6.

Wednesday, February 28

My throne room had been turned into a Zoom call command centre. I was using my phone (stuck to a GripTight tripod that I could hold like a sceptre if I wanted to move around) as the camera and mic, but was watching the other participants on my work PC and keeping an eye on the chat comments on my laptop. A second desk had been wheeled in, and the Zoom Lords - Brooke and MD - were being the admins.

Brooke was in a t-shirt - scandalously tight, Jesus Christ mate there could be kids on this call - that read 'Surfin' USA'. If you're one of the zero point one percent of people who want to know what MD was wearing, go to the images tab on a search engine and type 'man'.

The five minutes from seven fifty-five to eight took at least fifteen minutes. I got bored and started going over my thoughts for the Kidderminster match. My idea to use the Sweeper formation had been shot down before I'd even floated it. I didn't mind too much - it was pretty out there, even for the Sultan of Slaps, and as Henri had said, we'd probably win by doing a straight 4-4-2 so why get silly? Morale was good and we were pretty solid on injuries and suspensions. A few players were one yellow card away from getting a one-match ban and there were plenty of the usual aches and strains footballers got. Pretty trivial stuff, to be honest, for a team that had access to eight formations.

Buying the eighth formation, the much-derided Sweeper, had been a mistake, but I was in a fever when it happened. Recently, I'd only been getting tiny blobs of XP so my suspension from playing was potentially a blessing in disguise. I earned 1 XP per minute as a player, but 4 as a manager in the sixth tier. I'd get 8 a minute if I brought Chester to League Two. 720 XP a match would add up quickly.

With XP short on the ground, I was far short of affording Wibwob, a perk that would allow me to get a little bit funky with my formations. In the past day or so I'd been re-evaluating the other options. Condition was 2,000 XP but was poorly explained. I assumed it would tell me something about a player's fitness, but I had the Injuries perk to tell me if anything was really wrong. Contracts 3 would tell me who a player's agent was. It was 1,300 XP and seemed like something that could wait. Future was 900 and would tell me how a player was feeling. Attributes 6 would unlock another attribute, and I had access to perks for expanding the usefulness of Playdar and adding more youth teams to my screens.

A lot of things I wanted, then. If I got my way, this Zoom call would end with me in a position to get a lot of XP in a short time. The only thing standing between me and my desires was an unruly mob. The fans owned the football club, which was good and proper, so while I could treat it as my kingdom there were plenty of people who knew how to assemble a guillotine.

"Max," said MD. "It's nearly eight."

I checked. 7:58. "Yeah, I'm here. I'm ready. What, do you think we should start early?"

"No. Just checking sure you're awake. You were in one of your trances."

"How many are in the room?"

"Five hundred, but it's going up fast."

"How many members are there?"

"We've got 1,000 members and 1,500 season ticket holders."

I pushed my finger against my lips. "I think 1,500 is pretty good for the sixth tier but that's got to go way up for the National League. We're going to be playing Oldham and Rochdale. Altrincham, Barnet, Southend. Our capacity is 5,400. If our fans don't want to come we can fill up with away fans. We need to sell..." I closed my eyes and had a think. "We need to sell 2,500 season tickets. 3,000 would be good. 500 away fans, 500 walk-ins, we've got ourselves a noisy stadium. When we start putting results together we can get some sell-outs."

"Maybe we can think about your ambitions at the end of the season," said MD, who had a low ambition score. I'd been trying to get that higher but with no luck. The attributes of directors and owners didn't seem to change much, although I wasn't in contact with very many of them.

"Yeah. Which is now. This season's over."

MD shook his head. "It's not. But it's 8 o'clock. Whenever you're ready."

I glanced at my PC - it said there were 1,100 people in the room, but the number was ticking up pretty fast. "Hi, everyone. I see there's still people switching on. I'll give them a couple of minutes. What can we do for two minutes? MD, tell us that joke you know."

"Ha ha."

The chat was starting to whizz by almost too fast for the human eye to read.

Has he quit yet?

What's going on?

If he's off to Tranmere again I will set myself ablaze in front of the stadium.

Who's that blonde?

Who's going in goal on Saturday?

Is that his tactics board to the left? What level of 442 are we on now you daft lad?

The suspense is killing me.

I want to know what headline they're gonna use. He did WHAT?! is still an all-timer.

Brooke was reading along with me. Her face became the main one on screen - Zoom showed whoever was talking; the serfs were on mute. "Max, what's this? He did WHAT?!"

"Er... in January you're allowed to trade players. The transfer window; I told you about it. I loaned myself to Tranmere Rovers. They're a team not too far from here. Near Liverpool. Yeah, it all made complete sense but some people were a little bit surprised."

The main Zoom window changed to show MD shaking his head. He must have tutted or made an exasperated noise that the microphone picked up.

There were 1,400 in the room now, and the number had stopped rising so fast. "All right, let's get started." The chat briefly froze, then there was a mind-bending flurry of new messages. I wasn't like Sumo, the famous local Twitch streamer; I couldn't talk and read and respond to the messages. I closed the chat so it wouldn't distract me. "Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming. I'll try to keep it quick in case you've just stepped out of the pub for a minute or whatever. In the room with me here are MD - Mike Dean your managing director - and Brooke Star who isn't working because her work permit hasn't come through. She's volunteering unpaid and that's obviously fine legally and no-one needs to look into that any further."

MD tutted again. "Have you ever heard of the Streisand Effect?"

"Yeah, great movie," I said. "Quick state of play. We're eleven points clear with twelve matches to go. We've got a cup final on April 16 and a match against my former club on April 20. At that match we will parade our league title around, hopefully a cup, too, though Crewe aren't just going to give it to us, the bastards, and we've got some silverware from the youth teams and very possibly the women's team will have a league title, too. All they have to do is beat Altrincham who have more experience and who know that a draw will be enough. Easy.

"Onto today's topic. You know I've got a bit of a playing ban. Seven matches, which is pretty excessive, but I've been advised not to talk about the case, so I'm not even going to use the word excessive. I'm just not. By the way, did you know that the word excessive comes from an Old French word meaning 'to go too far'? As in, they've gone too far this time, and they'll regret it. But enough off-topic stuff. What does a seven-match ban mean? Well, I can play against Kidderminster on Saturday but then I'll miss the rest of March. That's Brackley to Buxton. The hardest matches in that run are Gloucester and South Shields. In April we play Brackley and Gloucester again. That's double Gloucester. Brooke, Double Gloucester is a cheese. It's funny."

Somehow she made the screen show her face even though she didn't say anything. Her expression made MD honk. Brooke the court jester - that was unexpected.

"What all that means is there's a few tricky games but nothing we can't handle. I know it's in the nature of football fans to live in a constant state of dread, but I don't. We're eleven points clear for a reason - because we're the best team. Yes, I'm quite good at football but even without me, we're the best team. I was thinking what a combined eleven from every club in the division would look like. Let's pick a 4-4-2. Who'd get in it from a different club? Christian Fierce at centre back. God, I love him. I can't wait to get one over on him this weekend. I'm not sure who the best goalie is, to be honest. Could be Ben. I might be forgetting someone. Left back. If I had to pick right now, I might choose the league's record signing Jonathan Hurts, especially since refs never send the dirty prick off. So there's three and one of those is questionable and the other is temporary until Eddie Moore gets up to speed. The rest of the team is Chester FC. We're half the defence, the entire midfield, both the strikers.

"I mean, I know you look at it and go what if. What if Kidderminster beat us? Then it's only 8 points. What if we lose those two tricky games? It's only two points. What if we have to beat Darlington on the last day?" I leaned back and smiled. "It's normal to think that. I used to do it, too. And I obviously consider those scenarios as part of the job. But I'm telling you now it's not arrogance or hubris for me to say this race is won. Even if we stumble, one of our three distant rivals is going to have to win every single match from now till the end. It's not going to happen. And we're not going to slip up. Our players are too fit, too determined, too professional.

"Right, so you didn't come on this call to hear what you already know, which is that we're smashing it.

"On Monday, I met the owner of Grimsby Town. He's called Chris Hale and he made a lot of money doing business things. He's not your typical b-boy, though. He tried to have a good culture and make it a good place to work and all that. Turns out - hey! You can make money without being a dick. Who knew? Anyway, I met him earlier in the season and told him his manager was shit and made a bit of an arse of myself, I think. Obviously, that wound him up but as he watched his team slip down the table he thought to himself, hey, that Max Best kid got it right. This manager doesn't improve players, doesn't use talented kids, doesn't make good substitutions.

"Grimsby are obviously getting to a point of no return while my team, that's Chester by the way, are flying. He's been sending scouts to watch how we do things. The tactics, the substitutions. And guess what? Those scouts are mates with the manager so they've been telling Chris Hale that the changes I make are rubbish. We concede more goals after I make my subs. Yeah! Because I'm bringing fifteen-year-olds on! And the scouts go, oh, he can't make up his mind about what his best team is. He can't stick to one formation. You can spin anything in any way you want to fit your agenda. It's crazy, this football world. You almost can't trust anyone. Your own employees will lie to you to protect their mate.

"Last Saturday, I get into an altercation with these scouts, unrelated to any of this, and boot them out of the ground. I call Chris and tell him not to send any more of his cretins, hang up, refuse to take his calls. Monday morning he drives to Chester to apologise in person and find out what really happened. We sit and talk it all out.

"Pretty quickly, he's asking for my advice on how to stop his kingdom from falling into the sea, who could the new manager be, all that stuff. I tell him sorry but we're going to be in the same division next year and it's my job to grind you into dust, soz not soz. He says there's still eleven games of the season left and I only needed three to save Chester last year. I tell him, very politely, that I don't give a shit but when we're in the division above I might help him out if he asks nicely, so did he want to pencil in a meeting for 2026?

"At this point he says something like I can't be that confident and that makes me a bit cocky and I start pulling my phone out going 'Oh wow Grimsby are eleven points clear oh no that's Chester' and 'Gosh Grimsby scored a lot of goals this year oh no that's Chester'. I was even starting to annoy myself but it was just really funny.

"Finally, I get on his tits so much he says, fine, if you're so good, prove it. And I go, I prove it twice a week, mate. And he says how much are you on I'll double your salary and I go yeah my salary's getting doubled in the summer try again and he says fine I'll double that and I'm like, I'm not interested in working for a b-boy or an oligarch or a hedge fund I work for the fans. So he reminds me of something I said once. Grimsby are 20% fan owned, so I could work for them 20% of the year.

"At this point I'm thinking, what's going on here? Like, does he want me as a consultant or something? So I ask him to spell it out.

"The upshot is, he wants me to go and manage Grimsby for the rest of the season. Not to improve the team or get involved with future transfers or anything that might make Grimsby more of a rival in the future. Just manage the first team and save them from relegation. He'll pay me a decent weekly wage - less than Tranmere, since I'm not going as a player - but with a huge bonus if they stay up. Huge. I mean, for him it's buttons. It's peanuts. But for me it's enormous. It's more than a year's income."

He had offered me fifty thousand pounds if Grimsby stayed up. Fifty thousand! Plus two grand a week basic.

"When he said that, I was tempted. Big time. But I remembered how bonkers you all got when I went off to Tranmere and even though I've basically given up on ever being popular, the thought of your reaction still made me go, shit. Do I really need that hassle?

"I was with Emma, my girlfriend, and she's a very level-headed, down-to-earth, strong, independent, modern woman, but she has one weakness, which is holidays. So Chris switched tack and said he had luxury homes in three continents and if I agreed to do it, we could stay in one that he wasn't using for our summer hols. This is the kind of place you read about in magazines but even if you win the lottery you can't, like, book it. It's beyond the reach of people like you, me, or MD. It's for people with superyacht money."

The screen changed to Brooke slightly shaking her head after a large tut. That must have been confusing to the viewers.

"So that's it, I suppose. I want to pop off to Grimsby and do my hero act. Get well paid and take my princess to paradise."

MD's face appeared on the screen, slightly flustered. "Max, you missed the most important part."

"What's that?"

He was such a drama queen sometimes. "That you're coming back!"

"I said that! It was the first thing I said!"

"It wasn't."

"I said we're in the cup final and we're playing my former team in the final league game."

"You didn't say you'd be back for those."

I scoffed. "Come on, man. I didn't wake up from my coma and grind non-stop to get to this point to abdicate just before the good bits. Give me a break. I want my flowers and I want to play in that cup final - I need to, to be completely honest otherwise it'll be an uphill struggle to win. And it's my moral, ethical, and spiritual duty to fucking obliterate my former team. You all know what they did and what they said. I'm going to go apeshit that day, as I'm going to do every time we play them. If they somehow get through the playoffs, that's six points next season, guaranteed."

"Okay," said MD. "So to clarify. You'll play against Kidderminster?"

"Yes! I'm not missing the only interesting match we've got left. They're the best team we've played this season. God, I've been thinking about this game since they switched to a low block against us. That first match defined our whole season and the second is like a thesis defence for my management. There's no way I'm going to miss it."

"Then there's ten league matches that you'll miss."

We'd had this conversation offline but wanted to get most of the basic questions out of the way. "Yes."

"That's quite a lot of the season, Max."

I shrugged. "So? When I hired Sandra Lane I promised she'd get to manage some meaningful games. I think we both thought it would be five or six, maybe. She did eight in January and one when I was sick. She's done nine and now she'll do ten. She's already done what we will ask her to do, if you see what I mean. Nah, Sandra's top. The team's top. Now, I'll say one thing up front. She's a bit of a trailblazer and she's got her own career to think about, so there will be less game time for the young players. What does that mean? Better results than if I was on the touchline, because as you know I do not give a shit and I'll throw all kinds of teenagers into the mix. I'll happily turn a few wins into draws if it means the young players develop faster. Sandra isn't going to take that risk when her reputation is on the line. I think we can expect a lot of very serious, very controlled performances when I'm gone."

I stopped talking while I tried to mentally recapitulate. Had I said everything I wanted?

MD spoke. "Max has offered to answer questions, if you - oh." I clicked the chat open again and closed it immediately - it had exploded and was whizzing past faster than the eye could see. The mob were sharpening their blades! I gritted my teeth; I wasn't completely defenceless.

Brooke said, "Good question from Bulldog. Have you already - ?"

"Hang on. Are you just going to read the questions out? Can you put him on the screen so we can talk?"

Brooke and MD exchanged a glance. "This is quite a sensitive topic. It might be better to keep some control of the narrative."

I tutted and stared at a ceiling light. "Control the narrative? How do you make everything sound so sinister? I don't want to control the narrative, for fuck's sake. I want to talk to a human being and if they want to yell at me that's... Can you try to put the questioners on, please? Cut them off if they start rambling about being a fan from the 80s or whatever. That stuff is too boring."

Brooke, her neck slightly stiffer than normal, wielded her mighty mouse, then Bulldog came on half of my screen. I was on the other half. "Hey!" I said, strangely happy to see him. He was part of the mob, but his son was one of my knights.

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"Hi, Max," he said, sternly, before aggressively rubbing his cheek. A hint of a smile came out. "You know this one's crazy, right?"

"No," I said. "Seems fine to me."

"Have you already decided? Are you just telling us what you've decided or do we get to reason with you?"

"I haven't decided. I know what I'd like to do and I don't see a reason not to do it but if anyone can come up with a good reason why I shouldn't, then, yeah, I'm listening. Bearing in mind," I added, before he could continue, "that I don't like it is not a reason. I don't want you to is not a reason. No-one's ever done this before is not a reason. The Wrexham fans will laugh at us is not a reason."

He shook his head while biting his bottom lip. "They will laugh at us."

"Don't care."

"Oh, that much is clear. Okay, football reasons. You're very confident in the team. But all it takes is two bad results and we're dragged right back into it."

"That could happen with me managing. Going to Tranmere was different because I could have played for those games I missed, but I wasn't playing well. Now I'm playing well but I'm banned so I don't see the fuss. If I didn't tell you I wasn't there, you wouldn't notice a difference."

"It's good you trust your staff but..."

"But what?"

"I don't like it," he said, and we laughed. "What do the players think?"

"Same as you, they think it's weird. But they all want to play in League Two, don't they? And they want to get as much money as they can from the sport. They understand my motivations very well and it means quite a lot more minutes for D-Day, Joe Anka, Bark, and Andrew Harrison."

"How... how do Grimsby's fixtures line up to ours?"

I had it all written out on a Post-It. "My last game there would be the thirteenth of April. Cup final's the sixteenth. Darlington's the twentieth. Now, Grimsby actually have another game on the 27th so in theory I could go back and do that, but I'm hoping to get enough points to see them safe by then."

"Right so you come back to Chester on the fourteenth and two days later it's the cup final. That's not enough time to prepare."

I laughed. "Prepare? We'll play 4-4-2 and our strongest team. There's nothing to think about. And by the way, I'll be training with League Two players for six weeks so I'll be coming back sharp, rested, and ready to rumble. What else have you got?"

"I know a lot of people will say you should stay and finish the job you're being paid to do."

"I'm not painting a wall. If your job is to push a rock down a hill you don't need to chase it all the way down. Our momentum is unstoppable. Not to tempt fate but I hereby declare our season... unsinkable."

"What do we get?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do we get a transfer fee or something? From Grimsby."

"No, you get nothing. The Tranmere one I truly believe was win-win-win - I came back a better player and we won eight in a row - nine after Saturday. And it was me doing a nice thing for good people. This Grimsby thing is totally selfish. I get loads of money and a nice holiday and that's it. End of list. To be completely honest, I'm excited about it. It sounds mad but the most fun I had in football was managing a different team every week. The Chester Knights, the boys, Broughton, a university women's team, some Sunday League rabble. Every year in every league in the world there's five teams worried about relegation. If I get a reputation as an escape artist I can make bags of cash. Leeds offered Sam Allardyce two million to keep them up. That was four matches! Yeah, I could work for Chester for cost price eleven months of the year, then rent myself out to a string of increasingly desperate, badly run football clubs." I laughed. "It sounds amazing."

Bulldog wasn't as happy at the prospect as I was. "Right, so, we're fifth in the league next March. Are you looking for a payday?"

"You're asking what circumstances I'll leave? Like, eleven points clear, league's all but over, you think that one's okay but if we're two points clear, it's no good."

"Yes."

"Okay, that's tricky. Let's start at the other end. We're seventeenth. We're not safe. Yeah, I've got to stay and make sure we're all right. If we're top by two points it's hard to justify vanishing for a month. If we're, like, fifth, and it's ninety percent sure we won't win the league but we'll make the playoffs... yeah, why not? As long as I'm back in time for the important stuff. If we're tenth and we're not going up or down, sure. I mean, I might make a total mess at Grimsby and bring them down and then no-one's going to be looking at me. It's all hypothetical. I might not even like it."

"I'm just trying to imagine what the future is going to look like. Every January you wander off to play football somewhere nicer than here, and every March you go to manage someone richer?"

"I don't think I'll be doing the playing one again."

"No?"

"No. It was good but... Nah, I think I'm over that. If I could go and train with a top team for a couple of weeks, I'd do that, but I don't think I'll actually play for anyone else like I did with Tranmere."

"Why not?"

I clicked the side of my mouth. "If I said it was because of my love for Chester, would you believe me?"

"No."

I did a cheeky grin. "Fair enough. I can't really say why. I'm pretty sure that was a one-off. Don't worry. I'll find some other way to annoy you." He didn't reply. "So what do you think?"

He snapped out of some thought. "What?"

"Are you going to let me go or what?"

"I don't like it," he said, this time without smiling. "This league isn't over. But I understand it's a good opportunity... I'm just worried they're going to see how good you are and throw money at you and you'll stay there."

I leaned forward to unplug my phone and grip the tripod. The worst was over and there was no point being anxious about how the mob felt. If the fans wanted me gone they'd have to sack MD, first. It'd take them a few days to get organised. Whatever happened, I'd get my rematch against Kidderminster, and if Chester booted me out I knew where there was a vacancy. "So... there are times this job is really intense and there's loads to do. May is going to be pretty frantic. That's when I can try to snap up players whose contracts are ending. End of May's the Exit Trials and I'm going to be absolutely hyper about them. First week of June the market's flooded with out-of-work players. Pre-season is about fitness and helping the team gel, plus loads of admin. Start of the season's going to be a struggle and we're going to have to scrap and fight like demons just to get some points on the board. Then a few weeks of driving the team forward, hard as I can, get that momentum going like this season. But, like, now is pretty tame. For the players it's getting really exciting. All their work's paying off and this gap we've opened up is motivating them to really hammer home what they've done this season. But for me, there's nothing to do. There's no tactics needed in most our matches. I'm really interested in going to another team for six weeks just for the mental challenge. Pit my wits against League Two managers. That's fun, isn't it? But stay there forever? Work for a b-boy? I don't see it. I mean, if you guys bin me off, then yeah, what choice do I have? But if there's a job for me here I want to be here. I've got big plans and I've put in a lot of spadework."

"Do you mean the facilities? Is that what you'll spend the Raffi Brown money on?"

Hearing that name made me wince, which surprised me. "Er... what? Oh, the money. So, not very sexy answer, it depends. I think, honestly, the future of this club comes down to the Exit Trials. It's all, like, Premier League academy players who are getting binned off and hundreds of scouts are going to go and take a look. If I can find some gems - very likely - and if I can convince them to come - doubtful - and if we can afford their wages..." I emitted a sound that was intended to convey extreme doubt. It sounded something like whergh. "If we don't get any, we're going to have to look at spending money on transfers. There's one player I definitely want but his club would ask for a king's ransom. So the Exit Trials could be huge. If we get, like two of these top talents, great but I mean, it depends what position they play. If we can get, like, eight hot prospects, holy shit that changes everything. You know what I mean? If we can get eight superkids then we buy one or two players who we know are National League quality who can help us out right away. And if we can do that, then we can use most of the money for facilities and infrastructure."

"Like what?"

"Kitchen. Chefs, nutritionist. We need more physios. We're expanding the age groups so we need more physios and coaches. Part-time to start with." I thought about mentioning the solar panels but half the mob drank bleach instead of getting vaccinated and I wasn't in the mood for culture war shit. They could post angry messages on Facebook when the panels were up. "Er... we've got other plans but it depends which grants and subsidies we can get. I don't think announcing them is a good move. It's all good stuff, though. You'll love it."

"Will you be doing Boost the Budget this year?"

"No."

"Will ticket prices be going up?"

I looked over at MD. "I don't know. I think the idea is you get promoted to a higher league and the prices go up, right? It's not my job but I think I can promise it won't be fifteen percent again. I'd like to keep them flat but maybe it'll be a pound more. This money we got for, ah, Brown, doesn't go as far as you'd think. We really need to get it right."

"I think I'm done. Thanks, Max."

"What for?"

"For talking to us."

"Oh." What a polite mob! "Well, that's a fair point. I should have done this before. There hasn't been much to say, to be honest. We were scrambling around trying to keep our heads above water and now we've got a bit of breathing space and a bit of money and yeah, we need to be more strategic and that's interesting to talk about."

Brooke spoke. "Who do you want next, Max?"

Someone about ten percent angrier and ten percent less eloquent. Pick someone closer to the heart of the mob! "Surprise me."

"Oh, fuck, it's me," said a guy I'd never seen before. He hid a packet of crisps and put his hand over his camera. When he reappeared, all was perfectly normal but I got the very strong sense that his room was an absolute pigsty. I leaned across to check Brooke's face - this seemed like another joke. Her expression gave away nothing.

"What is your name, caller?" I said, in my best radio voice.

"I'm Mark. Er... you don't want us to say how long we've been a fan?"

"No, thanks! You're a Chester fan, let's move on."

"Oh. Right. So I heard what you said about letting more away fans in if we didn't sell more season tickets. I don't like that."

"Why?"

"Because it's a home game. I don't want half the stadium full of Wrexham fans."

"Then buy a season ticket."

"I've got one."

I saw myself on my PC monitor with a quizzical expression. Why were we talking about this? "So, first thing is, I don't make these decisions. It's your club, Mark. If you want the stadium to be deserted every week, that's your call. I want it full. Players like playing in full, noisy stadiums. If there's two stands of Wrexham fans that's only going to inspire us and we'll play better. Bear in mind that it's your club and I can only set sort of guiding principles when it comes to that sort of thing. We're hiring Brooke here to help us with some stuff and one of her targets is to get more fans in. Chester fans, ideally," I said, with a pretty charismatic bit of twinkling.

"Is that why you're going to Grimsby? Punishing us for not going to matches? Times are hard, Max. Money's short. A lot of my mates gave to Boost the Budget and missed the early bird deal on season tickets and to be honest, there were no signs it was going to be a legendary season."

I nodded. "I didn't really think about it like that. I know there's loads of reasons why people aren't coming. I just can't help but take it personally. On Saturday we're going to score our ninety-ninth and one-hundredth goals of the season. We're amazing. I've conquered the National League North and it feels like no-one gives a shit. But that's why I'm putting Brooke on the case. She's not emotionally involved and she's going to talk to you and get all these stories and we'll work out how to do it better. I mean the obvious thing from what you've just said is, we're not doing Boost the Budget so if your mates can get three hundred quid together I'd love them in the stadium and next season will be legendary too, one way or another." I pulled at my bottom lip as I stared at nothing. "I know three hundred quid can be a lot of money but that's your Saturdays sorted for a year, isn't it? Oh, he's gone."

"Do you want another one?"

I checked the numbers. We still had over 1,400 in. All very ready to turn feral. The timebomb was still ticking. Which fan would detonate it? "Sure. Who's on line four?"

"Hi, Max." It was a middle-aged woman with a Welsh accent. "My name's Carina. I've got a footballing reason why you shouldn't go."

I sat up and jiggled on my chair. "Great! Let's hear it."

"The women's team!" she said, with no small amount of triumph.

I waited for her to continue but that seemed to be it. "I get what you're saying. I'm banned from the men's team but not from the women's. Yeah, that's a great hack. I love ideas like that. Okay, so that's all agreed - I'll play for the women. I'm sure Dani won't mind if I take her spot in the team. Oh, hang on. MD's saying something. I don't have the right what?"

The woman took this mini rant well. "I'm not suggesting you play for them, Max, but support them."

"I support them. I watch all the tapes and suggest things to Jackie but to be honest he's on top of everything. We had a discussion recently about fixing something and it was a matter of timing. I wanted it done right away. Jackie was fine letting it sit for a while. His way would have worked. He's doing great - I don't need to interfere and I try not to. I just send him some players every now and then. If he needs me, which he won't, I can come back on Sundays."

"When will matches be played at the Deva?"

Another topic shift! This mob had big attention deficit issues. "As soon as the pitch can take it. If we can get Bea Pea to stop doing knee slide celebrations, that'll help. But I've been looking at renting a proper ground for a couple of years until we have our own solution. Would you go to Flint to watch the team there?"

"Flint?"

"It's 25 minutes by car. They've got an all-weather pitch. Proper stands. As far as I can tell, they don't use it on Sundays. I don't know. Maybe Brooke and Ruth can find something better but there isn't a lot nearby."

"I would go to Flint. Don't know about others. It's not a nice drive."

"I'm very open to better ideas. We can do tier 5 and 4 there, or somewhere similar, and then move them into the Deva. Nice little progression there. Win your league you get better stuff."

"Flint doesn't sound terrible. It'd be good to have a base. Another question."

"Yes."

"You hired the American marketing expert."

"Texan."

"Will she be marketing the women's team, too?"

"Absolutely but right now we can't even charge for tickets and next season's main sponsor's been agreed so there's no hurry. If we can get a stadium booked, we can get to work filling it. One thing is the fixtures. We won't get them for ages so we can do planning but nothing concrete. Do you know what I mean?"

"Okay, thanks for talking to me."

She left and I rubbed my face. Brooke chose an aggressive-looking guy who looked like he hung out with Welly and went to train stations to fight rival fans. Finally! The heart of the mob! I saw myself snarling and tried to loosen my jaw. "I've got a question," he said, rudely. This guy was perfect!

"What's your name, dude?"

"Tom Dickharry. What's it matter what my name is? You said to skip all that."

Big charmer, this guy. "I meant skip the life story. All right, Tom."

"Did you get that man sacked?"

"Who?"

"You talked to the owner and he sacked the manager. That kind of thing is bad for your reputation. You'll get a name as a snake. It'll come back to bite you."

It took me a second to work out what he was saying and then another few seconds to wonder if snakes bit snakes. "Oh. No, Chris asked if he should sack him and I said to give the guy an ultimatum. Win on Saturday or you're toast. If he wins, great. If not, you gave him a sporting chance. That seemed fair to me. I'd want that shot. I have no idea why he sacked him. Maybe he's got a proper full-time manager lined up and I did this whole call for nothing."

"It's not for nothing, is it? You're telling us the plans and we want to hear it."

"I've been telling you the plans since I started working here. Item one, win the league. Item two, have some cup runs. Item three, fix the youth system. Item four, increase the quality of haircut among the first team squad. I mean, three out of four ain't bad."

"But future plans like the women going to Flint. That's good to know. You're thinking years into the future. We want to know that. So this Grimsby guy is rich, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"He's testing you. You told him you wouldn't go this Saturday, he sacks the manager anyway. He reckons you'll cave."

"Cave? I told him how much the Kidderminster game means to me. There's no way on earth I'm missing that one and he knows that."

"But he's rich, Max."

"I don't get your point."

"They don't think like us. They get what they want."

"I don't know what to say. I don't know what it'd cost to get me to start there tomorrow. I mean, a billion would do it. Like, there is a number. It wouldn't be a good start, though, would it, if he changes the deal before we've even started? No, I don't know why he did it but it's nothing to do with me. Playing against Christian Fierce is my Olympics. I don't care what else is going on that day. Don't invite me to any parties, I've been training for this day. Do you know what I mean?"

"What if the FA try to stop you?"

"Stop me what? Managing Grimsby? Why would they do that? And how?"

"They might think like we do. He works for Chester!"

I considered it. "If they get snippy I'll get MD to sack me. Boom. I'm unemployed. Finish at Grimsby, oh, look, a new contract at Chester! Easy."

The fan hung his head. "And could you still play the cup final then? It's already a mess. Don't make it worse."

I smiled. "My girlfriend's dad's a top lawyer dude. He can't stand the FA and if they stop me finding employment - again! - I'm going to let him loose. Like, seriously, they wouldn't try to stop me because they know they wouldn't have a leg to stand on. I have the right to work. You can manage a club and a national team at the same time. You can manage two teams in the same division in the same season. How can there suddenly be a limit just because it's me? Okay, how about this? I make Sandra the first-team manager and I'm the assistant. Why shouldn't Chester's assistant manager work at Grimsby for a while?"

"Because - " He jammed his thumb and index finger into his eyeballs, which always gave me the shivers. "Because you're not our assistant manager. You're our manager. Look, what would you say if the Man United boss did this?"

"I'd say mate, you're not eleven points clear and you don't even know where Grimsby is. And I'd say Grimsby could do a lot better."

Tom's smile was reluctant, but real. "Can I put my daughter on? She's got questions for you."

"Er... sure?" He put his phone down, giving us a close-up view of his kitchen table. I strained to listen for footsteps. "See this, Brooke? This is good content. It's authentic. I haven't been following what's happening though. What's in the chat? Are people mad at me or what? Ah, hang on, he's coming."

"Say hi to Max!"

There was a girl standing on the kitchen chair, leaning down into the lens as though it were fixed into place. Why not just pick up the phone and stand normally? "Hi, Max."

"What's your name?"

"Ella. Don't make an umbrella joke. I've heard them all before."

She was so far from my dream mobster it was crazy. Who was I going to have a blazing row with? "Ella, have you ever heard of a deed poll?"

She gave me a suspicious frown. "No."

"You pay fifty pounds and you can change your name."

She looked at her dad. "You never told me that!"

"Nice talking to you, name-to-be-decided. Bye!"

"I didn't ask my question!"

"Oh. I thought you asked how to change your name."

"I didn't, actually."

"Go on. What do you want to know?"

"Why don't you have a team for girls?"

"We're starting three in the summer. Next question."

"No but really."

"Yes but really. 12s, 14s, and 16s, probably."

"I'm seven."

"So you go to the twelves. What's the problem?"

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

"Yes. She's called Emma but I think she wishes she was called Ella."

"No, she doesn't."

"She will when I start singing 'under my umber-emma' all the time. Next question. We're doing rapid fire."

"What's..." She needed to think about it. "Why do you like football?"

"I like getting bad managers sacked."

"Oh."

"And I like that it brings people together."

"Oh. What did you have for dinner?"

"Caesar salad and king prawn takeout from ah... a Mediterranean restaurant."

"Oh. Can I see your room?"

"I mean, we're supposed to be letting people yell at me but sure. Quick tour." I stood and switched to the rear camera. "Here's my window. You can see there are four football pitches there. That's where we train. Sometimes I stand here and loom over them. When we build a new training ground I want my office to be a glass box just over the players so I can loom non-stop. I love looming, Ella. This is my flipchart. It's got my tactics. One page for every game. That's how Ian Evans used to do it and I liked it. If we flip back... What's this? Ah, it's Tamworth at home. We only won one-nil. I think it was a little bit boring but we were saving energy for the next match. These are the names of the players we were going to use and the backups. All these little squiggles mean things. Okay on this wall's a photo of Jackie Reaper playing for Everton. It reminds me that no matter how bad things get, they can always get worse."

"Why are you laughing?"

"I'm not. Now up here I've got these... Let me put them on." I had cut out a small perm and large moustache - the look was all the rage on Merseyside in the 80s - and with a tiny piece of blu-tac I attached them onto Jackie's head. "Jackie comes to use this office sometimes because it's good wi-fi here and one time in three I put this stuff on his head. I don't think he's ever noticed. This desk isn't normally here. Brooke and MD are helping to run this Zoom call because they're top business people and they like talking about conf calls and chuff like that. Wave to the child formerly known as Ella!"

"Is that your girlfriend?"

I swung the camera to my boss. "No, that's MD."

"The other oneeeee."

I switched. "No I couldn't date her. She never smiles." Brooke smiled. "Oh, hello! Now the rest of this wall is pretty barren but on that one I've got some other stuff..."

"Who's that?"

"Who?"

"That man."

Her attention had been drawn, like most people who went into my office, to the large portrait photo of the one thing on the walls that was nothing to do with football. It was a photo of a man wearing a suit too big for his body and a smile too big for his face. "This man is called Mr. Yalley. In my kingdom, he is a prince. He saved my life and he's a good and kind person and when I see this I try to be a good and kind person, too. I'm not very good at it."

"Oh. What's he laughing at?"

"What do you think he's laughing at?"

"Someone told him a joke."

"Do you know any jokes?"

"I know a football joke. My dad told me."

"Go on. Tell it to Brooke and see if she laughs."

I pointed the camera at Brooke and waited. Ella whispered to her dad and he reminded her what the joke was. "What do Henri Lyons and a magician have in common?"

"I don't know, sweetie."

"They both do hat tricks."

Brooke smiled and raised a thumb but I think even Ella knew it was fake. I flipped the camera back to face me. "Ella. Serious question from me to you now. When we play on hot days, do you know how I stay cool?"

"No."

"I stand near the fans."

Ella nodded, smiled, and raised a thumb. Brooke laughed at that.

"Ella I need to kick you off, now. I need to work out why people aren't mad at me."

Her dad took his phone back. "It's because they can't do anything about it. And because you were honest about it being for money. They'll get over it... If you come back. Thanks, Max. Good luck on Saturday! Come on you Seals!"

I wandered back to my chair and thought about the call so far. "MD, what's the mood in the chat?"

"Exasperated. But beat Kidderminster and people will accept it."

"Brooke? What are you getting?"

"I think win the league and you're fine. Some folks are hoppin' mad but most are talking about whether they want you to do well at Grimsby or not."

I pulled a face. "Yeah, that's a hard one. If I bomb this won't happen again. But if I'm great, you know we'll smash League Two." I shook the thought off. The mob could feel whatever they wanted as long as they didn't try to stop me. My position was secure. The guillotines were still in storage. The sun rises in the east. Grimsby's in the east. The Sun King will rise in the east. I am the state. "All right, then. I'm going to Grimsby. If you don't mind, everyone, I'm not going to talk about it any more. Next stop for me is Kidderminster. They spent three weeks coming up with a plan to beat us. I've spent four months returning the favour. If you aren't going to the match, make sure you've got Seals Live bookmarked. This one is going to be a battle royale."