13.

Evening Glow

The best poems rhyme, end of discussion. But I was finding that St. James' Park wasn't quite the muse I needed, and trying to get couplets to rhyme was doing my head in. Who said they needed to be couplets, anyway? As far as I could tell, the poets of the Song dynasty did whatever the hell they wanted.

The fog on the Tyne is all mine, I wrote. But I want to share it with you.

Scratch that out, I thought. That's terrible.

"What are you doing?" asked my favourite Weaver.

"What does it look like? I'm trying to write poems in the classical tradition, replete with symbolism. I'm struggling with the geese."

"It's just that you begged my dad for tickets and you aren't even watching."

"I am!" I said. "Look. Newcastle have had 65% possession and 4 shots, none on target. West Ham are in a low block and are countering just enough to stop the home team going mad on overloads. When Bowen gets the ball you can literally hear the dread from the home fans, but the team's overly reliant on him for my liking."

Emma leaned into me. "Okay. You're watching. But I'm worried about you."

So were a lot of people. My phone had been exploding to the point that once I'd found Emma, I'd turned it off. Worrying wasn't going to help me write these poems, though. I tapped the pencil against my lips. Sometimes changing the topic opened the door to inspiration. "It was good of your dad to give us his tickets but I would have been happy to watch with him. I planned a whole speech pretending to be surprised by the contrasting defensive systems. And, you know, sort of giving credit where credit's due to the Newcastle manager for some of the good things he's done. It's the new diplomatic and sophisticated Max. Max Joybringer, they call me."

Emma smiled. "It was good of him. He was pleased you asked. Plus he feels sorry for you."

"What? Why?"

"Because you got sacked!"

The person in front turned to gawp at us, but I simply scoffed. "That? That's not a real sacking. You can't sack me for taking points off three much better teams. It doesn't look good on my Wikipedia page but the break gives me time to work on my creative writing. Okay, idea. I'll pitch things you can text your dad and you can tell me if you think he'll like it. First one... I was thinking something like... Max is raving about how Anthony Gordon is being coached. His improvement in recent months has been dramatic."

She thumbed at her phone while I checked out the young winger. Gordon was a deeply annoying Scouser who I had always thought of as overrated. The curse disagreed, though, and since I'd seen him earlier in the season he'd added twenty points of CA and was starting to be a really good Premier League player. Newcastle's manager was top at improving individual players.

So was I - indirectly, at least - which meant that when adding to my squads for next season, I wouldn't be looking at players like Danny Flash. Yes, having a CA 62 striker would be a big help on day one, but it would frustrate me to invest money in someone who wasn't going to improve. Unless I was bringing in an older guy, of course. But I'd probably choose a CA 45 PA 90 striker over an oven-ready PA 62 guy. The early pain would be worth it.

And frankly, if Grimsby dropped into non-league I'd probably change my thought process altogether. If they kept Marcus Wainwright and Danny Grant they would surely smash the National League even with all their dysfunctions. So I could start the season with an even more youthful, even more inconsistent squad; we only needed to finish seventh to get into the playoffs. There wasn't that much difference between second and seventh, all things considered.

"Sent," said Emma. "What is interesting about the defensive formations?"

"Two things, to me at least. First, I'm interested in the way these differ from the basic versions. Newcastle use 4-3-3 but their defenders aren't quite in the normal positions."

"What's different?"

They had thick lines around them in the tactics screen, but I couldn't say that. "I'm not sure. I'm sort of keeping an eye on it. I think this stuff is why we need our own analytics dude. Someone where I can say 'this is weird to me' and he can slow the footage down and compare it to past seasons and all that guff. Obviously I'm here to learn it for myself but I think it'll be slow going. I need to put the time in. Meanwhile, there's something more pressing I can sink my teeth into."

"Your poetry."

I laughed. "I meant the contrasting defensive styles. That's the second interesting thing. See, Newcastle are very energetic. They do a lot of pressing and running and sprinting and counter-pressing and fast transitions and it's all very dynamic. In contrast, West Ham just stand there and let you smash into them."

"And you have to choose which one you want to be."

"I want to be able to do both. Against some teams we need to do the pressing, the super energetic version. It's fantastically coached here, it really is. But the manager doesn't rotate his line up enough so he gets injuries and fatigue and my squad's obviously much smaller than his so if he can't do it, neither can I. I need to add numbers, of course, but if it's a choice between adding four good players or eight okay ones, I'm probably going to go with the four. So what do we do? Get knocked out of cups early? I can't. I'm insane about cups. So then West Ham's style becomes interesting. Over a season, you're running less, you're getting fewer injuries. It's quite passive though, and the fans mostly hate it. West Ham play like that even if they're one-nil down at home."

"Is this the inside fighter outside fighter thing? That came up a few times over dinner with Donnie and I didn't quite get it."

"It's not real football jargon; it's just a way to frame a choice, isn't it? Like when we're looking for a landmark on holiday and I want to find it by intuition - you could say I'm being an outside fighter. You want to ask a local. Brutal, simplistic, utterly lacking in sophistication."

"Oi."

"Or if I wanted to marry you. How would I bring it up? If I was in inside fighter mode I would get in close, give you a big old smooch, and say, 'hey baby, it's time, marry me yeah?'"

"What's the outside fighter version?"

I got shifty. "I don't know. Sort of maybe start writing poems and hanging out with your friends or something. So yeah, West Ham are outside fighters. They stand back and let you tire yourself out. They come alive in the last twenty minutes of matches. There are games where I've switched off because I thought they wanted to lose, that's how bad they were playing. Then I saw they scored two quick goals near the end. Good goals, too. It's definitely a style. I'd like to have that option. Seasons are bloody long. Newcastle are the inside fighters. Lots of work and energy. It's all about throwing so many punches the other guy can't even set his feet. In a way it's more Max Best football, but grinding your players into dust like that isn't for me. Take this weekend. Lower league teams are playing on Friday and Monday. How can you play with this intensity twice in four days? You can't, but this Newcastle manager tries. It's kind of insane. I'd want to be passive on Friday and go all-out on Monday, or vice versa."

"Summarise that into eight words I can text my dad."

"Ooh, we can test one of my poems on him. Write this. St James' Park is famed for the noise of the Gallowgate; But tonight their songs cannot be heard for the sound of the PSR hate."

Emma leaned forward to get a better look at me. "Are you okay?"

"It's the wrong poem, I know. I thought I'd get away with it. How did you know that was originally the rain one?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Why are you writing poems? It's out of character. You've had a shock and you're acting weird. I'm worried."

I stuck my notepad between my thighs and pulled Emma into a big cuddle before gently playing with the nape of her neck. "I've suddenly got a lot of free time that I can use productively to think about the future. This trip is actually quite important for me." I needed the experience points from watching a top tier match before the monthly perk ran out but, as ever, I couldn't say that. "You know, the defensive zone stuff. Because we can play like West Ham if we buy Christian Fierce. And there's a guy at Wrexham whose contract is running out who I liked the look of. He could do a bit of the West Ham style or a bit of the Newcastle style. Fierce isn't so good in the Newcastle style. Okay? If I buy Fierce but only use him in half the matches, that's a big waste. I'm thinking ahead. This is big brain stuff. Now, one criticism that was levelled at me in recent times that maybe has some merit is that I'm not very sophisticated. I amputate when keyhole surgery is an option. I charge around and yes it's nice to be a generational talent and all that but when I think of myself I do like to imagine I'm not some oaf who bumbles around the countryside banging into hedges sticking his hand into wasp's nests looking for honey."

"Erm..."

"So I thought to myself, what's the most sophisticated thing that I could do that I could learn from a YouTube video in ten minutes or less? And the answer, obviously, is continuing the thousand-year-old tradition known as the Eight Views. It's eight aspects, eight ways of looking at a scene. It can be quite literal or quite playful, so the rain can be rain or it can be a cat drooling. There's always the same eight themes but there doesn't seem to be a particular order they come in. A thousand years, people have been doing this. That's longer than Coronation Street and Dr. Who combined, babes. A lot of that tradition is paintings and I'm not a good artist but I've written an okay sentence or two so I'm doing the poem angle. Oh, that reminds me. Beth said I wasn't a good writer and this is also a response to that. I'm going to write the next match programme in the form of an Eight Views poem. Eight Views of Football, maybe."

"There's a paramedic right there. I could go and get him."

"I discovered something profound last night, as I lay in the Taj Mahal thinking of rhymes for the word Emma. Would you like to hear it?"

"Yes, please."

"Even bad poems sound good if you read them out slowly enough. You are sceptical. Oh ye of little faith. Here, I'll demonstrate by reading my poem again, but slower, while I play with your hair because I did have to lose some of the evocative imagery in order to make it funny." I cleared my throat. "St James' Park is famed for the noise of the Gallowgate. The Gallowgate End is that stand there, and that structure I used is sort of boilerplate for this Eight Views style. By the way, that opening is part of me being diplomatic with your dad. St James' Park is actually most famous for having a contentious apostrophe and guys who go topless when it's snowing. St James' Park is famed for the noise of the Gallowgate; But tonight their songs cannot be heard for the sound of the PSR hate. PSR is the Premier League's Profit and Sustainability Rules. I can see your eyes glazing over but there are 52,000 people in here today with very strong opinions about it! I could start a riot in here by standing up and shouting I love PSR!"

The guy in front of me bristled but didn't turn around. I think Emma's beauty was intimidating for him. She asked, "What is it?"

"PSR basically means you can't spend too much money compared to what you earn as a football club. It's a big, big topic in the Prem this year, especially here, because the owners have all this money and want to spend it but they can't... because of PSR. Teams are having to sell players to get the balance sheets all lined up. It's having some pretty interesting effects and it's something I need to keep an eye on. Chester should be fine because we'll make most of our money from player sales, all profit, but we do need to increase our match day revenues and sponsorships and all that. One of the reasons I need to spend more time with Brooke. Anything that stops big clubs recklessly spending could work in our favour, of course. If even Newcastle have to sell a player before a certain date to comply with the rules, we could - one day - be in a position to pick up bargains." I smiled. Love a bargain. "Then again, by the time we're in the Prem, they'll have worked it all out." I considered what I'd said. "It's still a rare advantage for us against the big boys, though. Last time I was here I was a bit depressed because we'd never be able to catch up, but maybe there's just enough checks and balances in place that we maybe maybe could. What?"

"I've just realised why you seem so strange."

"What's that?"

"You're happy."

"I'm often happy. It's not that strange." I stretched. "But all right, today feels unusually awesome. I've got power but no immediate responsibility. I've got time to let my brain slow to a crawl. Read about old art, scribble some lines, do some lazy squad building, watch some football with my dream woman under the evening glow of the floodlights. Did you notice I said evening glow?"

"Yes."

"Good. That's the thing about the Eight Views. There are those set themes you have to use. One's called Evening Glow. You do a painting and call it Evening Glow over Wembley and everyone knows what the other seven paintings will be about."

"Everyone knows that, do they?"

"Everyone sophisticated," I said, and my smugness made my girlfriend laugh. Newcastle! What a wonderful place!

***

Evening Snow

We went out for dinner and popped into a bar to meet some of Emma's football-loving friends, the ones I'd been hearing about for so long but had never met. They started out treading on eggshells in case they said something to hurt my feelings. After all, I'd just been sacked and there was, apparently, a fair amount of mockery going around. But I was pretty much as relaxed and charming as I've ever been and soon we were just a group of mates in the corner, laughing and joking.

There was a brief dip in the mood when a tipsy Emma declared she was proud of me not only for my athletic prowess and ability to stuff my football club with a variety of love rivals, each more beautiful than the last, but she was also proud that I hadn't given up on my lifelong dream of writing poetry in the 'Eight Mile' tradition.

That was my cue to lift my voice and astonish the heavens. First, I checked that Emma's mates were all Newcastle United fans. They were.

"Great. You'll love this one, then. It's on the theme of Evening Snow, which, as you know, is one of the Eight Miles. I mean, Eight Views. Ahem. It's a bit ripped off from an old Japanese poem which went, The beauty of the evening on the peak of Mount Hira is best seen after the snows have fallen and before the flowers are fully blown. Fully blown being, as you know, an old way of saying in bloom. So here's my version with the closest thing you've got to a mountain here. I'll slow down so you can really enjoy it. The beauty of the evening on the peak of Currock Hill is best seen after the snows have fallen; and before Keegan's twelve-point lead is fully blown."

My reading was met with a snowy silence, and for a second I wondered if the scars from Newcastle's collapse in the 1996 title race were still fresh. But no, they were reacting to something quite different. "Did you say Currock Hill? I've never heard of it."

I put my notebook away with a sour, prissy look on my face. "My work is intended for a more sophisticated audience."

"Oh, yeah?" said one girl. "Like Emma?"

"Oi!" said Emma, and the pair fell about laughing.

"So that's your book of poems for the season?" said one guy. I think he must have been one of the ones mocking me the hardest in the WhatsApp group because he was doing his best to make me feel welcome. "You do a different one every year, sort of thing?"

"Oh, I don't really write poems," I said, pulling the notebook out and flipping through. "I'm just giving my brain a different challenge this weekend. Here's what I normally do. What've we got here? Sort of a sketch of our stadium if we knock various stands down. Where do we put the away fans and what's the capacity? Just thinking ahead. This, what's this? When I was in hospital I was having mad dreams about football without formations. This is a sort of... attempt to draw it but when I try to remember what it looked like, it's like I'm snowblind. Ah, you'll like this. This was my prediction for the final National League North table. I had us winning by 15 points, see?"

"When did you write this?"

"Seems like years ago." I looked at the pages before and after. "Must have been around September."

"And how many points clear are you now?"

"Exactly fifteen," I said, putting my notebook away with a cheeky grin.

"I thought it was fourteen," said Emma.

"Babes! It's called poetic licence. Please don't forget that I'm an artist." I pretended to leave in a huff, which got laughs, and made my way down the stairs and into the bar's toilets. As I was washing my hands, so was some rando.

"Want some snow?" he said.

"Yeah, but it's nearly April. Unless there's a crazy cold snap, it's not gonna happen."

"Right," he said, before pulling a paper towel, drying himself off, and scarpering.

I looked at myself in the mirror and was pretty content. Coming to Newcastle had been a good idea. I liked Emma's friends and the match had given me almost all the XP I needed to buy the monthly perk. I'd landed on 4,003 XP, one tiny point short of being able to afford it. I would have to watch our women's team play Altrincham to be able to upgrade my skills. There was no part of me that was even considering not being there, but it just seemed... poetic that a difficult month should end on such a high.

High? It took me a few seconds to realise the guy had tried to sell me cocaine. As if! I was a professional sportsman and I didn't take recreational substances. I went back upstairs and paid for another round of drinks.

***

Night Rain

That night, Emma and I lay on her bed. My brain was throbbing slightly from the alcohol and the music and the non-stop conversation in a language that was hard for me to understand - Geordie.

I had my laptop out and Ems was on her big phone. The task - preparation for our summer holiday, now that we wouldn't be staying in a palace with two swimming pools and three helipads. Emma was on travel websites scouting for locations, while my job - self-appointed - was to write the commemorative poem.

"How about Sardinia?" she said.

I thought about my need to find thirty grand in new money for West Didsbury to unlock matching funding from Sebastian. Better to keep the summer cheap. "How about Sunderland?" We went about our own business for a while. The room was too quiet; I liked to write with white noise or classical music playing. "Are you disappointed?"

"That you chose the day you met my friends to be the weirdest you've ever been? No, they loved it."

"About the holiday."

"Not really. I might be when we're on a freezing cold beach in Sunderland instead of one of Chris's private islands."

I didn't really want to think about what I'd lost in an oppressively quiet room. "The best time to plan a summer holiday is when it's raining." I made sure the volume on my laptop was low, went to YouTube and typed 'night rain'. The first video was called 'Three Hours of Gentle Night Rain' and had two hundred million views. I pressed play and put my laptop aside. "Next season's going to be the hardest one, I think. Rough start, we slowly get good, we make the playoffs and then we've got to be perfect for three matches. Stressful, but no-one will want to play us; we'll be ready. I want to have a go in the Youth Cup and the women's season will be the same as this one - only the top team gets promoted, no playoffs, so there's no room for mistakes. It's stressful - one bad half and your season's over. You have to wait another year to get another go. I find myself wishing I'd found some defenders for Jackie instead of doing Tranmere and Grimsby." I reached behind my head and found her hand. "I need more players. Can we do a lovely romantic holiday tour... of Cheshire?"

She squeezed me. "Of Cheshire's scenic towns and villages and football pitches?"

"We could stock up on talented randos. We kind of need to, really. But one big push and that's it. Next summer it'll be simpler, I think."

"Why?"

"We'll be doing most of our recruitment from other clubs. Finding a great midfielder on the street - yeah, brilliant. But it'll take him five years to make it to the first team. The higher we go, the longer it'll take randos to get into the side. It's even getting like that with the women. If I found someone untrained who was even better than Charlotte, it'd probably be two seasons before she kicked her out of the starting lineup. No, this summer's the key."

She squirmed around to face me. "Describe a day on this wonderful holiday of ours."

"We drive to Big Throbbing."

"If that's a real place we need to start there."

"We leave our bags at the Airbnb. I have a shower while you pick up all the crisp packets you left in the car."

"I did that once. Stop going on about it."

"We walk around the village and have scones and think gosh I wish I had a paperback book. We find a second hand bookshop and you inexplicably embark on a fifteen-minute conversation with an elderly gentleman."

"You exaggerate how often that happens."

"We drive to a country estate with a famous garden and walk around and I'm recognised by a Swedish volleyball team who happen to be in the area."

"Skip this part."

"We potter around the village peering at the restaurant menus that are kept inside little glass boxes on the outside so that I can decide if I want to eat there or not without having to talk to anyone."

"Your absolute favourite kind of place."

"We pick one, and, to work up an appetite, we drive to a local five-a-side centre and I watch eight minutes of shit football. We return to the restaurant where you embarrass me by ordering an apricot and olive salad but can you have pear instead of apricot and instead of olives can you have peas."

Her eyelids closed. Some of her dreams were further away; some were closer. "So, summer in Cheshire."

"And Wales. Shropshire. The Potteries. Merseyside. Places we could find players who could actually play for us if we offer a low wage. I mean, finding lads in Grimsby is useless unless they're world beaters and we give them enough money that they'd want to relocate. We were lucky with the Harrisons. Yeah, we found them in Tenerife but they lived in Bolton."

She rolled into me. "I'll do it if you tell me which Triplet's the good one."

I laughed. "Why do you care?"

"Because you've been teasing everyone with it since the summer."

"Hmm. Tell you what. You rank them one, two, three and I'll tell you how many are right."

"Promise to tell me properly."

"I promise."

She tried to focus, which was hard because the alcohol was still sloshing around and she was almost asleep. I thought she had nodded off, but she said, "Can you stop the rain? I really don't know how you find that relaxing." I gently closed the laptop and the rain stopped. "Okay," she said with a happy sigh, as she wriggled into the little spoon position and used my arm as a clamp. "Noah's the best. Got to be."

"You've got to name all three before I tell."

"Noah's the best. Andrew's second. Michael third."

"Hundred percent wrong. So that's that. We'll do my dream holiday instead of yours."

"It's eight minutes of football instead of eight minutes in a museum. It's not a drama."

The silence of the room threatened to get under my skin. "But Ems, we've gone, in a couple of days, from imagining us counting the superyachts going past to looking up which tea house in Flintshire has the best pastries. It's... It's not what I want for you."

"What do you want for me?" she mumbled.

"I want the Iron Man house in Malibu. I want infinity pools. I want houses carved into mountainsides but there wasn't a mountain so they flew one in from Austria. I want to give you the moon on a stick."

She squiggled around until we were almost face to face. The eyelashes parted and I fell, dizzy, into the eyes. "A tea house in Flintshire followed by a crappy football match in the... what's the theme right now?"

"Night rain," I whispered, scared to ruin the moment.

"Crappy match in the night rain. I'll love it. Because you'll be with me and you're my favourite person and you make everything fun. And at one of those crappy matches there will be a guy, or knowing you more likely it'll be a ridiculously beautiful woman, and you'll pick me up and spin me round and say bebs we found the next Jackie Milburn." She gave me a quick peck on the lips. "Who needs vitamin D, anyway?" We kissed, and things were starting to heat up when she pulled away a couple of inches with a suspicious look on her face. "What are you doing?"

"Kissing you."

"Max. You're not kissing me. You're in your own head."

"It's such a perfect moment. I want to do a poem."

"Go on, then."

"My Night Rain couplet isn't romantic, though."

"Could you get on with it, please?"

I hesitated. I had enough sophistication to realise this wasn't likely to go as I'd hoped. "The original is about some bridge in Japan. Bridge, right? I think my versions only make sense if you know the originals."

"Grow a pair and tell it me."

I played with her hair so that it'd seem more romantic. "Soft and fitful rain passes over the ridge; the light of the setting sun streams along the freehold to Stamford Bridge." It's fair to say that the first 90% of the poem worked tremendously. Emma melted. The end, though, ended a lot of things. "Um... Because Chelsea can't redevelop the ground because they don't own it, right. Someone else has the freehold. Bit like us with the Deva. So..."

"How many more of these do I need to hear?"

"Two."

"How many really?"

"Five."

"Ah, okay. Well, you know I support you in your little projects. Guess how your poetry ranks alongside Tranmere and Grimsby?"

"Poems first, Tranmere second, Grimsby third."

"One hundred percent wrong. Good night."

***

Autumn Moon

Sunday, March 31

Match 19 of 22: Altrincham Women vs Chester Tyger Tygers

Alty played their home matches at Mersey Valley Sports Club, not all that far from Chorlton and not all that far from the care home. Emma and I went for a quick chat with mum and Anna and I ended up offering to take Solly to watch the match with me. I knew almost everyone from Chester would be there so there would be no shortage of people who could be 'volunteered' to take him for quick walks if he thought the match was boring.

"Is it going to be boring?" said Emma from the back seat of the Duchess, where a deliriously happy dog was clambering over her to get a better view of the big wide world.

"It's two tier six teams who know their entire year comes down to this one game," I said. "They'll be a bag of nerves and both teams are similar in that there are pockets of good players and pockets of poor ones. You can see it in the passing moves - the ball is tranquil, tranquil, then it hits turbulence. There's some good play and then the last pass, the cross, the through ball goes miles off target. I went to sleep last night super peaceful, feeling serene, then suddenly I was wide awake at three a.m. stressed off my tits because I remembered that after Cody Chambers did a totally perfect training session I was hyper and made everyone do something with a mad degree of difficulty. Rule one of coaching is never end on something that's too hard. This boomerang trick, what was I thinking? If they do it in this game I'm going to implode."

"Stress? Implosions? The entire year comes down to this? It doesn't sound like it will be boring, babes."

"Oh, I'll be having palpitations from minute one to ninety. Everyone's going to try to talk to me but I'll be a proper stress head. You have to help me."

"You can get out of any conversation you want by telling them about your poems. So the context is, we lose today we are stuck in this league for another year."

"Yeah. Doesn't sound too bad, like, staying in the same division is what happens to most teams, but for us, for this group, it could be catastrophic. Some of the ladies are getting seriously good. Charlotte's already way above the level. We've got a batch of stars. Will they want to stay another year at tier six? If we don't win today, I'm not worried about getting promoted next year, that's easy. I'm worried about keeping the group. Dani, Angel, even Kisi. The women's transfer record was broken a couple of months ago. We could do that with Angel or Dani, but not if they leave this summer. Know what I mean? And Jackie. Maybe he gets a better offer that he rejects if we're in tier five and accepts if we're tier six. Yeah, it's trouble. And it's not just that we can't lose. We pretty much have to win."

"In Jackie we trust."

"I mean, yeah, obvs. It's just a headwrecker to be the DoF at such an important game and I have to be a spectator." Especially when I still had Bench Boost and Triple Captain available. I'd toyed with the idea of making myself manager five minutes before the match, smashing the perks, and reinstating Jackie, but that was too, too weird even for me.

We'd decided to arrive shortly before the match so that I wouldn't get an ulcer from worrying. As I hunted for a parking spot, I spotted Henri in deep discussions with Brooke. She was smiling with about a quarter of her mouth. I couldn't tell if that was huge or meaningless. Schrödinger's smile.

"The Texan," said Emma, ominously. They'd met briefly at the home match against Scarborough when I'd been sick, but to all intents and purposes this would be the first time they properly talked.

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"Yep," I said. I needed to fire off a quick reply to a message. "Hang on and I'll introduce you." I was vaguely aware of Solly's panting, his claws scraping on the tarmac, and the door clicking shut. There was quiet. I finished typing, pressed send, and realised I'd lost control of the sitch. "Shit."

I dashed out and around the car and saw Brooke and Emma side by side, fussing over Solly.

Henri snuck up beside me and draped his arm over my shoulder. "Bringing the dog was a good idea," he murmured. "We bond over a chin rub and a tempting belly."

"You can rub Solly's belly; he loves it." I squinted. "It was Emma's idea. She made me think it was mine. Wow. How often does she do that to me? She's a wizard." The women continued to talk to each other while facing the dog. "So she was nervous about Brooke."

"Or she was confident but took extra steps to ensure the day went well. How are you, my friend?"

"Fantastic," I said, from a deep chasm.

"That bad?"

"What?" I snapped out of it. "No, man. I'm serious. Everyone's freaking out over nothing. Come on, let's walk this puppy. Hi, Brooke. Are you excited about the big game?"

"I am! It's all anyone wants to talk about. Except for the whole thing with you."

"The thing with me? Don't talk about Solly like that!" I bent. "He's a good boy and a sweet boy."

"Max has been writing poems," said Emma.

Henri took two quick steps forward. "Pardonnez moi?"

I swirled my finger around. "It's time to class this place up a bit. My starting concept was football in general but now I'm thinking about niching down for the merch options. Brooke, write this down. Eight Views of Chester by Max Best. A set of eight mugs."

Henri gasped. "You're doing the Eight Views? What's Autumn Moon?"

"I thought Autumn Moon would be the hardest because, you know, it's spring, but it just popped into my head almost fully formed. It's when I pivoted from Eight Views of Football to Eight Views of Chester. Brooke, get ready to be swept off your feet." I handed Henri the dog's lead and fished my little notebook out. "Imagine you go to make a cup of tea and you pull down one of your Chester mugs - you bought eight, remember - and it's the Autumn Moon one. Maybe there's a golden moon that looks like a winter football and maybe Henri's about to do an overhead kick on it. I dunno, I'm a poet not a graphic designer." I held the page open with my left hand and made precise, ritualistic gestures with my right. It goes without saying that I spoke slowly so they could allow every word to seep into their subconscious. "At the Deva the same moon shines down as at Wrexham; But is it not more beautiful in Chester?"

Henri made an ecstatic noise, thrust the lead into Brooke's hand, and embraced me. "It's marvellous! You're simply marvellous! The Eight Views as tribalism turned into merch? It's the highest moment in football art. Tell me the other seven at once."

"I'm dishing them out in segments; only Emma hears them as they are birthed. If you want them all you need to buy the set. Boom. Marketing 20."

Brooke and Emma bonded over this scene almost as much as they had while mutually petting a dog. I got the feeling my b-girl wasn't going to hit the phones talking to ceramics companies in the morning. "Can you do it without the word Deva? I've been looking into stadium sponsorships. There is some interest."

"Oh, really? Top. But if you're asking me to change my poem, you don't know me very well. I'll not sell my artistic vision for twenty thousand quid."

"How about a hundred?"

I mimed crumpling some paper and throwing it in a bin. "Consider it edited. It's only art. This dog walk got very static all of a sudden. I get that you're transfixed by the beauty of my imagery but we need to keep moving. Don't we Solly? Don't we boy?" We walked away from the football pitches. "Hundred K for naming rights? For how long?"

"That was four years."

Twenty-five Gs a year sounded pretty shit. "Oh."

"It's tentative negotiations, Max. Just a gambit on their side."

Henri cleared his throat, suggesting he had something of value to say. "Brooke simply wants to give you a ballpark figure."

The silence that followed was complete. Perhaps the only thing missing was a faint, sad whine from Solly. Emma shook her head. "Max is writing the poems and Henri's doing the terrible puns. I feel like I'm in one of those body-swap movies."

***

Descending Geese

I went to the other side of the pitch from the dugouts because I didn't want to get in Jackie Reaper's face and put undue pressure on him. While my heart was screaming that I should get involved because the stakes were so high, my head was saying that I needed to trust Jackie and the players.

He'd gone with the formation we'd used for most of the season, 4-5-1, to get midfield dominance against Alty's 4-4-2. We had a decent bench that included Diane, the talented DM, plus a very attacking trio in Kisi, Julie McKay, and Angel.

The average CA of the first eleven was 26.6, a smidge below Alty's 28. Alty had home advantage, in theory, but in practice our supporters massively outnumbered theirs. Almost everyone from our men's first team had turned up to cheer the women on. MD, Inga, Joe, and five-sevenths of the board were there. The Yalleys had brought a big chunk of their church's congregation, including Pastor Yaw. Sandra Lane had appointed herself Jackie's assistant manager for the day, and she'd been busy on the phones, too. Many of the Man City girls had come, not least the Butcher of Burnage herself. Meghan, Youngster's biggest fan, was in a gaggle of City players. They were quiet. Maybe they were troubled by thoughts that, like Charlotte, they too could be forced to descend to the sixth tier. I had no doubts they'd come to life when Kisi was subbed on.

In addition to all that, fifty Chester fans had organised a day out and were singing and chanting behind the goal we'd be shooting towards in the first half.

Yeah. We outnumbered Alty fans at least ten to one. So we had away advantage, better technique, and slightly better morale, while Alty were far more experienced and had great self-belief.

The match kicked off and I immediately felt sick to my stomach. Far too much was riding on this. Imagine being forced to accept an offer of ten thousand pounds for Angel. If we pushed her, she could be the first million pound woman. That wasn't going to happen if she had to slum it for another year in the North West Regional Football League Division One South.

We took control of the midfield and almost at once it was obvious that Charlotte was the power in these waters. She raced ahead in passes completed, tackles, interceptions, and she pushed us up into Alty's half where most of the first ten minutes was played.

"Jackie Reaper's blue and white army!" sang the fans behind the goal, which normally would have pumped me up, but today stressed me out even more. Would Jackie be too defensive? Would he make his changes too late?

The first ten minutes were grim but the next five were torture. We would seem to be in control but then Alty would turn the ball over and launch a ball over the defence and there would be absolute mayhem. Once, an Alty winger raced ahead and fizzed the ball across the box, behind one striker and in front of the other. Heart-stopping. Where was Dani? Alty's next break came from an agricultural long-ball. Robyn ran out to head the ball clear, but she clattered into Bonnie. It was dumb luck that Mo was first to the loose ball. She smashed it away and while the goalie and defender got some treatment, Jackie tweaked his instructions. From my vantage point I found myself nodding as I went through the lineups. The full backs had been told to stay back, as had Pippa. Charlotte had been set as playmaker. Dani had been told to cover the runners on her side. Jackie wanted to slow the game down, make sure we had plenty of numbers in the rest defence, and try to be as precise as possible when constructing our moves.

Sensible, but we had to win. Alty must have loved how we were playing. They had a West Ham sorta defence and we were simply crashing into it. We needed to take more risks, plain and simple.

Emma knew I was struggling and she slipped right into assistant manager mode. First team players came and went, trying to talk to me, but I couldn't peel my eyes away from the action. Emma handed Solly out like he was a free sample, and the little fucker got walk after walk until just before half time, with my nerves frayed and aching, he came to flop at my feet. I sat next to him, legs crossed, and in the half time break tried to stop my head spinning long enough to talk to MD and Brooke.

Emma nudged me. I'd spaced out mid-sentence. "What?"

"Tell us a poem."

"No, they're shit. I'm a hack. I'm just being weird so I don't have to think about my inner turmoil."

"I know," she said, shaking me by the upper arm. "That's why now's the perfect time."

I closed my eyes and when I opened them, she was there, the breeze blowing through her wavy strands of hair, beautiful and soft and wise. For the first time, I wondered if I should have been writing poems about her. "So this one's back on the Eight Views of Chester theme. It's about me loaning young players to a small club in Manchester. Ahem. After passing many Range Rovers the wild geese alight at Roadchef for a rest; before continuing their long flight to West."

"Wild geese?" said MD.

"Mate, it's a thousand-year old poem template. There's set forms you've got to use. They're all about mountains and geese and fucking sails. Give me a break. This is good stuff. Where's Henri? He gets it."

MD gave me a good-natured twinkle. "So you want to do more loans to West Didsbury? Emma said you've been in planning mode. You'll be back to managing tomorrow, will you? Will you play?"

"No, tomorrow I'm going to watch a match with Fleur. We're going to scout together. Maybe I can show her some of the things I'm interested in. Make her a better scout sort of thing. That'll have a big long-term impact even if all it does is reduce the number of trips I have to make to see players she likes but I don't."

"That's... that's a good idea. We're still making her full time next season?"

"Yes. Have you got an idea of the budget? I need a budget. I know you'll say it depends but just please give me your best guess for now. And I should have a quick chat to the fans soon. Can we do a quick Zoom call with the members on Tuesday evening? They might think it's weird I'm not managing. Or playing. I'll explain it. What else? We'll have a meeting to talk about where you're at with the grants and the kitchen and everything. And also maybe we can get all the main staff together and I can talk about some things I saw in Lincolnshire."

"What did you see?"

"Not any hedgehogs, that's for sure. Analytics, data, the training ground. Bit of a reminder of some cultural stuff we've fixed but can't get complacent about. And Sandra can debrief me about what's been going on with the men's team. Three draws, four wins, to me it looks good but there are people saying it got a bit stodgy."

"No," said MD. "Sandra was using young players more than we expected. She said she wasn't interested in breaking records, she wanted to develop players, and she wanted to carry on doing what you were doing - as much as possible."

"We should talk about it anyway - there might be some useful lessons for next time I'm on a break. Oh, there's Ruth and the Brig. Everyone wave to Ruth; I need to talk to her." Ruth refused to join me on the grass, so the Brig helped me up and we did the conversation standing. "Just a quick question. Is there a chance you'd sell me the barn?"

"The what?"

"The cottage. The house I live in."

"Oh. Oh!" She glanced at the Brig. "I'm sorry, Max, I can't. It's my dad's house. I just can't. Even for you."

She seemed really upset. I smiled and reached out to touch her wrist. "It's okay! Just a question." I smiled harder. "I'm only thinking ahead."

Emma was puzzled. "Why would you want to buy it when you live there for free anyway?"

"I'm English. I want to own my house."

"You can't afford to put fifteen thousand in your football team. Where are you getting the millo you need to buy that cottage?"

My smile grew to dazzling proportions. "I think I'd negotiate below a million, considering there's a zoo in the attic. Look, I'm happy to live there and it's convenient for work. I realise I like the quiet and a bit of nature. Ideally it'd be halfway between Chester and Manchester but I'm just, you know, thinking what if I wanted to hang three flying ducks on the wall without asking permission? What if I wanted to close the zoo?"

"The zoo is closed," said the Brig.

"Oh? You put that mesh around the roof? Cool." We'd discussed that at the start of winter but we had to wait for the spring for the pine marten to fuck off back to the forest. "Look, here's the thing. You're all worried about me because I got sacked or whatever but what you don't realise is how absolutely and utterly I smashed that month and how I'm more confident than ever about my career in football. Okay so I'm not going to get hundreds of football clubs calling me to save them from relegation so I need to think of some other income streams and all that, but what I did on the pitch was brilliant and we are going to annihilate League Two when we get there. Next season will be tough but I'm looking at back to back promotions and back to back pay rises and I'm thinking maybe we can do a bit of social media whoring and maybe I'll get myself some sponsors and blah blah blah. And maybe when I start looking at buying a house of my own Emma will have opinions and she'll want to fully move in and listen to my poetry recitals. We'll be staying in the area for our summer hols and we can hunt for players while we hunt for a house. Sound good, babe?" She was grinning at me. "What?"

"It does sound good. But you know what's even better?" She looked at the pitch, where the players and the ref were returning. The Chester fans had trudged around to the other end and were now behind the other goal. "I'm the queen of distracting you when you're stressed. You're welcome."

***

Clearing Weather

As we'd done in so many games before and as we'd discussed on the phone, Jackie switched to 3-5-2, bringing off Lucy, whose legs were starting to fail her, and bringing on Angel. He would have used Julie but I'd convinced him to go with the even younger, even more inexperienced player. I just had a feeling it could come down to a single moment and if it did, I wanted our best finisher on the pitch.

Alty came out with a bruising, crunching intensity that forced us back. They made us look small and every corner they won gave me another ulcer. Bonnie was immense. She won three headers in a row and the tide turned. Pippa put in a crunching tackle, Dani skipped away and zipped a pass to Bea Pea. Her first time layoff was almost perfect... but a defender slid in before Angel could get her shot away.

That reminder of our threat got Alty retreating. They only needed a draw, I told myself for the two hundredth time.

Pass, pass, but the move broke down.

Pass, pass, but the move broke down.

It was only when I felt a tug on my sleeve that I realised I'd had my hands on my head for about three minutes. I tried to sit with Solly, but it didn't take. I was soon up and pacing around and not even Emma's distractions worked.

Fifty-one minutes. Fifty-three. Our season was being compressed into a smaller and smaller package. It would come down to the last half hour. The last twenty-eight minutes. The last twenty-seven minutes. This was our World Cup final and I couldn't play or manage. Trust Jackie. Trust the players.

Sixty-three minutes and Charlotte wriggled past a challenge and suddenly had yards of space. Unusually, both Angel and Bea Pea dropped short to offer an option. Charlotte went with Bea Pea, who took a touch and laid it off to Angel just like we'd practiced. The sickness intensified as I thought of Angel trying a boomerang scoop-flick. Instead, she took a touch and played it into Bea Pea's path - the textbook, Cody Chambers version of the move. The pass was overhit, though, and the keeper got there just before Bea Pea.

Good, though!

Alty's experience counted, and they slowed the game down. A couple of fake injuries, taking their time on goal kicks and throw ins. Charlotte was starting to get frustrated. Dani was lucky not to be booked for a late tackle on one of the time wasters. I understood the impulse, believe me, but all it did was allow Alty to waste even more time.

Seventy minutes gone. There wasn't an unbitten fingernail on any of the spectators.

Solly didn't want to go for a walk so I paced off on my own and counted to ten. When I got back I saw Alty had dropped a little deeper, giving Charlotte even more time to pick her passes. She wanted to go wide to Maddy or Dani, as we'd trained, but Alty had done their homework and were double teaming Dani. Kisi for Susan, please, Jackie. That would give us even more creativity and threat. At this point, who cared if Alty scored? A draw was just as bad as a defeat. Don't wait too long, Jackie mate!

Charlotte, out of options, decided to try the forward pass again. This time, Angel was the holdup player. The centre back was stronger than her, but she kept her balance and touched the ball to Bea Pea. Not quite on target, but Bea Pea's first time wall pass was good... but Angel hadn't been able to get around her marker in time and the chance was lost. Charlotte's head dropped.

Jackie, mate! Say something! But he hadn't noticed - he was in discussion with Sandra.

Seventy-two minutes gone, and once more Charlotte used her skill to get some space. But when she saw the strikers ahead of her, she crabbed to the right and played a safe pass to Maddie.

I lost my shit.

I hopped over the railing, narrowly avoiding Solly's tail - sorry, boy - and screamed for Bonnie. When I got her attention I told her to send Charlotte over.

The lineswoman suggested I should maybe get fucked or whatever; I took a microscopic step back and reached my foot so that it was sort of under the fence's crossbar. "I'm behind the fence! Look!" She was too busy to complain further.

At the next break, Charlotte came over. "What?"

"You've got to use the strikers. We're swamped on the wings. Use the centre!"

"They can't do it."

I wanted to scream but I just about kept it together. "This isn't fucking Man City! We're not trying to do one hundred percent safe passes all the time. Attack! That pass to feet isn't a good option but it's the best one we've got right now and the more you do it the more it'll bring defenders away from the wings. Trust your teammates the way I trust you!" I didn't add for fuck's sake, because this was the new Max, the sophisticated diplomat.

Charlotte jogged away with her morale a point lower.

Well, didn't that just sum up my entire month?

The weather might change but some things stayed the same. I could make any situation worse, guaranteed. I slumped against the railing, as the gloom from the past month crept back like a Necromancer's mist.

Brooke, MD, and Henri left me alone while Emma reached around from her side of the fence and snuggled into me. "Tell me a poem."

I took a look at the pitch, a sad, mournful glance. A painful end to the season was on the cards. We just didn't quite have the quality. It would be a long, cold summer for these women, the ones who stayed. How many would leave? If someone wanted Charlotte, I could hardly stand in her way. I pulled out my little notebook, turning away from a page where I'd predicted the final league table - if we beat Altrincham. I found a poem I hadn't told Emma, yet. "This one's called Changing Weather. I haven't adapted it yet. This is the original, or one of the originals. The wind drives away the storm clouds and scatters them... Oh. That's about my players. My superstar collection, blown to the four corners. I knew it'd be hard to keep them here, but... I think for the first time a poem has actually produced an emotional response. Who knew that was possible?"

"What's the rest of it?"

"The wind drives away the storm clouds and scatters them; and the white sails of a hundred boats come flying to Awazu."

Emma adjusted her head. "Don't feel bad, babes, but I think the originals are a little more evocative than yours."

"Yeah. Stick to what I'm good at. Making big plans. Having big dreams."

"Aw, babes."

"I'm all right." I sighed. "I like Altrincham. It's a good club. If it can't be us, at least it's them."

"What's happening in the match? We're being pushed back, it looks like."

"Charlotte's sulking."

"Aww."

Some of the sickness returned as I tried to imagine our interaction from Charlotte's point of view. "I've fucked off for a month and come back with egg on my face and the first thing I've done is shout at her mid-match. Christ, why am I so shit?" Emma didn't know, or chose not to say. I slipped out of her arms, knelt, and rubbed Solly between the ears. "Solly, mate, have you got one little walk left in you? I need it, mate."

The dog sort of sighed and forced himself onto his feet. What a champion!

"Max!" called Henri.

I twisted my head. Alty had been attacking and it seemed that Dani had sprinted back to help, because she was slowly getting up not that far from our penalty box. From the distribution of players, I reckoned Susan had picked up a loose ball and popped it forward to Charlotte. An Alty midfielder flat on her arse hinted at a cheeky nutmeg, and now Charlotte was motoring.

Up the pitch she went, but Alty had the entire back four ahead and two midfielders closing on Charlotte. On the right, Maddy had her head down in a desperate sprint, but would she be able to make up the ground in time to help out? It seemed unlikely.

Charlotte popped the ball to Bea Pea, who held it up and played the same square ball we'd been practising. Bea Pea instantly turned and wrestled with her marker, fighting to be in position for the return pass.

Angel, though. I knew what she'd do. She'd seen that I was here when I shouted at Charlotte and now - I knew it just as a clearly as a Song dynasty poet knew that geese were only interesting when landing - I knew she would try my stupid boomerang flick. And that it would utterly, utterly fail because she had nowhere near the technique to pull it off.

Angel kissed the ball with the inside of her right foot, used her left as a pivot as she twisted away from her marker, and here it came - another moment my immaturity and unprofessionalism came to bite us on the arse. Everyone would wonder why she'd tried something so stupid. Probably she wouldn't blame me. She'd say she was trying to add assists to her game. I'm a team player, Max.

After she did her tornado impression, the ball spat out a yard in front of her with the defender, wrong-footed and clumsy, on the wrong side. Angel took a step and struck a left-footed thunderbolt. The goalie had been expecting the return pass to Bea Pea - we all had - and like a weather vane in a storm she flipped from right to left and she flung herself to the floor in the manner of a collapsing A-board.

Finishing 20! The net bulged! Angel ran to the Chester fans behind the goal!

The goal drives away the storm clouds and scatters them; and the blue and white sails of a hundred fans come flying to the goalscorer.

I went a bit tonto. In my mania, I couldn't conceive of a way through the metal railing behind me, so I launched myself forward, hands flopping and flapping in the air as I tried to do eight victory dances at once. I had enough sense to know I shouldn't have gone onto the pitch, so I sprinted across and joined the celebrations that were ongoing there. It was a twenty-person jubilation, with Jackie, Sandra, Kisi, Livia, Dean, Jill, and many, many more.

Not satisfied with their hugs and shouts, I raced around to the fans behind the goal and caused another thirty seconds of bedlam. I led the chants of Jackie Reaper's blue and white army until I felt my knees start to tremble. I jogged back to the dugout.

Emotionally devastated, I spent the next three minutes motionless on the bench. Kisi took to the pitch to massive acclaim, and the non-stop singing and chanting, the exuberance of our play, the teamwork, the togetherness, the Chesterness, was too much for Altrincham. Jackie had timed the change perfectly. The whole match had been a masterclass in grinding down a physical but technically inferior team and then outclassing them at the end. We're going to win, I thought, shaking my head. We're going to do this!

Jackie saw me, but mistook my black mood for depression about being sacked. He left Sandra in charge while he came to cheer me up.

"Max," he said. "I know you're feeling down and the world seems dark and dismal right now, but you can't have a rainbow without rain. You'll come through dis. We're all here to help you. We know what we've got, even if Grimsby don't."

His bedside manner was comforting and I almost wished I was actually miserable so he could cheer me up some more. "It's not that, you prick. We did that secret training the other day and I was worried I'd put a stupid idea in Angel's head."

His brows formed a V like a bunch of geese. He pointed to the pitch. "But that was your move. She told me."

"No, I mean, yeah, I showed them that. I showed them two moves but really the drill was about the other one. A piece of skill that is very much in the poetic tradition. Angel told me she would do it in a match before I did."

"And she just did."

"No, that's not what I meant."

He gave me a little punch. "It's what she meant. You showed her two things. One she can do, one she can't. Guess which one she's been practising?" He scoffed. "You're such an idiot sometimes."

I glared at him and nodded towards the technical area. "Get back to work."

He got up and held his hand down. "I'd love another assistant."

I took his hand and grinned.

Jackie went to the right and shouted at the defenders. Sandra stood in the middle and yelled at the midfielders. I went to the left and smiled at the forwards.

Angel's explosive goal had forced Alty to reshuffle, strengthening the centre. Kisi and an Alty midfielder raced towards a loose ball. Kisi slid at it, getting it to Mel. She played it first time to Maddy, who found Charlotte, whose morale had returned to maximum. She burst forward and the fear in the Alty ranks was thrilling to me. She shaped to pass to Angel again, causing both centre backs to move to intercept. Instead, Charlotte chipped the ball over the defence, out to the left where Dani sprinted to get a quality first touch. She plucked it from the air with her left foot, waited for it to drop, and smashed it low across goal where Angel caressed it across the line.

"Holy shit, we're actually good," I found myself saying after some intense jumping around and shouting.

Jackie laughed. "Did you think otherwise?"

"I had a wobble," I admitted.

"Whatever you said to Charlotte, it worked."

"She didn't like it."

"When you speak, she listens." He scanned the pitch again, looking for tweaks. "We all do."

"Okay," I said, summoning a joke to shield me from my feelings. "Remember you said that in the bar when I get up to do my poems."

"Your what?" he said, but the match had restarted and we got back into position.

***

At the full-time whistle, the players went mad and celebrated like they'd won the league, which they had. But by then I had already processed the win and was thinking ahead. To start life in tier five able to beat anyone we played, we needed a better goalie and three new defenders. We would play our home matches in a real stadium, the one in Flint. We could start to get really serious about marketing and developing the youth system. Angel's goals had lit a fuse under the rocket and it was my job to steer it right.

While I was still in a calculating sort of mood, I re-read the description for the monthly perk. Seal It Up would give me fifteen minutes per match where the defenders would perform better. Yes, please. I bought it and my stash of XP was reduced to buttons.

I commiserated with Alty's manager and had little chats with their players. This was the new Max, sophisticated and diplomatic.

And if I spent more time talking to Alty's goalie and defenders than the rest of the team combined? Coincidence, mate.

***

Returning Sails

Monday, 1 April

National League: Altrincham vs Oldham Athletic

My head was still sore from being hung, drawn and quartered with every kick of a football, and I'd had some beers because Jackie wouldn't let the women drink and someone had to. That was my last alcohol of the season, though. There were only two weeks before the Cheshire Cup final - the last piece of the jigsaw, if we could manage to beat a Crewe team who were flying high in League Two.

The women, though. We'd done it. It had been close, but we'd done it.

Behind me, Emma and Fleur, our scout, were chatting away. Emma was amazing in the many ways she could make connections. I could only get close to people through football, and even then I was a real Marmite personality. More than half of people who tasted me hated me. Emma was the Heinz ketchup of people - everyone loved her.

"Emma," I said, interrupting their chat. "I've decided you're the Emma of our relationship."

"That's nice, Max. Thanks."

After about two seconds, I heard quiet giggles.

We'd come to scout a National League match, since that was the level we'd be playing next season. About halfway through the second half I would begin quizzing Fleur for her opinions on certain players, but for now it was just a chill day out and I was happy Emma and Fleur were getting on.

Why go to Alty for the second time in two days? Simply because I hadn't scouted many National League teams since I'd unlocked Contracts 2. Now I could see how much my rivals were paying their players.

Oldham's average was around a thousand a month with a few getting less and half a dozen on fifteen hundred. Fondop, their best player, was on 1,900 plus bonuses. I didn't have the numbers from their injured players or those not in the matchday squad, but my best guesstimate of the total yearly outlay was one point five million. Alty's was somewhere in the region of one point two million. But then what about the backroom staff? I had the salary details of the ones on the pitch but not the rest.

I went into the curse shop and looked at the Finances perk for the first time in a long time. It was 2,000 XP and would summarise a club's balance sheet. Seemed like something that would be incredibly handy right about now, if only to make sure MD was giving me enough budget to compete.

"Fleur, I need to go to loads of matches in the next few weeks. Do you want to join me? I won't be able to pay you your scouting fee but I'll drive and all that. Consider it unpaid training."

"I'd like that!"

"Top," I mumbled, as I started to plan out a scouting schedule that would take in as many National League rivals as poss while getting to 2,000 XP quickly.

"I'm not surprised he asked you," said Emma. "Max told me he doesn't spend enough time with beautiful women."

"No he didn't," laughed Fleur. She leaned forward. "I have a favour, though. Henk's not doing well at Tranmere. They liked him at first but it's gone a bit sour. He's not getting minutes. Can we talk about coming back to Chester?" She sighed. "He never should have left."

"Have you spoken to anyone at Tranmere about that?"

"No."

"Do that first. Absolutely no way I'm going to piss off the one club I've got good relations with. Okay? If they don't want him, of course he can come back." Henk was PA 33 so he wouldn't get into the first team but he was tall and strong and looked good on the ball. I could imagine getting some cash for him - I should say some more cash since Tranmere had paid five grand for him - and he could help with our FA Youth Cup runs. I took my notebook out and crossed out a couple of words and added new ones. I shifted in my seat so the women would be able to hear me clearly. "Returning Sales. God, that's clever. The starlet is returning from afar to his mum's house; sped on his homeward course by the winds of glory."

Fleur whispered, "What just happened?"

Emma whispered, "If you don't react to it, it stops."

***

Evening Bell

We drove back to Chester, dropped Fleur off, and sped to the digs, where a bunch of Chester players and friends had organised a post-match party. A youthful Chester men's team had drawn with Alfreton, bringing our points total for the season to 102, and the number of goals scored to a record 114.

When we got there, the party was in full swing, with lots of alcohol-free drinks, nibbles, and of course, hams. Brooke appeared to be enjoying a conversation with Magnus Evergreen. Livia and Dean were laughing with Ryan Jack, his morale sky-high. Charlotte, Angel, and Sam Topps were the only ones watching the match.

On the big TV was Grimsby versus Bradford City, which had been moved to be the late game and was being broadcast live. We'd missed most of the first half, and Grimsby were winning one-nil.

"Why are they on?" said Emma, scowling slightly at the word they.

"This was arranged ages ago," I said. When they thought I'd be managing. Henri refused to cancel the party saying he'd already paid Mariners TV and we could hate watch but we'd bloody well watch. I thought about slumping into a bean bag, but it was nearly half time. "Do you know the lineups?"

"No, boss," said Sam.

"Who do you want to win?" said Charlotte.

I sucked on my teeth. "Tricky. I've got that mob primed to win the next three matches and if they do, it actually makes me look shit. Do you know what I mean? That's hard to take. But I don't want them in the league with us next season. They've got too many good players. On the other hand," I mused, "we are Chester and we fear no man."

"Or woman."

"We fear no man or woman. Except Donnie Wormwood. He'd batter me."

"He wouldn't," said Emma. "He's lovely. I like him. And you're not afraid of him, either, or you wouldn't keep calling him washed-up and a has-been and all that."

"What are you afraid of, Max?" said Angel.

"My greatest fear is that one day I will write a bad poem. Fortunately," I said, smirking, "it is yet to happen."

"Henri said you are writing eight poems," said Charlotte.

"Yeah, it's an old tradition. There are eight themes. I've absolutely nailed seven. Stick them on the mugs already. I've got one left. Evening Bell. I want to take Emma to a church later and that'll be the signal for my brain to get busy."

The women were enjoying the chat, but Sam had frozen at the first mention of poems. He reminded me of someone in the front row at a circus worried about all the buckets of water that had suddenly appeared. He didn't want any poetry to splash onto him. I said I'd be back for the second half and went to do some mingling.

***

Before the match resumed, the line up graphic flashed on the screen and I saw that Coach G was in the dugout and he'd named almost the shittest line up imaginable. Three traitors were in the starting lineup and Caine was on the bench. In the first half they'd gone all-out to prove me wrong, but at the start of the second it was clear to me that they'd switched off. Dobson was lazy, Green was selfish, King looked good but didn't produce.

I sank into Henri's sofa and watched from afar as the team crumbled. First came the equaliser, then Bradford went ahead. There were enormous gaps all over the pitch. Huge cracks in the walls and roof. No wonder I was so fucking tired after those first three matches; I must have been keeping it together through sheer force of will. Football as architecture. That image again. I supposed it made sense, then, that I had grand designs. Good line! I'd save that one for when Henri was around.

Emma came and snuggled next to me. One by one, the Chester players left whatever they were doing and sat in the lounge. When the number of people watching hit critical mass, Henri slumped into a bean bag knowing his hosting duties would be taken up by someone else for a while. "Max. Tell us what you see."

"About Grims?" I shook my head. "Good players. Four bad characters."

"Four?"

I hadn't told anyone about Otis King. I'd told the Brig I'd found the mole and he'd nodded and said 'well done'. There was no benefit to me of letting that nugget of info out. "Three and a half. Fuck those pricks, let's talk about the good guys. The goalie, there. He's a top lad but the fans were on his case. I gave them a blast of my diplomacy and sophistication and they didn't like it but no-one booed him in the next games. Conor there's playing right mid. They overused him this season and I struggled to use him while keeping him fresh. They've got Windmill at right back again. He's too slow! And they took the captain's armband and gave it to an absolute shit. Poor John's head must be all over the place. On Friday he's captain and the team's on the up. Now all the bad apples have been poured back into the bag and one of them's supposed to be the leader." I exhaled. "Bradford aren't even good. I'd have smashed this. It's bonkers. But you know who the real victim is? Henri. He had to pay ten quid to stream this garbage."

"Bastards made you waste a month," said Aff.

"Nah, it wasn't a waste. Not for me. I got loads out of it. Might wait a couple of seasons before trying that sort of thing again," I said, with a wry smile. "Trying to win two leagues here and save two teams from relegation there was one job too far, I think."

"Some people don't want to be saved," said Youngster, creating a silence that was soon filled with mirth. When he realised he'd done a funny, he broke into a goofy grin.

"Thanks, bro. Look, guys, I know some of you think I'm secretly depressed or whatever. I am slightly frustrated when I think about the wasted potential but honestly I'm happy. Emma, tell them."

"He is. He really is."

"I did have a few dark days at the beginning but I tell you what, though, I think the whole experience made yesterday even sweeter. What a performance that was! I was too nervous to appreciate it until it was over."

The room suddenly split into eight different conversations, eight views of the title-winning match. Given how noisy it was, it was somewhat surprising I found it so tranquil. Then again, maybe not. I was surrounded by friends while my dream woman snuggled into me. The height of civilisation.

"Oh oh oh!" I said, getting to my feet to demand the remote control from Youngster, who had a compulsive need to hold it whenever he was watching TV. I turned the volume up. "He's bringing Caine on. This is the guy who pretended to be injured."

The camera cut to the sideline, where Caine was cricking his neck left and right, ready to return to first team action. The announcement that he was going on happened at the same time as he took three quick steps onto the pitch and made the sign of the cross.

The boos were off the scale. A quick-thinking TV producer cut to a shot of the Findus stand, where the fans were giving Caine all kinds of grief. I let the boos seep into me like I was in a hot springs renowned for its healing properties. After about eight seconds I realised this was maybe not a good look, so I turned the volume down and said, "You know, one never likes to see..." but I didn't get to finish.

"Chester! Chester!" chanted someone and almost instantly everyone joined in, including Emma. She looked so fierce, so full of life, I gave serious consideration to sneaking her into one of Henri's spare rooms.

Instead, sophisticated Max took her on a tour of everyone in the room asking if they'd ever come across a hidden gem of a village or beauty spot in Cheshire. Gathering ideas for our summer holiday. The final whistle blew with the Mariners slumping to a three-one home defeat to the absolute indifference of everyone in Chester.

***

Most people had drifted home, until only the residents of the digs, Henri, Charlotte, and Youngster, were around. (Pascal was out and WibRob was spending the Easter weekend with his parents.) Henri had bought a nice fire pit, and we went out to enjoy its evening glow. Once more I was snuggled next to Emma.

We talked about everything except football. We planned everyone else's summer holidays. We tried to find rhymes with Emma beyond 'Gemma' and 'dilemma'.

Finally, Henri asked about my Eight Views project.

"I realised I'd done it wrong. I should have done them about what's really important. Sorry but it's not Chester. It's not even football. It's Emma."

"Aww," said Charlotte, while Youngster's eyes popped open, wishing he could write that line down for use on... who? Meghan?

Henri smiled and perhaps copy pasted the line into his own flirting database. "All that remains is Evening Bell, no?"

"There's loads of options. Church bells. Colin Bell. Doncaster Belles."

"Ooh, church bells," teased Charlotte, and Emma actually blushed a little.

Something had been nagging away at me. "Charlotte, are you mad I shouted at you in the match?"

"No."

"You seemed... upset by it."

She watched as the fire crackled. "No-one likes to be told they're doing a bad job when they're doing a good job. But I thought, he's usually right. I came to learn from the best, didn't I? And it all happened just like you said. Okay, in the moment I was mad but sometimes we don't realise how good you are until later. Do you know what I mean?"

Almost perfectly on cue, my phone rang. The volume was on because I'd shown Henri a section from the YouTube video that had started my interest in the Eight Views. "It's Chris Hale," I said. "Holy shit."

Emma and Henri both reached out to grab me. Emma said, "He wants to apologise. Bring you back. Oh my God. Do you want to?"

I was ready to say no, but it wasn't only my decision, was it? If I wanted to share my life with Emma, I had to share my life with Emma. "I'll do it if you want to go to Monaco instead of Honey Knob Hill."

The phone continued to ring.

"Is that the only reason you'd do it? For me?"

Ring ring!

"Yes."

Ring ring!

"I want to go to Jolly Bottom."

Ring ring!

I picked my phone up, turned the volume off, and put it away. I closed my eyes, holding my finger up. "May I have your attention, please?"

"Honey Knob Hill isn't a real place, surely," said Charlotte.

I cleared my throat and spoke slowly, partly for poetic effect, partly because I was writing a rhyme on the spot in the manner of the rap battles in Eight Mile. "I'd marry you now but the church is shut; tell Chris Hale I'm staying put."

Henri groaned. "No, Max. No. It doesn't mention the evening bell! I cannot allow that to be the only poem Youngster ever hears. You have the original in your notebook, yes? Please read that one. You may do your incantation voice if you wish."

"That was quality, that," I grumbled, as I got my notebook out. "Fine. This is Evening Bell. I already had a go at tweaking it for the Eight Views of Chester series. Here we go. At the sound of the full time whistle; the lovers pause before pledging themselves till daybreak."

Something in Henri's face made me rush to his player profile to check his morale. It had slipped to abysmal! No sooner had I spotted it than he was back at superb. What the hell? He shuffled uneasily. "Will I be playing against Darlington, Max?"

"What? Darlington? We've got the cup final first. Who gives a shit about Darlington?"

"No, you're right, I don't care," he lied. "The cup final, yes, for the final cup." He sighed. "I shall score the winning goal, I think. That will impress... That will be impressive."

"Henri's writing poems that don't rhyme. I think that's our cue to leave, babes. Grab your glass."

"I'll tidy up later, boss," said Charlotte.

I pointed at Youngster. "Are you going to let our Player of the Season do all the work? Come on, dude."

A few minutes later, Emma and I were outside. The car was just there but I felt like going for a quick walk. She reached for my hand. "Are you done with poems, now?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. It's almost a shame. Almost. What are you going to do next?"

"What do you mean, do next?"

"You've always got these little manias. It's one of the things I like about you. You try things."

"It just happens organically. I don't force it."

"But if you had to choose right now?"

"Flutes."

"What?"

"Close-up magic."

"Like a pick-up artist? Veto."

"My next mania," I said, turning her into me, "is to very diplomatically and with incredible sophistication win the cup final and then humiliate my former club. Both are pretty trivial, really. I suppose I could plan what I'm going to say when I address the fans as we're parading our trophies." I kissed her and walked off, but the peace and quiet didn't last long. Soon, the cogs in my brain were whirring. "I've got it. I know what I'm going to say."

"Why are you doing an evil grin?"

"It's not evil. It's playful." I tried to get my face neutral but failed. "Okay. Maybe a little bit evil. Do you want to practice villainous cackles with me?"

"You know I do, Max. You know I do."