whatever Pep was doing seemed to be working for him, but I preferred my version - cold, hard facts.
The Injuries perk helped me keep track of what injuries my players had. I found it most useful during matches - it would say something like 'suspected knee injury' and if it was possible I'd whip them right off the pitch. I felt I was getting fewer serious injuries than other teams in the league because of that. If it cost me a few points here or there in specific matches, it would pay off in the aggregate. And injured players were fucking miserable to be around. They were bad for morale.
Which brings us to Morale. Seeing that a particular player was happy or sad was pretty amazing, especially to a self-absorbed prick like me. By keeping an eye on moods, I could try to intervene to give a boost, or put a generally happy team on the pitch. Pep's teams were so good and the system so robotic that morale seemed less important, but given equally talented squads, morale could be an area where I'd outperform him.
And getting that squad was made slightly easier by having bought Playdar. It led me to talented players who were currently playing football, including back garden kickabouts with their mates. I'd found a few good players with it, and since Jackie had taken the women's team off my hands I'd been using it a bit more often. Sandra and Pep would only be able to find new players from within the world of football - but for them, that would be enough. As managers, they wouldn't need to worry about budgets the way I did.
And that was it. The budget. Money solved all kinds of problems for top managers - money meant worldwide scouting and data analysis, meant being able to attract any coach you wanted, buy any player. At some clubs, the manager could buy two new right backs every summer until he found the right one.
Yeah, I thought, as I looked at Sandra again. I was on my way to becoming a top manager, but it wasn't clear I'd ever be able to bridge the gap between myself and managers who had billions of dollars behind them.
As we scored our third goal against Cheadle, I resolved not to worry about it too much. For now, I needed to focus on bridging the gap between Chester and Walsall.
"What do you think?" I said.
She scanned her notes. "I think you're under-rating Trick. I think Andrew will never be a right back. I think D-Day is the personification of why City discourage players from dribbling - he'd drive me mad, the way he gives the ball away. I think Pascal is clever and I think Youngster is doing the work of one player." She looked at me. I was smiling. "What?"
"This is going to be fun."
***
Saturday, December 2
Winning our FA Cup match against Salford had achieved three main things. First, it had pushed a tricky mid-winter match against Gloucester back to some currently undetermined later point in the season. The Maxterplan in action.
Second, we'd got over forty grand in prize money, which was fast being spent on buying cast-off equipment from other clubs and gyms. (We now had a pretty decent amount of boxing gear; I had been getting pretty good on the speed balls before my progress got capped.) We had spent about five grand buying new, top-of-the-line goalkeeper swag, such as a little machine that spat table tennis balls at them to hone their reflexes. I'd have played with it but didn't want, as yet, to get my goalie skills back.
Finally, getting to the second round was very much the fulfilment of my promise to go on a cup run.
And the fans were loving it. Outside the Deva stadium were hundreds of them, waiting to board the coaches that would take them two hours to the midlands. Burly builders getting wasted from minute one, burlesque dancers, building society managers. Shy accountants, dog food tasters, colour experts, computer hackers. Politically left, right, and disinterested, marmite lovers, marmite haters, Max Best fans, Max Best sceptics.
The only thing they had in common, the only reason most of them would ever have occasion to talk to one another, was the local football team.
One coach was full and ready to depart.
"Just waiting for one more passenger," said the driver on his microphone. "I think that's him now."
Many curious heads turned - this was a break from the norm. How would the driver recognise one passenger in particular? As they looked, the answer revealed itself. Half the passengers started chanting "Brig! Brig! Brig!"
The coach doors opened and the Brig climbed on board. The cheers were ear-splitting. He gestured that the passengers might want to reduce the volume by 98% or so.
A guy who had been sitting on the front of the coach stood up. He was wearing a Chester baseball cap, sunglasses, and what was now plainly a false beard. He took the three items off.
"Best! Best! Best!" Almost everyone whipped out their phones and filmed me.
I took the handheld microphone sometimes used for bus tours of scenic Cheshire. "Good morning, ladies and gentleman, welcome to Chester Golden Chariots, also known as Bobs Cars, note the lack of apostrophe which does not bother me. Bobs Cars, the only way to travel. Today's maximum cruising speed will be some seventy mph and with good headwinds we should arrive in glorious Mykonos in approximately thirty hours." I pretended to receive information from the Brig. "Ah, that's next week. Today's it's two hours to sunny, er, Walsall. Which is in Birmingham, according to the internet. Please be careful if you go to a fish and chip shop. They have different words for everything. What we'd call a chip barm, they call a chip muffin." There was uproar. "What?"
"It's called a chip bap!" yelled one idiot.
"Sorry," I said. "It is the official position of Chester Football Club that chips served in a bun is called a chip barm. Isn't that right, Brig?"
I thrust the microphone in his direction. "Chip butty," he said, and winked at one of the female passengers.
"Is anyone here for the first time?"
A pair of hands went up. A couple wearing Chester kit, scarves, and bobble hats. "We are!"
"All right. If you're one of us you get on the bus. I know you'll all make these dudes feel welcome. Make a right old fuss of them." I looked around. "I just wanted to thank you for your support," I said. "Sometimes the match is so intense I tune you out so I can focus and make good decisions. Especially if I'm playing. But the other guys hear you, and the opposition do, I promise you that. Oh," I smiled. "The referee, too. Not that we try to influence the refs." Good laughs. "It's going to be really hard today but we're going there to give our best and to represent the club in a good way. Getting to the third round could put millions in the bank, and my players are complete media whores, I learned. They all dream of being on TV. So believe me, we're motivated. We're going for the win today." Big cheer. "And the Brig and I are going to travel with you until I start to feel that maybe it was a mistake." Another cheer.
On cue, the driver pulled away, drove thirty yards, and stopped. He opened the doors.
I grabbed the mic. "Okay, that was enough. See you at the match!"
We got down and walked to the Brig's car. I got in the back - we'd pick Sandra up.
"Was that good, sir?"
"I think so. They'll share it on their socials. Talk about it. It'll be one of those things they bring up when I'm on a losing streak. Yeah, we lost today, but remember when he sat on our bus in disguise? He gets the club. We've got to give him time to turn things around! You know, stuff like that."
"And perhaps these good memories will become useful when you, ah, take your break."
"Exactly."
***
FA Cup Second Round: Walsall versus Chester
We arrived with a much larger contingent than normal - being able to name nine subs and use five meant there was lots of anticipation. For some players, this would be the highest-profile match of their careers so far. For someone like Trick, it could be as good as it ever got. His last hurrah in the Cup.
And for one player, it was a bewildering and shocking opportunity to get some first team experience.
I was 'suspended' and Gerald May had picked up a slight back strain, so instead of naming two goalkeepers on the bench, I'd brought fifteen-year-old Benny to Friday's training and named him as the final sub today.
His dad, Nice One, had made his name and cemented his legend by taking Chester on two famous cup runs. I'd made sure the TV guys knew the story because they would for sure point their cameras at Benny in the warm up and they'd play up that angle in the highlights package. Like father, like son?
I had no doubt Nice One was a very good player - based on the crappy footage I'd seen, I wouldn't have been surprised if he was CA 100 or more. The internet said he’d had a season with 26 assists, which seemed like an accounting error. Benny had PA 40, so realistically he didn't have much of a future at the club, but I felt pretty good about giving him this moment. Especially because the fans were loving it. MD had texted, telling me his phone started blowing up when the news broke.
Benny. Good kid with good finishing. I couldn't put him on the pitch - Walsall were a very good League Two team, very solid, lots of rugged men who knew their business. They'd eat him alive. No, just being on the bench would make his year.
The lineup, then, was 3-5-2 with Ben - hopefully back to being my first choice keeper - Glenn, Carl, Magnus; Aff, Raffi, Ryan, Sam, Joe; Henri and Tony. Average CA 51.1.
Sandra stood next to me as I filled in the team sheet. "No bronze, four silver, five gold, two platinum."
"That's right. This is our strongest team."
"And we still expect Walsall to play 4-4-1-1."
"Yes. They're not resting their first teamers; they'll put out their strongest lineup. They really want to win this."
"What's your special secret trick for this one?"
I smiled. "When the Met Heads beat you, we spent three weeks plotting it. When Kidderminster beat us, they did the same. Three weeks! Their directors told MD. We've had three days to prepare for this one. No tricks up my sleeve, I'm afraid. We'll do our best and take the wins where we can. One win would be if the media pick up the Benny story. Another would be if they notice how sexy I look today. Either or both will help us get picked for the TV matches next season." I smoothed down the front of my expensive - for me - new suit. "What do you think?"
She looked me up and down. "If you'd worn that instead of your hoodie, I'd have come here a lot sooner." She fidgeted with my tie and took a step back. After another long look, she nodded. "But if you're really trying to get the TV companies back, maybe don't tell them off live on their own broadcast. But... hmm."
"What?"
"I thought you'd send me out to do the interviews."
"Oh. I wasn't planning to. Do you want to?"
"God, no. I just thought maybe it was good for the club's image if, you know. A woman. For the sponsors. Media attention."
I frowned and looked down at myself. "This is for the sponsors. Look at me. I'm pure eye candy."
She smiled and nodded. "All right, Max. You ready for the team talk?"
"Yeah. I'm going to read from a Wikipedia entry about the worst television shows ever made. Henri's going to love it. Wait till you hear about The Briefcase." That old, familiar look. Was I joking, or...? "By which I mean to say I'll remind them of Walsall's strengths and weaknesses that we talked about yesterday morning and get the lads hyped without overloading them with information."
***
After doing just that, I took Benny, Pascal, and Robbo aside. "Benny, how are you feeling?"
"Great, Max! It's amazing."
"Yeah. It's just that you look pretty stressed. I was wondering if this was maybe a bit too soon for you. Maybe all this was a bit unfair."
"No! I'm ready. I'm ready to play."
His attempt to look fierce was extremely funny. "All right. But you're not going to play. You know that, right?"
He rubbed the back of his neck. "I mean, yeah."
"But you need to be ready to play. This is all about the experience, yeah? About learning the standards. And there's no better role model than Pascal. You follow him and do what he does. Right?"
Benny's head bobbed up and down several hundred times. If I'd met him in a bank I'd have assumed he was off his tits on cocaine. "Right. Right."
"And if Pascal gets on the pitch, you do what Robbo tells you."
"Like what, boss?" said my goalie.
"Send him for warm ups and whatnot. Point out weaknesses in their goalie and defenders. Get him ready to come on."
"Even though he won't."
"Right."
I don't think Robbo was terribly happy at losing his place again, but he shrugged. "You're the boss, boss."
I went around the dressing room checking on morale, looking at the tactics board, and talking to Sandra, the Brig, Dean, and Vimsy. There was nothing left to do. The truth was we had very little hope of winning and there was zip I could do about it. The best thing I could do for the team was to act natural, act chill, and the best thing I could do for the club was to look good and seed a story the media could pick up on. But there was no fire inside me. We would lose with a whimper and it was my job to put a brave face on it.
The bell rang and the dressing room cleared out, leaving just me and the Brig. "Sir? You're not yourself."
"I had to inhibit. Be a good role model for Sandra. She isn't going to tell wild, irrelevant stories before matches."
"Are you still thinking about The Briefcase? You shouldn't go down internet rabbit holes late at night."
"I can't help it. They gave poor people a hundred thousand dollars and then said, yeah but there's this other family who needs the money more than you. So you could clear your family's debt but be seen as heartless, or you could stay poor but make viewers think you were a good person. Whoever came up with the concept needs to be locked up." The Brig was the wrong audience for this. Maybe Henri at half time. "Do you like my suit?"
"I do. But there's something else. What's troubling you?"
I checked the room was really clear, but lowered my voice anyway. "This has two-nil to Walsall written all over it. I don't see how we win unless we get some spectacular piece of luck."
"Perhaps this will prove to be your lucky suit, sir."
"I doubt it. Things are going great but days like these are never not going to blow."
***
Walsall's average CA was 80, which was a lot less than Salford City's. But Walsall's manager was clearly extracting the maximum from his players and that was one reason I was dubious about our chances. They had a good defence, solid midfield, and a powerful forward. They even had a central attacking midfielder, a true number 10, operating as the conduit between midfield and attack. If I had a better left back I would have used 4-1-4-1 and let Youngster deal with the CAM.
But I had Trick. So it was 3-5-2, let our best line up battle theirs, and may the best team win.
The best team started winning pretty much as soon as the whistle blew.
I found myself looking around the boxy stadium with its red seats and one oversized stand. We'd brought around 800 fans and they were making a decent racket over there. The home fans didn't seem very enthusiastic about the match. There wasn't much history between the teams, Birmingham had very little to do with Chester, and there wasn't a lot of jeopardy. If we hadn't beaten Salford, the attendance might have been another five hundred fewer.
I sighed and settled into my spot, trying not to let my depression show on my face.
It couldn't all be wins and knee slides and glory and chanting. There would be days like this, and plenty of them, where we were simply outmatched. If it had been a league game I'd have concentrated furiously so we could beat them in the return match, but by the time we got to play Walsall as division rivals sixty or seventy percent of the players would be different - on both teams.
So I spent some of the first half talking to Sandra about the players. She told me what she'd picked up in training and I either agreed or suggested something else for her to look out for (a polite way of telling her she was wrong). I said I had developed a weird connection with the group so I could make formation changes pretty easily but that she'd need to work on that.
Then she got interesting.
"You know you do easy sessions the day before a match?"
"Yes."
"Cutting edge teams don't do that. They go hard all the time."
My neck nearly snapped from turning. "What?"
"Yeah. Brighton, for example. Every session's a session."
Brighton were ripping up the Premier League on a fraction of the budget of other teams. They were amazing. "But if we can do that, players will improve faster."
"Yep."
"Shit." I paced around, thinking things through. "What about overloading? Red zones?"
"The way you rotate the team, you could do it. Ideally we'd have proper fitness data. GPS trackers and all that."
I paced around some more. "I think... we have to start next season. I can't stress their bodies halfway through with a massive change like that. Right?"
She shrugged. "I mean, probably. But you could move set pieces to Friday afternoons and get an extra session in during the week."
"Can you do it so that... the extra session is initially easy and very slowly add to the intensity over the course of, like, months?"
"Piece of piss," she said.
For the first time that day, the quality of my smile matched the quality of my suit. "If you're giving me higher quality sessions and more of them, remind me to double your salary next season."
***
At half time, Walsall were leading one-nil and we hadn't really troubled them. We'd battled hard to turn our five out of tens into six out of tens, and we hadn't been embarrassed. But we hadn't been able to get much goal threat going.
I gave a non-demented team talk aimed at negating Walsall's CAM. I also swapped Henri and Tony so we could ping high balls to the left where Henri might win some headers that Aff could get on the end of. It was pretty caveman stuff, really, and I actually felt embarrassed saying it in front of Sandra. But it was my job to try to find some point of advantage and that was all I could think of.
In the first minute of the second half, Carl fired a hopeful ball long in Henri's direction and a Walsall centre back headed it away. So that was that.
I shook my head while I blew air from my cheeks.
"Sandra. Manager chat."
My new assistant snapped her notebook closed and came over. I pretended to point at certain areas of the pitch while I ask for her thoughts about the latest developments in the Premier League. The Man United manager had seemed amazing at first, but this season things had unravelled very quickly and the team had no passion or discernible way of playing. "That's the takeover," she said. "The uncertainty. You've got chaos here but it's all in your wake, isn't it? The players are following you. At United, there's a vacuum at the top and the players are sensitive to it. Also," she felt she needed to add, "United are shit."
"Hmm. What about Burnley? I went to see them in the Championship and they were slapping teams morning, noon, and night. The manager looked like the next big thing but they've lost every home game."
"It's a huge step from the Championship to the Premier League. He's trying to play like City with Burnley players. And he refuses to compromise his principles so they keep getting smashed."
"What would you do?"
"I'd be pragmatic until I had the players to play my style. What about you?"
"I think I would, too. But I can't help but admire the guy. He's going to get himself sacked but... it's amazing."
She swept her eye across the pitch. "I think we should switch to 4-1-4-1 and see if we can't get some control of the ball."
I hadn't told her I knew we'd lose. "That's right, but..." I nodded to the bench. "If we've only got one striker, I can't bring Benny on."
"Benny? You told me you wouldn't use him."
"I told him I wouldn't use him. Now, I'm thinking giving him five minutes at the end is the way we turn this loss into a win and move on with our season."
"Because of his dad."
"Right. The fans will love it. It'll show I'm keeping my promise to care about the youth team. Show I'm serious about giving these guys chances. It'll energise the whole youth system, not that it needs it, and it'll keep the fans warm on that long trek home."
"It's only two hours."
"Unless we score soon, I'm going to do it. He won't be nervous because I told him he wouldn't play."
"Ah, right. I see."
"He'll run around like a headless chicken and that'll be funny. That'll keep me warm on the long trek home. Anyway," I said, lowering my voice. "It's personal. My Chester story began with him. If I can't win, if I can't optimise or maximise, I'm going to keep the promises I made to myself. That's never steered me wrong." Now it was my turn to be surprised by her smile. "What?"
"That's how you beat me."
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing. Get your head in the game, Best. I'm not giving up just yet." She jabbed her finger at the pitch. "If they're still fighting, so am I." She took a couple of paces forward. "Joe! Wake up! Get tighter on that! Ryan! Tony was open! Drop a pass behind! Get them turning. Come on, boys!"
***
Sandra's burst of instructions got us further into the game but then we got dicked on a counter attack. It was weird to see - I couldn't remember the last time we'd conceded to a fast break.
I sighed and made a raft of subs, giving some minutes and the chance to be on the highlights to Trick, Pascal, Youngster, and Steve. Even though we'd lost Aff, our average CA only fell a few points, to 48.5. Still, we were closer to being half of Walsall's level, and my next change would be to replace Tony, CA 44, with Benny, CA 8. We'd basically be playing with ten men at that point. I mean, literally. Ten men and a boy.
Walsall made a bunch of changes, too, and that excited me very slightly. There was a big drop in quality from the first eleven to the subs, which partly explained why they weren't pulling up any trees in League Two. Still, though, it'd take a miracle for us to get anything.
We kept plugging away, though, and with Trick and Pascal fresh on the wings we actually got a couple of decent moves going.
But Walsall recovered, shut us down, and that was that.
With the clock on 85, I called Benny over and while I talked to him, I swapped him and Tony on the tactics screen. I would have taken Henri off, but the next match was a week away so there was no point resting him. Behind Benny, Vimsy was getting the board ready.
"Did your dad ever tell you about how he played in the FA Cup?"
"All the time," said Benny. I think he was trying to roll his eyes, but it didn't work. Here, now, he was buzzing. If he'd ever failed to understand what his dad had accomplished, this experience had brought it home.
"Great. So now you'll be able to tell your own kids."
"What do you mean?"
I turned him around and showed him his squad number was being displayed on the board. "Stay near Henri. Look for flick ons. Keep your shots low." I pushed him and he stumbled, dumbstruck, to the side of the pitch. Tony was waiting for him - they exchanged a high ten and I gave Tony one, too. Before I let him take his seat behind me, I mumbled in his ear. "One for the fans, mate."
"Yeah," he said, too tired to think of something more apt. His smile told me how much he approved. He'd made his debut once and he'd been around the club long enough to know all about Nice One and the son who was following in his footsteps, if slightly higher up the pitch.
When Benny's name was read out, the Chester fans reacted with a moment of stunned silence followed by a massive roar.
The roar saturated Benny with more energy than a human being could hold - he ran around like a feathered domesticated animal whose body ended at the neck. He sprinted to the right, then to the left, and then he needed a breather. Absolutely hilarious. I couldn't help but turn and grin at my support staff.
When the match clock struck 89 and the chance of a comeback was less than zero, the Chester fans pumped up the volume. A song was dusted off from the olden days, starting with the dads in the crowd. It was derived from the football staple "Nice One, Cyril" and for the first time, I had an inkling of how Benny's old man got his weird nickname. It didn't take long for the young'uns in the crowd to learn the lyrics - most had grown up hearing them and the memories came back in a rush of nostalgia.
Nice One, Smasho
Nice one, son
Nice One, Smasho
Let's have another one!
My smile was starting to hurt, now. I looked at the bench again, wondering who would have been around the last time those songs had been heard in a cup match. Vimsy? He wasn't a Chester guy. Dean? Far too young. No, this was a moment for the real Chester old guard. The MDs and the sponsors. The granddads. I'd have to listen to Seals Live. Boggy would be in heaven.
On the pitch, Henri won a header - finally! The ball whizzed towards goal and Benny was on it like a flash. Young, nimble, eager, he zoomed towards it - could he? He couldn't, could he?
A defender casually jogged towards Benny's line of attack and the teenager crashed into him, landing with his limbs all over the place. Bit of a harsh lesson in standards, that. I felt Vimsy nodding behind me, appreciating the defender's mastery of his position.
The ball was collected by the other centre back, who touched the ball to the right back. He had Trick haring towards him so he played it straight back to the previous guy, who lazily dabbed it back to the goalie.
But Benny had one thing going for him - he was too inexperienced to realise he'd had his arse handed to him by a wise old hand. What he knew best was the simple virtue of running flat out almost all the time. So he redirected his latest sprint from the centre back to the goalie. Only when the goalie shaped to pass the ball to the full back did Benny give it up as a lost cause. He put the brakes on and turned, wondering if he should press the full back. It seemed wrong - Trick was there. So what was he supposed to do?
The goalkeeper thought better of playing the short pass and decided to whack the ball to the halfway line.
For some mad reason, the ball didn't ever get more than three inches off the turf. It flew straight and true, as though a line drawn by an analyst in the studio, at Benny's heel. It hit the heel, bounced back the way it came, and went into the net while the goalkeeper fell to his back and covered his face.
Henri jumped for joy, and he and Trick ran to Benny, arms aloft, ready to celebrate the kid's first ever professional goal. But Benny, now that he'd worked out what had happened, ran into the goal, retrieved the ball, and dodged his elderly teammates on his way back to the halfway line. He put the ball on the centre spot, squeaked "come on!" and was ready to go, pacing up and down like a de-aged version of me. A panther, a caged tiger released and out for blood, a cold-hearted assassin, calculations complete and ready to execute.
"Oh my God," I said.
"What?" said Sandra.
The board went up - there would be four minutes of injury time. Our fans had gone berserk - full savage, threatening to shake the stadium apart with their dancing and screaming and shouting.
"We can do this," I whispered, and after a second, I was in full flow. On the touchline, screaming at my players to attack. Oh, what I would have given to push a defender forward. I set the entire team to 'make forward runs' and made them all press.
Walsall, despite being well-coached and full of experienced, disciplined players, were shaken. They couldn't keep the ball. Pascal showed why he considered pressing to be his superpower - he terrorised his full back, the left mid, and even the left sided centre back. They hoofed the ball long when they saw him coming. In the middle, Ryan Jack had rolled back the years, Youngster was full of running, and Raffi Brown looked ten foot tall.
Headed clear by Ryder.
Jack picks up the loose ball. He chips forward to Brown.
Brown has options! He chooses right.
Bochum steadies himself and fires a low cross.
Lyons is there!
He slides and lifts the ball over the keeper...
...
But it's saved! Incredible reflexes. The goalie has made up for his previous error.
That wasn't true. We were only having these chances because of the goalie's mistake.
Williams receives the ball with his back to goal. He looks for support.
He lays it off to Brown. Brown finds Youngster.
Youngster plays it simply for Jack to run onto.
His first-time pass makes the defence turn.
Bochum is running onto it...
But the defender slides in.
Throw-in to Chester.
The defenders are all going forward.
Cavanagh looks to his manager, asking permission to go forward. He's told to stay.
Carlile's throw reaches the penalty box.
Alton flicks it on...
And there's mayhem! Pinball in the Walsall area.
Benny falls over. Was he fouled?
The ball is cleared.
One last chance for Chester.
Williams gathers - hits a quick cross. It's headed out as far as Jack.
He chips it forward - more chaos!
The ball somehow falls to Brown. He hits the post!
No - it was saved. The keeper got a hand to it.
Corner to Chester. Surely the last chance of the game.
Score and they'll earn a replay at home.
Yeah, and I'd be able to play in it. That would be something.
Ben was waving at me again. Should he go up for the corner? Well, why the fuck not? He wanted it - he was almost on the halfway line. He sprinted forward.
Ryan Jack with the corner.
All eyes on him.
The referee stops him from taking it - he wants a word about some jostling around the Walsall keeper.
Now he's ready.
The corner's hit - hard and fast.
Cavanagh rises highest.
A thumping header!
But it's saved!
Chester's goalkeeper has a header pushed over the bar by his Walsall counterpart!
And that's the final whistle.
Walsall survive a late scare to progress to the third round.
I rushed onto the pitch, headed straight to the penalty area where almost all my players were slumped. They'd worked their arses off and had got no reward for it. But I was buzzing. I was thrilled.
I embraced Ben - he'd kept us in the game in the first half when Walsall had been coming at us from all angles. The curse rated him nine out of ten and that was before he'd nearly scored the equaliser.
Then I picked out a few others. Henri had worked tirelessly to create space for others. Ryder and Carlile had stretched themselves trying to keep a lid on much better players. The midfield had been dominated but not overrun. And Benny! I gave him a hug. The little brat was pretending to be devastated we'd lost because that's what he thought Max Best would want.
I waved the team over to me and led them towards the Chester fans. They clapped and cheered and when we took a few steps back and pushed Benny forward, they hit maximum volume.
Now, finally, the debutant allowed himself to smile and laugh.
Good times. But something was missing. I called Livia and asked her to hand the phone to Sandra.
"Where are you?" I demanded.
"You said you wanted me to be statesmanlike and do all the handshakes with the other team when you forgot or refused."
"Fuck that. Get over here."
By the time she crossed the pitch to where we were, someone had spotted Nice One and forced him to cross the advertising hoarding onto the pitch, where he stood arm in arm with his son as the fans and players sang his song.
Nice One, Benny
Nice one, son
Nice One, Benny
Let's have another one!
***
Maybe I should have let Sandra do the post-match interviews. I was drunk on football.
Max, you nearly got back into the match, there at the end.
Nearly, yeah.
You needed a slice of luck.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. You think because we're a non-league team we don't know how to score goals? Mate, we don't have eighty million pound sex pests on our team but we know how to stand still while a goalkeeper fires the ball at us from eight yards away. We can do the basics. There's no luck about that.
What were you thinking when your goalkeeper went up for the corner?
I was thinking, gosh, I hope he scores. [Attractive toothy laughter.]
What did you make of your team's performance?
I'm ecstatic. I can't believe it, really. I think this is the first time I've been surprised by them like this. I know what they can do and when they do it, I'm happy. But to compete with Walsall like that for so long, stay in the game, and then to yeah, get a lucky bounce and really try to hammer that opportunity... it's so good. That's pure character, that. I didn't do anything. A few of our good results, yeah, not to be smug about it but they're because I was clever or had a plan or something. Today was all about them. I didn't think we could do that. That's blown my socks off.
What did you say at half time?
I was trying to talk about this TV show I've been reading about but no-one was interested. I'll have to find a subreddit or something. That one's even too niche for Henri.
Young Benny made quite an impact and there were great scenes at the end with his father.
Yeah his dad was really kind to me when I first came to Chester. It's just a mad story, what happened today. Mad. It's totally messed with my head. Years from now I'll be talking to you saying 'oh you were there the day we beat Walsall' and you'll be like 'no Max you lost' and I won't be able to process it. It feels so much like a win. I wouldn't swap this for a win. No chance.
There's a big prize for the winners. A third round tie against a big team.
I wouldn't swap it. Walsall's next game might be Tottenham away and good luck to them. They'll make millions. Our next game is against Swindon Supermarine and we'll make a cash loss on the day. We'll get to the levels we want but in the meantime I wouldn't swap places with Walsall's manager. I wouldn't swap places with anyone.
***
After I'd done my media duties, I stared at my experience point counter.
XP balance: 2,226
No debt! And managing against a tier four team had been giving me EIGHT XP per minute, and unlike against Salford I hadn't ruined it by playing half the match. This haul was enough for me to buy the December perk, but it wasn't the time to think about that. No, this was the time to stare into space with a vaguely happy smile, idly humming the Nice One Benny song. The Brig came to rescue me. "Ready to go, sir. We need to stop off at the dressing room."
I fell into step beside him. "Top. Where's Sandra?"
"She wants to go on the team bus."
"Sick of me blabbing on?"
"The difference in the level of detail when you talk to her and when you talk to me is striking. I'm grateful you simplify things for me. But no. She said it's two more hours where she can get to know the players."
I shook my head. "I've struck gold, there."
"Platinum, sir."
Huh. Had I ever spoken about my player ranking system with the Brig? I thought I hadn't, but perhaps I had. Or perhaps he'd overheard us or decoded Sandra's squiggly handwriting. I rubbed my face. I was suddenly very, very tired. "All right. The plan. A week of top training. Win in the FA Trophy, win a few league matches, Christmas number one."
"And then a break." He pushed a door open and held it open for me.
"And then a break." The Brig was smiling as I passed him. I realised we were back in the dressing room. He had mentioned that, but it was the expression on his face that puzzled me most. "What?"
"I got you something." He tapped an expensive-looking travel bag.
I took it and carefully unzipped it - I didn't want to break it and have to pay a thousand quid for a new one. I reached in and pulled out one of my shit hoodies. One of the ones the Brig hated so much. "Mate," I said. I had a whole outfit in there, right down to my most comfortable trainers. It was like he'd poured me a whisky and fetched my slippers. "What's this all about?"
"One simply wishes to remind you who your best assistant is." He tried to keep a poker face. "Actually, it was Emma's idea. You might say she gets the pre-assist on this one."
"The two assistants thing is weird," I said, as I loosened my tie. "In the summer I think we'll relabel you Head of Performance or something like that. How does that sound?"
He fake-coughed with his hand covering his mouth. "I have seen at other clubs there is a more suitable title."
"Oh?"
"Director of High Performance."
"Absurd. I love it. You're hired."
"Very good, sir."