5.

  Tuesday, November 30

  The door of the Sin Bin flew open and Alex Short, our sports psychologist, crashed it closed behind him. "Oh," he said, surprised by how many people were in the room.

  "All good, bro," I said. "We're nearly done."

  Alex carefully slid his umbrella into the stand by the door, then shook some of the rain off. Pretty good impression of a wet dog; my godson Jamie would laugh his head off at that. "Brr," said Alex. "It's absolutely tipping it down."

  "Easing off then, is it?" drawled Jackie Reaper, who was next to me, a few rows from the front.

  Alex settled into one of the front-row seats and shivered. November had been as cold and wet as anyone could remember, and not everyone was happy about it. He looked to his left. "Go ahead, Luisa, sorry."

  Luisa had joined the coaching staff full-time in the summer, with special responsibility for looking after our Portuguese and Spanish speaking players, but she was no slouch when it came to player analysis. She did fantastic individual sessions in the Sin Bin and out on the grass. She was just wrapping up with Nasa, our Brazilian right back. Jackie and I were observing, although sometimes Nasa's English failed him and there were bursts of Portuguese. We didn't follow the nuances, then, but we got the gist and the session kept Jackie out of the rain. Rain is something people with heads shaped like plums try to avoid, lest they spend half the day looking like actual prunes.

  Luisa said something to Nasa, then, louder, "That's it, Max. Do you have feedback? What do you think?"

  "On the whole, I'm unhappy." I waited for her to heat up, but she knew me too well. I smiled. "I wanted to show off in front of Jackie by pointing out all the things you got wrong. But there weren't any! No, that whole sesh was mint. Really great analysis, really helpful."

  "Actionable," said Jackie. "And not too much. Rookie coaches always overload players. This was the perfect amount."

  For some reason, the compliments from Jackie hit Luisa harder. "Thank you," she said, and I thought there might have been just the tiniest hint of a blush. How can a prune make you blush?

  I said, "Can I make one comment?"

  "Of course."

  I stood and moved past Nasa, giving him a pat on the shoulder as I went, before turning the laptop to face me. It wasn't very practical, so Luisa stood and went to sit next to Nasa. I took her seat and opened the fourth clip that she had prepared. "The point you were making was solid, Luisa, but here's one thing I reacted to earlier in the move."

  On the big screen, we watched a clip of our home win against Stoke City. Stoke had finished that match really strong and I wanted to put my most 'pure' defenders on the pitch, so although Nasa's CA was only 96 at the time, he had played the last quarter of an hour. The clip showed Stoke's left back ready to take a throw-in. Nasa was tight to the left-midfielder, ready to attack him if the ball came this way. "This is great," I said. "Fantastic intensity. None shall pass! Luisa, how do you say that in Portuguese?"

  She said something. Nasa didn't smile - he rarely did - but he seemed pleased.

  I let the video continue for a few more seconds, and stopped it when Stoke threw the ball into play. "There's something missing," I said. I played that part of the clip again.

  Luisa and Nasa discussed it in their language. There was lots of shrugging. Luisa said, "I chose this clip because of what happens next, Max. The transitions."

  "I know," I said. "But this is interesting, too."

  I played it again - that part of the clip was about seven seconds long.

  Luisa shook her head. Nasa turned to Jackie. "Mister, do you know?"

  "I think so," said Jackie. "Max wants you to scan." He meant the process of looking around, checking where everyone else was. It was something that top players did far more than mediocre ones. See what's around you and then in the split-second when you need to make a decision, you've got some of the information you need already stored in memory. I had half a theory that constant scanning would help players improve their anticipation skills.

  Nasa closed his eyes. "Scanning," he groaned. "Yes, yes, claro. I look for the ball. But I must look behind also."

  "It's all good, mate," I said, because he was the kind of person who took things way too seriously. "It's a frantic situation and mad pressure. Luisa, what's frantic?" She translated what I had said, then I continued. "But the scramble that comes after this throw, the double transition, it's a little easier when you are always scanning. We need to make the scanning so..." I pinched my index finger and thumb together while I sought the perfect word. "We need to make it so automatic that you do it five-nil up, five-nil down, first minute, last minute. You do that, everything else is easier." Luisa said it in Portuguese. Nasa was really happy with the feedback. I was pretty sure that in a couple of months he would have trained himself to look over his shoulder every five seconds. Better driver, worse painter, better footballer, worse lover. Terrible at staring contests.

  I stayed in the rear-facing seat, swivelling slightly, enjoying the feeling. My hard-working coaches, my ambitious and motivated players. My mate Jackie. My therapist. My awesome training ground with its super-comfy moulded seats. The sound of the rain, the gentle warmth of the underfloor heating. I was so content I could have a nap.

  "We should get a hammock in here."

  Luisa said, "We discussed this. No hammocks, no bean bags, no Japanese mats. If you fall asleep, no-one is brave enough to wake you up and they have to come and find me or Livia or Mari Hughes."

  I pouted for a few seconds before twisting happily. "Nasa, how's your mum?"

  A smile at last. "Very good. Very very good. She is happy."

  I made my twists bigger. "Why don't you bring her to England?"

  Amazingly, his smile widened. "Too much rain!"

  Everyone else laughed along with him, but I felt my synapses starting to fire. I had been looking at house prices in Chester and had seen a cool building for sale in the city centre. Three swanky apartments, each with two bedrooms, each bedroom with its own bathroom. Three apartments. Three Brazilian players at Chester. "I want you to stay at this football club for a long time. How do you feel about that?"

  A third smile! We were smashing records today. "Yes, it's good. Yes, thanks."

  "So bring your mother over."

  He glanced uneasily at Luisa. He didn't want to emasculate himself, but he decided to be honest. "Too much money."

  I pawed at the air. "Pah! If you keep training like this, I'll give you more money in the summer. So much money!"

  "So much money?"

  I nodded while opening a browser on the laptop. I looked for the property I had seen. "You, Thomazella, Gabriel. Three Brazilian players. I want you to stay and help me in the Premier League. Luisa, this is super important. Please translate even if he understands." She did, while I frowned at the computer. Where had the stupid listing gone? Had it been sold already? Slightly panicked, I continued. "Gabby is 23, you're 22, Tomz is 21. You're too young to live with your mothers. You need to have parties and meet beautiful English women. I know it's strange for you to leave Brazil and come to a country with beautiful women five deep." I waited for Luisa to translate, but she was giving me a strange look.

  "What does five deep mean?"

  "Oh. Um... like one on top of the other."

  "I see. You want me to tell Nasa your fantasies." Jackie snorted. Luisa translated.

  Nasa spoke next. "What about Toquinho?"

  I stopped my search. "Yes, Tockers is very beautiful."

  Nasa groaned. "You want him at Chester. We are four Brazilian players, not three."

  "Okay, yeah. Good point." Toquinho was registered to Saltney Town in the Welsh Premier, but more importantly, he had played in the Champions League qualifiers and was now playing in the Europa League. He had played against CSKA Sofia, Nice, and Eintracht Frankfurt. While we were in Europe's second most prestigious competition, the Welsh training caps did not apply. Tockers was CA 80, but he had PA 154. He'd be a good squad player in the English Premier League. "Yeah, I do want to bring him to Chester one day. Hmm. This idea doesn't work."

  "You are not happy," said Nasa.

  "It's not that..." I said, slowly, "It's just I found a cool building and I really kind of fell in love with it. But it only has three flats. Let me show you. Ah, here it is." An elegant three-story brick building appeared on the screen. The postcode: CH1. "You can't get more Chester than that," I said.

  "Too much!" cried Nasa.

  "What?"

  Luisa said, "Are you going to pay him Max money, Max? He's looking at the price." The property was listed at ￡850,000.

  I tutted. "I don't want him to buy it! I'll buy it and rent the apartments to the mums of Sao Paulo. It'll be like a wild party house for 50-year-old Paulistas." Luisa translated, and Nasa relaxed. I showed them the photos of the inside. Beautiful wooden floors, spacious, airy rooms, astonishingly tasteful green wallpaper with a floral pattern. "I've never wanted to drop nearly a million quid because of wallpaper before but look how fucking cool that is!" The men in the room liked the wallpaper, but Luisa's smile didn't seem completely sincere. The three apartments were virtually identical, and then the last photo was a crappy car park. Everyone in the room - especially Luisa - purred with pleasure. "Yeah. Six parking spaces in the heart of Chester. It's worth the asking price just for that!"

  Jackie said, "Are you buying them flats, lad? Or are yous just daydreaming?"

  "I saw them the other day and I was like, oh my God, I want them. I think I've just been looking for a reason to go for it, right? Brazilian mums, that's the reason."

  Nasa spoke to Luisa, who said, "How much is the rent?"

  I shrugged and went back to the main page on the property listing, which had a mortgage calculator. The default settings were for a 10% deposit and a 30-year repayment term. I changed the latter to 20. "I don't care what Henri says. I don't want this crap hanging over me for ever." The calculator spat out a monthly mortgage payment of ￡4,911. "I need to cover tax and shit. For now, let's say there are six bedrooms at a thousand a month each."

  Nasa shook his head. "Is too much."

  "It's Chester city centre!" I wailed. "I could get that in a week on Airbnb."

  "You're paying him 1,400, aren't you?" said Luisa. The Brazilian players didn't have many secrets from her.

  "A week," I said. I squinted. Nasa had added 15 points of CA since pre-season and was now CA 96. I expected his progression to slow a little over the winter, but every point he got closer to the Championship's 'recommended minimum' of 111 would give me the confidence to increase his minutes. When spring came, he would get more game time and his CA would shoot up. By the end of the season, if he didn't get injured, he'd probably be close to 111. Cole Adams had started this season at exactly that rate, so if that was Nasa's floor going into next season, yeah, I would offer him at least the same as Cole. "If Nasa keeps working, he'll soon be on about three and a half. He can afford 250 a week for his mum."

  Luisa translated. Nasa's interest in what I was saying grew. I was planning to more than double his salary! "My mother and Toquinho's mother, together."

  "In the same flat? That works for me."

  "Thomazella's mother and father. Gabriel's mother and father. All together!" The sun rose in his left eye and set in the right. "All together in the rain."

  "We're dancing, and singing, in the rain," I sang.

  "It's hard to hold a candle," crooned Jackie. "In the cold, November rain."

  "It's easy to hold a candle," I said, "in the incredibly well-insulated, energy class... er... C... flat where all your mates live!" I looked at Nasa. "C is the highest rating, I’m pretty sure."

  Nasa decided to ignore our banter, which was probably a good idea. "Please, again," he said.

  I turned the laptop round and let him look through the photos. "Luisa, will you talk to the others? If they're interested, we can all go down and check it out."

  "It's a very lovely house," she said, dubiously.

  "That's right. It is." The thought of owning something so elegant made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. "One thing - it's a mum's house. Nice, clean, fun, laughter, no complaints from the neighbours. I don't want to see Neymar there."

  Luisa smiled. "I don't think Nasa's mother and Neymar would get along. They don't go to the same parties."

  "Neymar's whole life is a party," I said. "Okay, it's time for my therapy."

  Alex stirred. "It's not therapy, Max."

  "There's no garden," said Jackie, the prick.

  "They don't have gardens in Brazil!" I yelled.

  "They'll want some green space. Somewhere they can plant their favourite flowers."

  I pointed to a spot just to the left of Jackie's ear. "They can use the space between the gym and the main pitch! I was gonna put some raised beds there and let the youth teams grow stuff. I had a plan to track down this absolute cutie pie that Henri used to..." I stopped and gave Luisa a guilty look. "Um... track down a very knowledgeable young person whose gender I can't remember who I, Max Best, used to enjoy speaking to at the garden centre that I, uh, discovered on my own. I was going to get her to come down and do horticulture lessons in the raised beds next to the gym. Gym for bicep curls, right? Garden for flowers. I was going to call that area Guns N' Roses."

  Luisa sighed. "When the jokes get this bad, it's time to leave." She nudged Nasa, who didn't want to look away from the laptop. They gathered their stuff and shuffled towards the doorway. They grabbed their umbrellas, gripped each other's arms in solidarity, and plunged out into the wet. I shook my head. In a few minutes, they would get changed and would have a training session in that very rain while wearing even less clothing! People are so weird.

  Talking of irredeemably weird people, Jackie came down the steps and bent over the laptop. "Eight hundred and fifty grand, Max. I thought you were saving up for something."

  "Eighty-five grand deposit, Jackie. I got more than that when Saltney Town beat CKSA Sofia. I got about that much when 5,000 nutjobs from Eintracht Frankfurt decided they wanted to descend upon The Racecourse to watch the champions of Wales."

  "You lost that one, didn't you?"

  "I didn't lose anything, no. That was Well In." Llewellyn was the manager of Saltney Town and while he was brilliant, he couldn't make up a 40-point CA gap. "But what I meant was, our share of the gate receipts was healthy. We've got Marseille coming soon and they have mad fans who will think it's fun to go to Wrexham. Dynamo Kyiv is the final game and I reckon a lot of Ukrainians around the UK will come to watch that one, but I've agreed with my best friend Ryan Reynolds we're gonna give all that money to a charity in Ukraine. It's not just gate money, though. In a few weeks, we're away to a team from Slovenia who we might be able to beat. If we get that prize money, Saltney will get about a million quid from the league stage, all told. That's all gravy, if you know what I mean. That's all, just, extra. I can afford 85 grand, especially if it means three or four top, top players stay at Chester longer."

  "As long as you aren't over-reaching. You have manias, don't you? You've got those other flats you bought."

  "The Best Chestern Hotel."

  "I'm never calling it that." He drummed his fingers on the table. "Can you afford this? Has the power trip of being a landlord gone to your head? I heard about guys who go nuts buying property on tick. Always lending money against the last project to pay for the next one. What's it called? Over-leveraging?"

  "That's the phrase, yeah. I don't think I'm close to that because I put down such a big deposit on my hotel that it reduces the danger, and I would basically need to lose all my income streams for buying this second one to be a real risk. I take your point, but I'm gonna talk to my friend at the bank. If she's happy to give me a mortgage on this one, that's probably fine, right? I'm thinking I could add one property per year, kind of thing."

  Jackie seemed satisfied by my explanation but then clicked around and frowned. "Hang on. Didn't you pay about this much last time round? That was 14 flats. This is 3."

  "No, that one cost way more." The Best Chestern had gone through at 1.8 million, but I had 'only' paid half up front. Jackie might have heard me talking about buying the flats for 900 grand. "This is much more expensive on a per-flat basis, but it's more premium and the location's unbelievable. Most of all, I'm thinking that if their families are here, the Brazilian lads are gonna be happy to stay longer. They're happy, I get a free block of flats, more or less - everyone's a winner."

  "Hmm," said Jackie, whose socialist tendencies made it hard for him to enjoy the idea of his mates having a property empire. "They might not want to live in England, Max. They'd hate the winter." He stood straight. "It could be something for a couple of years, I guess. Bit of mum's cooking to keep spirits high. I know some Brazilian players who moved their whole families across. Yeah, sure, why not? Okay, I'd best get out there."

  I mimed cracking a whip, adding a cool sound effect. "Whu-CHA!"

  "Holy Mary, mother of God," he said, as he trudged towards the great outdoors.

  I turned the laptop back towards me and scrolled back to the mortgage calculator. I had over four million quid in the bank in the UK and another 1.6 million in Gibraltar. I could easily buy these flats outright, but Henri would tell me off. In his worldview, the main reason to buy property was to leverage your money. If a bank would finance me, 850 grand could be ten deposits on ten blocks of flats. I doubted I would ever take such a risky position and anyway, I needed some cash on hand just in case an opportunity to buy shares in Temps Perdu suddenly arose.

  Old Nick had told me I needed to buy the entire company, but while I was working for Chester, that seemed impossible.

  A sense of failure started to envelop me, so I turned to retail therapy to ward it off. "Alex," I said. "Should I buy this?"

  He had gone to the very front of the room, where there was a small but incredibly useful tea-and-coffee station. "Should you buy that? Personally, I love the style. Luisa didn't seem to like it, did she? Maybe it's a bit barren, visually. It's quite boxy. But I like it. It reminds me of those ones you get in London with the black painted railings outside and each little bit of the terrace is like two million quid. This one's not far off that, is it? The numbers are pretty far outside my comfort zone, to be honest."

  I leaned back and considered him. Alex Short was a popular member of staff. The players loved talking to him, and his calm, unruffled, uncomplicated personality was absolutely perfect for the needs of Chester Football Club, where drama lurked around every corner. A few weeks ago, I'd had a thought, and every time I saw Alex, that thought reinforced itself: Alex Short's air of calm and trustworthiness was as artificial as the surface of a Liverpool FC striker's teeth.

  The thought came to me one morning when I was watching the squads come into the canteen at Bumpers before training. I was trying to avoid thinking about death, failure, and the futility of everything I was struggling to achieve, and my method of avoiding those dark thoughts was to indulge in some low-level male gazing of the women's team.

  It didn't take long for me to realise that every single one of them looked better than the day they had arrived at the club. Of course, a healthy diet and regular exercise will do that, but there were no more weird orange tans, no more hideous eyebrows. The ladies were getting social media 'feedback' about their appearance. They were sharing tips about the best hairdressers, nail places, stylists. When I thought about it, lots of them spoke better, too.

  I turned my attention to the men and while there were far more tattoos - not for me, Clive - the haircuts were better, the clothes were better, the biceps were bulging. Mo' money, mo' solutions.

  I checked out the coaches, the backroom staff, even Jojo, our beloved receptionist and all-rounder. Some of the differences were subtle, but I would have put money on a jury of my peers saying that every single employee of Chester FC had levelled up in terms of attractiveness since they walked through the gate for the first time.

  Not Alex, though.

  Not to say he was unattractive. That's not where this is going. I'm saying he looked just as he had done the first time I met him - very slightly dishevelled. Very slightly unshaven. His trainers were very slightly faded and scruffy. The cover of his notebook always seemed to have a coffee stain on it.

  I would have paid 850 grand to see his past twenty notebooks side by side - I reckoned he bought them in bulk and made the exact same stain on all of them.

  His unthreatening authenticity allowed our players to open up to him, but I knew all about his authenticity.

  It was fake.

  It was fake as fuck and that's why I had decided to start going back to therapy with him. Alex Short was my kind of psychologist - a manipulative bastard who would go to any lengths to help his patients, including having a shit haircut right up until his retirement, when I fully expected him to yell 'thank fuck for that' and turn into George Clooney.

  I tapped the laptop. "Is this obnoxious? Flaunting my wealth?"

  "I didn't take it that way, no. How do you respond to people flaunting their wealth, Max?"

  I wagged my finger at him. "Don't think you can sneak into my brain like that. I know your tricks." I put my palms on the table and lowered my head. "Buying these flats... It's a good investment for me and it's a cool solution for the lads whose parents live so far away. From the summer they will be able to afford it easily. They'll have a more frictionless life in Chester. It's perfect."

  "But?"

  "I do feel pretty cynical. Bought loyalty isn't loyalty."

  Alex rubbed his cheek - was there slightly more stubble than last time? Was he getting more unkempt the richer the players got? "I don't think most football managers would even think of using their own money to buy a whole building for their players' parents to live in. That will go a long way on its own. The parents have met, I think?"

  "Um, not sure about all of them but most, yeah." I leaned back and squirmed.

  "You okay?"

  I grimaced. "Sorry, Alex. It's rude but I've worked myself up about these flats. I think I might buy them anyway, do you know what I mean? If it isn't Big Mama House, it'll be something else."

  "On-loan Bayern Munich Starlet Central."

  I laughed. "Yeah. Can I fire out a few messages?"

  "Of course."

  I texted Aff, Saltney Town's Irish left winger, then Gemma's dad, who was retired now but had spent his life in the building industry. They were my go-tos for assessing things like structural soundness, finding evidence of rising damp, all those things that would give a homeowner sleepless nights. I texted Luisa to tell her to gather the Brazilians for a trip to the flats as a matter of urgency. "Ugh."

  "What?"

  "Luisa's going into a session now and she won't get the message for ages. Will I phone the estate agent? No, that's mental. I can wait. Can I wait?" I looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds, then put my phone down. "I can wait. Alex, I'm all yours. Fix me, please."

  He smiled. "Can I ask about Jackie and Luisa and the Brazilians?"

  "Sure. What do you want to know?"

  He pulled a pen and notebook out of a thin backpack. "I don't know the first thing about it so I don't even know how to frame the question. Um... Why's the manager of Tranmere Rovers here?"

  I clapped my hands. "One of my more genius schemes, mate! I'm disgustingly proud of this one. Let me gather my thoughts." Alex dropped into the seat where Nasa had sat. He was in the player role, I was the coach. Who had the power here? I did. Or that's what the cunning little brain-tinkerer wanted me to think. "It starts with me agreeing to help Tranmere this season."

  "I can't believe you're mates with Diggy Doggy."

  "I'm not. I threatened to destroy 20 million pounds of his and his mates' money and that brought him to the table. I'd say we understand each other and we get on. Not sure about mates. We probably could be if we lived in the same hemisphere. Did you know he was a qualified football coach?"

  "American football?"

  "Yeah. And he does counselling. He's great with disabled kids and the neurodivergent. I do like him but also I need to keep him at arm's length because I need to make sure he doesn't wreck Tranmere." I threw myself back into the seat. "This whole mess was completely avoidable. Mateo didn't want to sell Tranmere but the fans hounded him out. It's on them if the club fails. Maybe I should have let it." Aggressive nods turned into head shakes. "Nah. God, I'd love to own Tranmere Rovers. The synergy between that club and the rest of my little empire is incredible." I tutted and sighed. "Right now the gig is that I keep Diggy's new toy in League One, and if that goes well I'm going to offer them an even sweeter deal. This one's about not losing all his money. The next one will be about making fat stacks. But first, survival."

  "Right," said Alex.

  "Loads of their squad left in the summer, and the new owners had a folder called 'players you shouldn't buy'. There was some dust on the front so it said: players you should buy. That's how they accidentally bought a pile of garbage."

  "Is it that bad?"

  I considered the question. "I'm exaggerating but not by much. Of the eight players they brought in, three have potential. Note the word. They're not useful now. Even with Jackie Reaper coaching them, it's gonna take months to get them to a decent level. Okay, so my first job was to assess the squad. Then I had lunch with the Grim Reaper himself and told him what I thought. That was easy because he had worked with them enough to agree. I told him I could get such-and-such a player to do this and so-and-so to do that. Showed him what his team could look like by the end of the week, and how it would be bolstered by January signings."

  "Okay so you mean there were some free agents who could come in right away."

  "Yes. They're not match fit, there are problems with all of them, pretty much, but Jackie doesn't need culture, he needs results."

  "Survival."

  "Exactly. I outlined how a few free agents could help him stabilise, pick up a few draws and the odd win here and there. It's all based around Tony Herbert, the centre back from Panama. He's fucking amazing." I mentally brought up the Tranmere Rovers squad screen, which was one of 10 squads I had in my head these days. Ten! Tony Herbert had CA 107. Very nearly Championship quality already. If Jackie stayed in charge for the entire season, Herbert's CA would shoot to 115 at least.

  "We have the right to buy him, don't we? 1.5 million pounds?"

  "Alex, that's such a bargain. I should get a medal for that one. Okay but we're still talking about the other medal I should get. Where was I?"

  He checked his notes. "Stabilise until the January signings arrive."

  "Right. Tranmere are rock bottom of the league but it's not like they're up against teams that are much good. Three wins in a row and they're back in business. Chester have Magnus Evergreen coming back from Saltney in January, and we've got this Italian kid coming to play in an advanced midfield role. I was looking at the squad list thinking, we need to loan two players out. Didn't take long to think of Adam Summerhays and Thomazella."

  "Two defenders," said Alex, his eyes shifting left and right as he tried to get ahead of my thinking.

  "Yes. Two defenders going to study under Jackie Reaper, who is on a par with Peter Bauer when it comes to coaching defenders. In fact, maybe a touch better in terms of the actual defensive side. Which is what Adam and Tomz need."

  Alex was getting the overall concept. "Six months with Jackie learning the basics, then back to Peter for the advanced stuff."

  "More or less, yeah."

  "You want to push back on what I said."

  "Not really because it doesn't seem a good use of our time."

  Alex smiled broadly. "Honestly, Max, it might not be the best, ah, therapy for you, but I personally would love to learn this."

  "Okay, sure. Jackie and Peter can both do the basics and the advanced stuff. I know that. They know that. But football players are simple creatures and if we tell them the story that Jackie's all about duels and Peter's all about how to navigate a Champions League last twenty minutes, players will lap that up. Do you know what I mean? But Jackie's coaching in League One so by default he'll be teaching my lads the basics. Testing their foundations. Adam and Tomz have been well coached so it's not like he needs to fix them. They need minutes more than anything, but of course Jackie will teach them some tricks. Some of his underhanded Scouse ways."

  "That's good, is it?"

  "That's mint. Yes, please! Christ, I would have gone weak at the knees to sign a young Jackie Reaper. Um, there's quite an obvious weak at the knees joke there. Poor Jackie."

  "Adam Summerhays and Thomazella to Tranmere in January. Okay. I think I see how that's good for them."

  "It's very good for them," I said, getting up to get a mug of hot water. I had started drinking it on my European road trip as a protest against how shit the continent's tea was, and I had weirdly grown to like plain hot water. It saved money, too, and as every Finance Influencer knows, if you stop paying for tea and coffee, soon you'll be able to afford a luxurious London-style property in CH1. I held the mug between my palms, enjoying the warmth. "I had to sign Helge because he's a rare talent. I couldn't pass up that one. And Lewis Lamarre on a free transfer? Come on, that's a no-brainer. So Adam got pushed down the pecking order, plus I've been playing more three-at-the-back than I expected. After I saw Tranmere's squad, Jackie and I went to visit Adam and pitched the idea. It was basically, mate, here's a way for you to play almost every match because I've told Jackie he needs to play 5-3-2 or even 5-4-1. Their current left back option is a guy called James Gladfelter. Everyone calls him Jack the Lad and he's a top dude."

  "You had him in Gibraltar at one point, right?"

  "Yeah. Like I say, top dude and you can use him but honestly he's not a League One player. Adam's a huge upgrade." Jack the Lad had capped at CA 80, but Adam was 91/137. "Adam is desperate to get minutes, he knows Jackie, and I got Diggy Doggy to call him. Boom. Sold. Then we did the same with Thomazella." The Brazilian centre back was 92/178. He had improved brilliantly on the training ground but needed time on the pitch in meaningful matches.

  Alex was scribbling a 5-4-1 graphic, it looked like. "Adam left back. Tony Herbert centre back. Thomazella centre back. Three of Jackie's back five will be at Chester next season."

  "Yeah, and they'll have been trained by one of the best coaches they could have at this point in their life." I stopped myself. "Huh. Why did I say that? I just fell into that trap."

  "What trap?"

  "The trap of thinking that because he's in League One, Jackie's not elite, and that there are some supercoaches in the Premier League who are the real big dogs. That's not how it is but the Premier League narrative is so overwhelming it even affects me! The closer we get to it, the more I'm sucked into the black hole of its excess and self-satisfaction."

  "You think Jackie Reaper's as good a coach as anyone in the Prem?"

  I walked back towards my chair. "I know he is." Jackie had Coaching Outfield Players 20. I had never seen anyone with a score of 21. "Okay, but that's why I'm so pleased with myself. I'm gonna try to get Jackie some more players between now and the transfer window, but he's got the basis of a top defence. The only thing is, Adam and Tomz are undercooked. I told him I would give them some minutes in the Championship to give them a boost and get them ready, but only if he came to give our defence some private coaching."

  Alex looked towards the door and his eyebrows rose. "Ahhhhh! Got it!"

  I shook my hands sideways from the wrist as though stroking two dogs at once. "Sorry, Alex, but you don't quite get it. You understand it. On a logical level, you understand the words I'm saying and the overall concept." I leaned closer. "But you don't know how fucking amazing this is for the players and for Chester."

  I was pretty sure that Chester had a higher Facilities score than Tranmere Rovers. Just to make sure that we were getting the benefit of sharing The Legends (Saltney Town's training campus), I had created a mutual contract. Chester were paying Saltney one pound a year to use The Legends, and Saltney were paying one pound a year to use Bumpers. I hoped that contract would force the curse to count the two training grounds as one big facility.

  So when you put an elite defensive coach in a very good training ground and made him work with a small group of high-potential defenders... And when you took one of those defenders and you focused your entire weekly Secret Sandra budget into two days of his training... you hoped for good results.

  Secret Sandra, you remember, was the vaguely sinister perk that allowed me to turn some of my hard-earned experience points into improved training speeds for one player at a time. The limit was 200 XP per day, and I had convinced Jackie to come and give a masterclass twice a week. Those chosen for the sessions were those most in need - Helge, Adam, Tomz, Nasa, and Roddy. Roddy was injured so I had 'reluctantly' asked Peter Bauer himself to step in to 'make up the numbers'. As much as I was excited to get that group of defenders popping faster, the main target of this coaching was Thomazella. I planned to spend the maximum 200 XP on him whenever Jackie turned up. It would have been a waste not to use Secret Sandra for the other five days of the week, so I was giving out table crumbs to low-level squad players. Even if it was only 5 or 10 XP a day, all boosts were welcome.

  "You're probably wondering," I said out loud, "why I've suddenly been able to convince Jackie to come and coach us, when there were times in the past when offers of insane money couldn't get him out of bed. And it's simple. The more hours he puts in between now and January, the more ready for action Adam and Tomz will be. A few years ago, I went to Tranmere in January and saved them from relegation. I won't say single-handed because you'll underline the word 'conceited' for the hundredth time. In January 2028, it'll be the Chester boys saving the day again. I can't wait to read the Tranmere discussion boards."

  Alex was sceptical. "Between now and January there might be, what, eight sessions? How much difference would it really make?"

  "Do you know the Current Ability score in Soccer Supremo?"

  "Vaguely. It's out of 200, if I remember correctly."

  "Yeah. Adam and Tomz are, I don't know, low nineties. Let's just say they're both 90. In the normal course of events, they might get to 93 by January. Knowing that I'm sending them on loan and want them to get off to a good start, I'll give them extra minutes in the next four weeks, so they might go up to 95. But if Jackie comes to Bumpers and lavishes them with all this extra attention, I mean... It's hard to say, but..." I pulled at my bottom lip. "96 for Adam, 98 for Tomz? That might be fanciful. We'll have to wait and see but yeah, it could be quite meaningful. We get better players, we get higher future transfer fees, Jackie gets lads who will dig him out of a massive hole. The whole thing - hole thing? - is just incredible and I love it. I am as good as it gets and you can write that down and underline it a hundred times the way you underline the word 'windbag'."

  "I'm only making notes about topics to come back to later because it's all so fascinating."

  "I'm only joking." I took a beat. "How much does it bother you that I mention the way you take notes?"

  He opened his mouth to reply but paused. He gave me a cheeky smile. "Do you want to swap places?"

  "Do you know what I want? You're gonna hate it."

  "Tell me."

  "I want to walk around."

  His elaborately-constructed facade of being an everyman, decades in the making, came crashing down around him. He leaned back, looked up, and groaned. "I hate rain, Max."

  I narrowed my eyes. "What was it Jackie said?" I got the laptop and typed in the lyrics. "It's hard... hold a candle... Here we go. November Rain by Guns N' Roses. I vote we blast this out extra loud before we head outside. Any objections? Bosh."

  The song started.

  "Hang on," I said, pointing to the music video. "I know this. Yeah, it's the one where Elton John plays piano."

  "That's actually Axl Rose."

  "What, seriously?"

  "Yeah. I'm not sure if he was cosplaying as Elton or what."

  A woman in a very sexy white dress walked down the aisle of a church. "179 days until my wedding." I glanced at Alex to see if he wanted to dig into that comment.

  He didn't. He used a knuckle to point towards the screen. "That woman in the wedding dress, that was Axl's girlfriend. Maybe his wife."

  "I didn't know you were a rock fan."

  Alex glanced up at the ceiling. "Any time it rains in November, this comes on the radio."

  "Right," I said. "That makes sense. So it has been on every day for, what, four weeks?"

  "It was a smash hit," said Alex. "One of the defining power ballads of the 90s. One thing I know about it is that it's one of those massive songs that the band hates playing."

  "Why?"

  He shrugged. "Too sappy. Too sentimental? It's like if you won a cup final doing long throws and inswinging corners and for the rest of your career, that's all the fans wanted you to do."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I shuddered. "Mate. This is supposed to be therapy."

  "Sorry, Max."

  "Oh, the guitar solo!"

  "The first guitar solo."

  "What? Anyway, this song's a banger. Let's listen to this instead of talking about my problems." I leaned back and sipped my warm water. "It rained before, during, and after our two home matches in November. Why didn't Joe Anka play this song?"

  "Probably because it's nine minutes long."

  I sat up straight. "What?" Swiping the trackpack, I realised we were barely halfway through. "The shit? Ain't nobody got time for that. I'll just take a screenshot of the lyrics to make it seem like I know the song inside out." I did just that, read them through a couple of times, then pressed pause and slowly closed the laptop. "I want to be in the November rain, not hearing about it."

  Alex gritted his teeth and tried to smile as he looked at the exit. "All right. Therapy on tour!"

  ***

  Alex grabbed his black umbrella and opened the door. I refilled the mug with hot water; I would carry it around. "We'll do a full loop, I reckon. Left or right?" I mused. "Right, I think."

  "You're the boss." I stepped out and pulled down my hood. Alex couldn't believe it. "Don't you want an umbrella?"

  "Nah. Okay, here's something that has been on my mind." I paused and looked at him. "That's good, right? I say what I've been thinking about?"

  "That's good, right," he agreed, using the exact words I had said. That was one of their tricks. Something about if you copy what people say enough times, you can take control of their brain. I'm sure I read that somewhere.

  I led him around to the side of the Sin Bin, all the way towards our boundary fence. I gave the wire mesh a friendly slap. "See that field there?"

  "The one behind all the raindrops?" he said. Whingeing about being outside in the fresh air! "I see that field," he added.

  "I want it."

  "Oh. I didn't expect you to say that but now that you have, I should have expected it. Do you mean for you or for Chester?"

  "For Chester. Expansion plans. Phase two." I sipped my hot water and gestured to the training ground. "This is mint but it's not top-end Premier League mint. Imagine we could see our Soccer Supremo Facilities score, which we obviously can't, so we have to guess. I think I would guess Chester plus Saltney equals 15 out of 20. That's gonna be fine for a couple more years, I think, but when we want to kick on, we'll need that number to be higher, and we don't want to start that process after we run into trouble. We need to get ahead of it."

  He nodded, and I think he gave my mug a jealous glance. "What would you build here?"

  "It's just speculation for now but I'm thinking another gym about the size of the existing one. Then we could split it into men's and women's and tailor the equipment. Bit less bumping into each other, which has pros and cons, but I do think it would boost our score. Then the main thing would be one or two mega pitches."

  "What, like, a double-sized pitch?"

  I laughed. "That sounds fun. No, I mean pitches exactly as good as the one in the Deva. Undersoil heating, top drainage, hybrid grass. Same dimensions, pretty much year-round playability. This rain today wouldn't put a dent in it. Major flood? Yeah, that would be bad but if that happens, we train at the Deva. If that's flooded too, we've got bigger problems than football. Yeah, I'm thinking two spectacular pitches here. Maybe even some little stands around to give it a more epic feeling and so we can host bigger summer tournaments."

  Alex adjusted the umbrella and turned so he could see the main training pitch. "I thought the pitch we have is really great."

  "It is really great," I said, "but what's underneath the grass is loads of sand and stuff that Jonny Planter used his contacts to get. It's a sort of home-made approximation of a mega pitch. I love it and we'll always use it - especially because I can see it from my office - but if we want to level up, this new field is the solution. Then I'm thinking if we really want to be a billion-dollar club we need a much bigger media centre." I had built one next to the Sin Bin, with space for 30 reporters to do press conferences, a room with all kinds of spotlights and different types of chairs for interviews, and an experimental space with a green screen wall that we could use to insert sponsor-friendly backgrounds into videos. "So if we plop a bigger, badder media centre over there, we free up the current media building, and that space will be put to good use. Then the edge of the field that runs by the street will be a decent-sized car park."

  "Oh, that would be very helpful. We're struggling at the moment."

  "I know. People need to get more into the idea that you can park down the road and we'll send a Seal Pup to pick you up. Anyway," I said, taking a warming sip. "That's my idea for phase two."

  "How would it affect the Facilities score?"

  "Hard to say," I confessed. "The biggest difference between us and a megaclub is the number of pitches on offer. Okay, well, here's two more. The number of buildings? Here would be another big one. The number of gym spaces? We'd double what we have. What's hard to factor into the game is perception. When you go to Spurs, it feels amazingly premium and luxurious. It makes the players feel special through the quality of the finish. You know, the marble and the fucking gold toilets or whatever they've got. I don't want that here because it's a community club and I don't want players turning up in Lambos thinking they're better than normal people. And how can Soccer Supremo calculate the feel of a building? You and I love Big Mama House, but Luisa had an equally strong negative reaction. So how do you code that into a game? I'm guessing you can't. I think the finish quality and all-round fanciness could impact the Facilities score but only a little because, you know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. So that's one of the bigger unknowables. My educated guess is that adding phase two would take us from 15 out of 20 to 17. Right? I mean, luxury pitches, big media centre, ample parking... What more do you want?"

  "A big roof covering the whole thing," he muttered. "What would phase two cost?"

  "Two hundred grand for this plot. Which is a rip, by the way, but I don't mind; it's shit being a farmer. Copy paste the gym we built, that's 800 grand or so. New media centre, yeah, another 800. Million quid a pitch. 4... call it 5 million all in? That's a bargain compared to what most clubs spend, and all the work will be done over here so it won't impact our daily life. We'll still be able to train."

  "5 million sounds like a lot, Max."

  "It's not. The real issue about this expansion would be the running costs. I try to keep the club's overheads down in case we get relegated but this expansion would really be, like, whoa, we really need to build our fan base, our sponsorship base." I nodded and we continued our loop of Bumpers.

  "How's that going? Growing the fanbase."

  "Interesting question." I stopped walking; Alex turned to face me. "The waiting list for season tickets has stagnated a tiny bit. That's my main metric for how well we're doing." I started walking again, deep in thought. "The McNally terrace has been a huge hit and we've got a waiting list for season tickets there, but people aren't sure about the new West stand. It'll be good but will it be as much fun? The younger lads want to be in the McNally where they're allowed to be more rambunctious. Do they want to be in with the old fogies and the media and the hospitality types? I think me saying I wanted to leave put a dampener on that part of the club's growth. People don't want to commit to something that might turn sour. I don't know."

  Alex stepped aside to let someone pass on the path. "Is there anything more we can do? I heard we were giving away shirts and match tickets to local kids on their birthdays. That kind of thing, plus winning, and things will go well, surely?"

  "Yeah, it will," I said. I decided I wanted to peer into the gym to see who was training. The pitches were mostly deserted but the gym seemed to be packed. "I'd be happier if we had more of a backlog, though. One area where we've had good growth in fan numbers is abroad. People are responding to our story. We're like Wrexham but we're even more about the football and we're very, very authentic." I eyed Alex's trainers, but he caught me looking so I faced the front. In the busy, warm, well-lit gym, Magnus Evergreen was spotting Saltney Town's Ash Bradley. I pointed. "That's fascinating to me. Ash has always been injury-prone and it has messed up his career. I'm not sure if Magnus is teaching him to exercise better or if this is some special injury prevention stuff, but I love it. Player-physio is an amazing role because Magnus is in the dressing room, he hears players complain about their aches and pains, he can see when they're struggling, and at full-time he can switch to physio mode and get stuck in."

  "How many player-physios do you know?"

  "One," I said, as we set off walking again.

  Alex gave the gym a doleful look, wishing he was inside. "You said this is fascinating and you love it. Could you tell me more about that?"

  "Just that it emerges naturally from the situation they're in. I didn't have to tell them to do it. I think I spent long enough setting examples and telling people what I want that now it's just happening on its own sometimes. I like that. It makes me feel like I've achieved something. Makes me feel like it's worth putting in the work because if you have the right cast of people around you, they'll start to chip in and in the end it can be in the direction of autonomous. I don't know, I just like it. It's rewarding to see the culture seed itself."

  "You spoke about the money you're getting from Saltney Town. That's got to be rewarding. How does that compare to this?"

  We had come to the corner flag of the main training pitch. I put my hand on it and wiggled it around. "You see a similarity between the money and the cultural stuff? Yeah, it's similar but the financial rewards are more predictable. You graft for years, you win the Welsh league, you know how much you're gonna get from UEFA for every win, draw, whatever. That's top but seeing Magnus share his expertise with his mates, or Luisa do extra stuff to make sure the foreign lads settle in, or that day when all the coaches and half a dozen players piled down to York to help Yorkie move. It's more rewarding because it's unexpected. They're doing it because they want to do it and because they like doing it. UEFA don't like sending me tons of cash." I grinned. "Actually, that makes rinsing them very rewarding. Forget all that sentimental stuff. Make my enemies pay me - that's the happiest I can get."

  We walked along the edge of the pitch towards halfway, on the far side, away from the main buildings. To our right lay an unused space. "Is this where you meant for the Guns N' Roses project?"

  "Yeah. I was thinking we could put loads of raised beds and grow our own lettuce or whatever. Not sure. It's one of those good things to do that's also pretty pointless, in the end, when you can just buy a big pack for three quid. That said, when someone comes to visit and we give them a salad and say we grow our own ingredients, I mean, that's nice. People respond well to that. That could help us sign the next Magnus Evergreen, right?" I frowned. "So then it's not pointless." I waved a hand. "We'll work it out. It's not a priority. The only thing I'd say is that I'm not totally comfortable taking away farmland to put down football pitches. I have an impulse to replace the, ah, calorific output that we took away. Not sure how I'll do that, exactly."

  "You're very aware of your impact on this land and your legacy."

  "I suppose," I said, as we passed by the giant screen that was next to the main training pitch. It allowed our coaches to show replays of incidents or moves, or even to demonstrate what a certain drill was supposed to look like. Time on the pitch was limited. Vikki, our set pieces coach, had 40 minutes a week to do her stuff - the big screen was a huge time saver. "If I could click my fingers to a time 20 years from now, Chester would own all the farmland from here to the city, pretty much. This long strip by the river, do you get me? The next section would be for phase 3, but then all the rest, I'd plant woodland. Gorgeous little mini-forest thing all along here. It'd be amazing, but yeah, less arable land so I have to compensate for that." I watched as a few people left one building and rushed around the corner, holding kit bags over their head. "It's like when I sign a kid. Hamish Andrews, for example. He's up in Scotland, as happy as a clam. Do they have clams up there? I tell him he lives in Chester now and he's like, oh. What about my friends and family? They're gone, mate. We're your family now." I said my part of that conversation in a sinister voice that made me cackle. "You have to at least think about replacing what you took."

  "Big Mama House."

  "Yeah!"

  We walked on. Alex said, "Last time we chatted was before the international break. You scored that incredible free kick against Plymouth."

  I groaned. "Don't mention Plymouth. I got so much grief for the cheap beer thing. It's not safe, according to the mainstream media. Load of killjoys. Brooke and MD knew my plan and had tweaked it, hadn't they? I wasn't allowed to mention the cheap beer until right before kick-off and we had to mysteriously run out during half-time."

  "That was a great part of the story, anyway. Plymouth drank Chester dry! They loved it."

  "Not at the time, they didn't, and there was some extra aggro in the city centre afterwards. The Council gave us a bit of a telling-off. Brooke's like, oh no, we have to make beer expensive or the Council will take away our licence. Crying into a wad of banknotes. Yeah, so the international break. What happened? Bark got two more caps for Jamaica. Roddy got a muscle injury training with Wales."

  "How angry did that make you?"

  "Zero. Are you talking about when I got pissed at England for breaking Wibbers? It's not the same. First of all, Well In was coaching at the time and I trust that he's not doing anything insane. Second, we're getting more muscle injuries while we ramp up the intensity of our running. At the moment it's just little abductor tweaks and shit but yeah, more injuries are expected. Also, he's not coming back on a plane. Youngster got called up by Ghana and I was like, he's injured, bro! I phoned them and sorted it out. It's nice to have good relationships with national teams."

  "Why did they call him up if he's injured?"

  "It's teams like Arsenal who announce their players have an injury just before the international break, but they always play in the next game after the break. Countries are sick of being lied to, which is understandable. I did a video call with Ghana's under 23 manager and said, look, it's your right to call him up and check him out yourself but two long-haul flights are the last thing Youngster needs right now. It helped in that case that it was an impact injury and I could show them the incident in the match. But I got Youngster and his dad on the call and they were clearly gutted that he couldn't go. We got it sorted and he was able to stay here and recover properly. And I made sure not to use him in the first match after the break just to show he was really out. I ended up not using him against Norwich, either, so it was really like, yeah, Max means what he says."

  "That seems very mature all round."

  "That particular sitch was decent, yeah. So Ghana and Wales, going good. Northern Ireland's a new one. Lewis Lamarre joined the squad and they actually used him in a match! I think they want to get him to 3 caps so that he's locked in and can't change, not that there's any risk of him playing for England. But Lewis said it was great and they made him feel welcome and hey, he got an international cap. He never expected that, so he's buzzing. Absolutely buzzing. I told the N'ireland scout I'd look out for more prospects for him. Oh, and Hamish and Tommy Thompson went up with Scotland's under 20s so that was a good boost for those guys and it's the start of my relationship with the Scots national teams."

  "Do you want to talk about England?"

  "Nah. We didn't get any men's call-ups at any age groups but it's not egregious. Those squads are usually full of players from megaclubs. Haley was called up for the women's team so that was a relief. If she came over from the States only to get dropped because of shitty politics, that would have been awful." I drained my water and pointed towards my office. "Let's go round so I can dump this." We turned left at the next corner flag.

  "You said you want to win the Youth Cup this season. How's that looking?"

  "Top," I said. "Right now, Chas Fungrieve is as good as Wibbers was in the final we won."

  That statement blew Alex's mind. "Chas? Really?"

  "Really." It wasn't quite true. At the time of our Youth Cup triumph at Old Trafford, Wibbers had been CA 79. Chas, our lanky, ungainly striker, was currently CA 76. Chas's PA was only 83 but he would hit that long before this season's final. "Because we're in the Championship, we skip a couple of the early rounds, so Chas won't be able to go for Wibbers's goals record, but I reckon he will have some fun. He's tall but he's quite agile so the main way to stop him is to get really physical. In men's footy, referees give fouls against Chas even though he's the victim. That's just because he moves weird. I'm hoping that the unfairness will lessen through his career when refs understand what they're seeing, but at youth level, it's a different story because he's just as strong as any defender he plays against. He's going to be a menace; I can't wait for the first match."

  "That's just before Christmas, isn't it?"

  "Yep. Big Christmas present for me, that. I might run up the score for once. Let all the other teams know that Chester ARE back."

  "Whoa-oh, whoa-oh!"

  Smiling, I brought up the under 18s squad list. "We're already miles better than the team that won the cup final."

  "Miles better?"

  "Yeah." That winning team had a potential average CA of around 48. With the current guys arranged in a 3-5-1-1 formation, I could get an average of 51.7. "Some of this year's crop have had minutes in the first team this season, but most haven't. I'm going to try to get everyone on the pitch twice. Once for, like, two minutes, just to get that monkey off their back, then for five so they can get a feel of the ball, maybe compete for a header or whatever. The tricky part is with the three weakest players. The goalie and two centre-backs are a little behind the others, and it's just hard to chuck a goalie on in the Championship, you know? Impossible, actually. And it's almost as hard with a centre back. But even without any boosts, I expect us to be the best team in the competition. The only danger is if one of the big clubs decides to really go for it against us. It's possible they would have a good eleven plus some top attacking talents, but then again, we've got Wallace Wells on the left, Roddy Jones on the right. There won't be many better wingers than that."

  I beeped the door and placed my mug inside. Sandra Lane was at the far end of the corridor, just about to leave on that side. "Max!"

  I stepped through; Alex joined me with unseemly haste. I called out, "What's up?"

  Sandra waved her phone around as she came closer. "Did you just bid 600 thousand pounds for Pascal Bochum?"

  "No," I said.

  "Oh, I see. I was gonna say, that would be mental, even for you."

  "It was 600 thousand Euros," I said.

  She took her time in replying, and I enjoyed watching the rainbow of emotions that appeared on her face. "I suppose my question is, what the fuck? I mean, I'd love to have him back."

  "Back?" I said, confused. She waved her phone around even harder. "Oh," I said. "We're not going to buy him. We're just bidding on him."

  "I see," said Sandra, testily. "That's cleared that up. Alex, it's crystal clear now, isn't it?"

  I let out a weird little snorting sound I couldn't remember ever making before. "It's simple. Every time Pascal's weirdo manager doesn't use him in a game, I'm going to make a transfer bid for him. That's why I'm doing it in Euros, see?"

  "No," said Alex.

  Mildly frustrated that they couldn't understand, I said, "Right. It goes like this. Pascal doesn't get on the pitch, I bid 600,000 Euro. Next week, he's not there again. I bid 590,000. It's a message, right? This asset of yours is losing value every week. My suspicion is that most clubs, when they get an incoming transfer bid, are duty-bound to have a meeting to discuss it. Imagine the head of football and the finance department having two meetings a month in which they discuss how their head coach is wrecking one particular asset. That's why my bid has to be in Euro. If I bid in pounds, they might put the difference down to currency conversions and whatnot. I want it to be visceral. Even though they know I'm yanking their chain, the dwindling offers will provoke a reaction, for sure."

  Little lines appeared in the middle of Sandra's forehead. "So we aren't trying to buy him? You're just being a dick?"

  "If by that you mean I'm putting pressure on the head coach to use a player who will help him get results, yes."

  "And what if you accidentally buy him?"

  I laughed. "The way people keep saying we might accidentally go up through the playoffs? I'm not going to accidentally buy a tiny German forward, Sandra. I'm not like you when you get drunk and wake up shocked the next morning because they're delivering the new sofa you ordered."

  She got shifty. "That was Jamie mashing the keyboard. Look, what if they accept one of these bids?"

  I shrugged. "Then we negotiate with Pascal. If he wants to come back, we get a good player and he gets to use the facilities his sale paid for. Sell him for a million, buy him back for half that, except he's worth way more now because he has been improving the whole time he has been away. Heh. I'd go for that. Why not? But it won't happen. In his mind it would be like giving up. He would come back to Chester in a few years, yeah, after he had proved himself there. Not anytime soon and by then we'll be in the Prem. Nah, this bid is just me trying to help his career in my own unique, special way."

  Sandra's eyebrows climbed about half an inch. "This is, indeed, a unique and special way to help someone's career. That's true enough." Her brows returned to their default setting. "What if this backfires on him?"

  "What, so that he plays negative minutes?"

  "I take your point, but he isn't in the bomb squad or anything. He's not playing because of tactical reasons. This doesn't help with that."

  "We'll see. I have to get back to my therapy."

  Sandra looked worried. "Oh my God, I didn't know. Sorry."

  "I don't think it matters. Alex just wants to see that I'm open and communicating and living my best life and at the end of the session he gives me a lollipop. So far I've answered all his questions and now I've even answered yours, too. It's the best session ever."

  Alex was listening, but his attention was focused on the walls. To our left were two lifts, then a staircase. On our right, the wall was covered in carefully-chosen scenes from recent Chester FC history. "Can we talk about this wall art?"

  "No," I said. "Kay, Sandra. Seeya. Once more, Alex! Once more unto the breach!" We popped outside again. The rain had eased off and was no more than a heavy drizzle. Jackie, Luisa, and a small group of defenders were doing their masterclass. I got fifteen yards closer and watched it for half a minute. "That looks absolute mustard," I said, with a sigh. "Maybe I should have let him get sacked. Then I could have this every day."

  "How does he feel about losing his assistant?"

  "Mixed feelings," I said. "Vimsy was a rock for him, but he's down in Tempsford and surprise, surprise, he loves it. I got him a replacement striker who isn't a dick and they're running rampant again. If you're Jackie and you see your mate is happy you don't think ugh, this is bad news for me. You get some of that happiness yourself. And the owners were happy to send over an American coach to be Jackie's new assistant. That's to help them tap into the American market, but I watched the guy work and he's got the skills. Jackie's realistic about how strong his position is. Fans have short memories, owners change. Life's precarious." I checked a screen in the curse. "I've been the Chester manager for 1,674 days."

  "What's - "

  "Four years, six months."

  "That's... I don't have any context for that. Is that a lot?"

  "Depends on your point of view but I'm the fourth-longest serving manager in the top four leagues. I was fifth until Crawley sacked TJ."

  "Your mate."

  "Yeah." I tried to think of something meaningful to say about that, but couldn't. TJ had done amazingly well to last as long as he had under the new ownership. I pointed towards Bumpers Lane to tell Alex the route we would be taking. To our right, a series of mini-pitches; ahead, the two full-size 3G ones. "Some of the managers I overtook on that list moved to bigger clubs, so it's not that they were all sacked, if you get me. But the job's so brutal. You turn up at a club that's in a shambles, most of the time."

  "Because you're replacing a manager who got the boot."

  "Right. Your squad's an incoherent mess. How many times have you seen a Premier League club appoint an attacking manager, replace him with a defensive one, then go to a guy who does mid-block counters, then start the cycle again? You go through managers like that you're gonna have a mess of a squad. The new guy needs time to sort it out but then bang, you sack him." I glanced at Alex, and was happy that he couldn't get his notebook out because of the rain. It helped me to open up. I glanced around to make sure no-one was nearby. "I have imposter syndrome sometimes. We're playing Stoke, we're playing Norwich, Birmingham. These are big clubs! You get good results but you think you must have got it through luck or something. The oppo managers are trying interesting things but we're holding our own against them. I can't shake the feeling that it's not because we're doing anything amazing. Most of what we've done this season has been really conservative. Functional. No amazing tactics at all that I can remember. Square pegs in square holes, make sure we don't get outnumbered in midfield. Those other clubs are tripping over their own feet and we're just nipping around them." I shook my head. "I'm up against good managers in this league but half are hamstrung by their owners and the mad expectations of the fans. It's crazy how many times I hear fans booing their own players at half time. How many crisis clubs are there in this league? It's mental."

  Alex listened patiently. "Imposter syndrome? Tell me about Stoke City."

  I lifted my eyes while I recalled the memories. "Yeah, so Stoke have one of those squads that have been built over loads of managers. It's not coherent. They have some good players but overall it's a mess. We're lean and quite well optimised. We got an early lead and waited for Stoke to come at us. When they did, we picked them off. It was going amazing until the end when it went bonkers. How did it go? Two-nil to us, two-one, three-one, three-two final but they had two amazing chances in the last minute."

  "It's interesting there, Max, you said our squad's optimised. That's not what an imposter would say. That's what a technocrat would say."

  I smiled. "Yeah, but that's the director of football speaking, not the co-manager. But I see what you're saying. Um..." I pushed my hood back to let the rain smash into my face, then covered myself again. "I think I'm still not confident about man-management and don't think I'm doing a good job when it comes to the more highly-strung players and I think that's gonna be quite a limiting factor in my career."

  "You're talking about Owen Elmham."

  "Yeah."

  "Tell me how it started from your point of view."

  "Right. Brooke shows me the tweet from Owen's mum. I read it and my first words are, 'Well there goes seventh.' She says, 'Why do you say that?' I say, 'Because we just lost our best goalkeeper'. She tries to talk me down from the ledge and stuff."

  "Why do you think your first reaction was that we had lost Owen?"

  I tutted. "Because there's no way I'm going to put up with that crap. It's bad for the team, it's bad for the image of the club."

  Alex closed his eyes while trying to remember the wording of the tweet. "That Max Best is clueless. How does that make you feel?"

  "It doesn't bother me in itself. Millions of people worldwide write similar things every day. Everyone's got an opinion. The difference is this is a player's family. My first thought was that Owen told her to write that, knowing it would create a media storm."

  "I doubt that very much."

  "You're free to doubt that very much but that's the whole problem, right? As soon as this story comes out, everyone splits into two camps. Those who agree with the mad old cow, those who disagree. Those who want Owen in the team, those who think this bad behaviour is disqualifying. We're split. And every time a girlfriend or a wife talks shit about me, we split again. And again and again until there's no team spirit left. It's absolutely unacceptable. I'm not going down this path. The thing about the enemy within is that when you know who it is, it's very easy to make them the enemy without. Owen's out of the team. Problem solved."

  "That was your first instinct. But he has played since then."

  "Yeah. So-called wiser heads told me to slow down, think things over, talk to Owen. We had a supervised chat in which I explained my position. I said that while I didn't like being slagged off by a player's mum, I could let that part slide, but that I couldn't accept her slagging off the football club, which had made Owen its highest-paid player ever. That's not how you say thanks. He countered by saying that he didn't write the texts so what was I mad at him for? I didn't take that very well, and countered by saying that to me, this was a tactic to undermine Swanny's position and his confidence so that Owen would be our number one goalie by default, and maybe that worked at his other clubs but not here because he's now goalie number four and he's lucky that Banksy is out on loan. I said that if he wanted to find another club he could leave whenever he wanted."

  Alex's face was a picture. He could not believe what he was hearing. "Go on."

  "Sandra and MD invited me to shut my gob for a minute, which I did with almost no sulking. Long story short, they told me I wasn't allowed to bin him off because of this. I said fine, every time his mum writes shit about Chester, Owen gets a two-match ban. Sandra's absolutely horrified because he's really a top player. Really, really top. And yeah, it's a shame because with Owen in the team you look upwards at the league table and without him you look sideways. But that's how it had to be. That's why Rainman was on the bench against Stoke and Norwich and Owen was wherever the fuck."

  "Now that you reflect on it," said Alex, carefully, "is there any part of you that thinks you over-reacted?"

  I opened my mouth to reply, but then realised he had tricked me. He thought I over-reacted - join the club - and this was his way of saying it. Neat trick! "No. I need to set boundaries otherwise this behaviour takes root and you can never get rid of it. It's Japanese Knotweed, this. And this is actually a good time to do it because it's a safe season. I can't have players wrecking their mates on social media, directly or indirectly. I can't have wives or agents or brothers slagging the club off. Players need to know that I only have one button, and that button is very large, very red, and very bad for their careers."

  "I'm not a football expert, as you know, but it seemed like we struggled in the matches that Swanny started."

  "You mean Swanny looked rubbish against Stoke and Norwich?" He hadn't done too badly in the first match, but Stoke's late surge came partly because Swanny shanked a few clearances and got shaky when the Stoke fans taunted him. Then, against Norwich, I played in the DM role (to let Youngster heal) for the first half, and we were leading 1-0 when I subbed myself off so I could get enough XP to buy cool new perks. In the second half, Norwich put the brilliant Charlie 'Duggers' Dugdale on the wing to see if he could cause some mischief against his former club. I mean, yeah, he could. We ended up losing 4-2 and when people said we would have got a draw had Owen been playing, they were probably right. "The way I see it is that a teammate went public saying Swanny was shit. What's that gonna do to your confidence? This is a hard game and all your mistakes are put under the microscope. It helps to think that your teammates like you and respect you." I lifted my shoulder and stretched. "It's winding me up just thinking about all this. I don't accept it's an over-reaction, no. Swanny's an asset for this club. He represents millions of pounds in potential income. Owen doesn't. He's just a cost. A massive cost and yeah, he's saved a few shots but so far we have been dicked on the trade because clubs are looking at Swanny thinking, yeah, no, don't fancy that. So we've lost half a million in wages, a couple of million in lost transfer fees. Plus I've got ulcers and I need new teeth because these have been ground down. Over-reaction? I honestly think my first reaction was right. Bin him off as soon as that post appears on socials. What a statement that would have been! You sign for Chester, you make your gobby relatives delete their socials. Instead we've got this constant drone of noise from the media and it's just more and more pressure on Swanny."

  We were walking past the medical centre, which had been getting busier in recent weeks. The latest to pick up a strain was Joel Reid, though Andrew was back on the ‘suspected leg injury’ list. So far, the lads were only losing 2 or 3 weeks at a time, which was tolerable. If the injuries got bigger, we would have to pause our plan to increase the physical demands on our players.

  Alex scratched his cheeks. "After his two-match ban, you put Owen back in against Birmingham and he was brilliant. Loads of saves, clean sheet, two-nil win."

  I got hot under the hood. I turned towards Alex and raised my arms. "And what happened? The final whistle hadn't even blown and his stupid mother was off on one again!" I lowered my arms but couldn't stop clenching my fists. "See, Max Best? That's what you get when you use your best players!" I pulled my shoulders up again, tried to will them to relax as I turned them in loops. "He's done. He's out. If you're not with us, you're against us. All for one, one for all. Thanks for your service, we'll always have Birmingham, now clear out your locker."

  Alex rubbed his cheek even harder. "I know it's hard to keep an open heart when even friends seem out to harm you."

  I frowned and pulled my phone out to check the song lyrics. "Well done," I said.

  Alex smiled slightly. "Six points from the last three games moved us up to twelfth. Top half of the Championship! The highest position in the club's history. Isn't it worth trying to find a way to keep Owen involved? I understand your point of view, and yes, he's only here until the end of the season and it's good to make an example of someone as a warning to everyone else in the future. But..."

  I got the feeling he had more to say but that he couldn't. If my key defenders had used their sessions to say that they much preferred having Owen in goal than Swanny, Alex wouldn't break their confidence to tell me that. "I think that the Owen conversation is over, Alex. It's not just the first teamers and the guys we might sign who need to learn this lesson, it's the kids. I've been scouting Cheshire again and I've found a couple of minor gems. They need to know what it takes to make it at Chester. Their parents, too."

  Both my latest finds were hopefully years away from having their brain rotted away by social media: a ten-year-old AM R with PA 115, and a nine-year-old goalie with PA 75.

  I wagged my finger at the main 3G pitch, the one with the friendly T-Rex watching the on-pitch action. "This is a place for positivity. This is a place for builders. You build a career, you build friendships, you build wealth. Owen's mum is the opposite of that. She's got the mentality that gave us Brexit and a lurch towards far-right politics. I can't stop people like her hollowing out this country but I can stop it here. Out there, the words are chaos, stupidity, backstabbing, entitlement. In here, it's growth. Thriving. Togetherness. Unity. Optimism. What was the lyric in that song? Nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain. Nothing lasts forever. We made it to twelfth, now we gracefully slide down the table. Owen reminded clubs what he can do; he can go and do that for those other clubs, and his mum can get back to her Facebook groups."

  Alex seemed to be on a mission to save Owen's career so that Chester could finish in the top half of the table. Absolutely wild behaviour. "If Owen's mum was here and she was listening, really listening, what would you say to her?"

  I looked down, smiled, and shook my head. I wasn't gonna answer that one. I pointed back the way we came. "I was distracted by Jackie's big, shiny head when we were down there. I want to buy the next field that way, too. That'll be phase three. The academy. On the left, a row of low classrooms. On the right, one of those domes that cover a pitch. You need one of those when you're in the Premier League, for some reason. That's two million quid. It'll be hard to stop the first team from begging to train in there on days like these."

  "Why don't you put a giant dome over the whole of Bumpers?"

  "Jackie's head's not big enough." I rolled my head around. Being reminded of all the old stress had stressed me out. "We have got six league games left in 2027. On paper, and if we can move past all the social media bullshit and get back to business, we should get three wins, a draw, and two defeats. Ten points. That's very, very decent. That would put us 11th or 12th, maybe only five points behind Wrexham. That's my prediction, anyway. I'm consolidating the shit out of this football club, which is my job right now. I'm happy. I rate my performance 9.7 out of ten."

  We walked on a bit while I double-checked my workings. The men's team only had three matches in November. We had beaten teams with CA 116 and 117, as we would expect, but lost to a team with CA 135. Even in that one, we had outplayed Norwich in the first half. Me, Peter Bauer, Dan Badford, Cheb, and Wibbers were silky smooth, almost impossible to get the ball away from. It was like we were doing Relationism but on a pitch-wide scale. Every time I thought about the triangle between Peter, Dan, and myself, I got a tiny little frisson of pleasure on the back of my neck.

  Good results, then, and I had earned a good chunk of XP and used it well. Some went towards boosting my players, and some went into the Panopticon perk. I added Tranmere Rovers and Newport County to my squad lists. Why? Because in each case, I had half a million pounds riding on the outcome of their season. By adding the squads to my head I would know if a key player picked up a slight injury that needed to be rested, and I'd know as soon as someone threw a tantrum or was acting against the interests of the team.

  Then I had saved up for a new Attribute, spent the 4,000 XP, and unlocked...

  Anticipation.

  A player's ability to see the future. Obviously, the higher the better. Peter Bauer's score was high, of course, while Fitzroy Hall's was relatively low. That fit with the eye test - people often talked of Peter having a 'sixth sense' when it came to spotting danger, while Fitz was often a half a second too late to make a block or a clearance.

  It seemed certain to me that forwards benefited from Anticipation. Tom Westwood had a low score, while Wibbers had a high one. Yeah. Wibbers would quite often take a few steps back in a crowded penalty area and the ball would drop right to his feet. It happened with Tom sometimes, but I never got the sense it was anything other than blind luck. It was almost as though Wibbers was making his own luck.

  Really good Attribute to unlock, I reckoned, and more evidence that November had been a good month. Given the choice, I would try to sign players with high Anticipation. It wouldn't always be possible, of course, but Chester were slowly getting to the point where we would be able to choose from similarly talented players, and then I would gravitate towards those with high Anticipation, Decisions, Determination, and Technique.

  XP balance: 1,728

  We were walking past the canteen, towards the car park, but Alex stopped. He frowned and scratched his cheek. "You didn't mention Spectrum and Pradeep. They have been very excited recently. Running around, whizzing from here to Saltney."

  "Yeah, they're excited. We tweaked the model recently and the computer loved it. The AI is starting to produce more reliable results." Pradeep's model had gobbled up the Anticipation data I fed it and it instantly started spitting out much better results. It was such a leap forward that it was scary. How soon until an advanced chatbot replaced me? Now I knew what it felt like to live in the age of AI as an artist, a programmer, or an English teacher.

  Alex said, "That's good. Now you just need to get it to filter players by the social media output of their parents."

  I groaned. "Let it drop, Alex." I shook my head but then laughed. The Owen Elmham situation was absurd, it was true. "I suppose that's what I'm worried about, long-term. You can have the best data, the best scouting, the best facilities, but to succeed you need to master the human element. I always feel like such a noob. Four years, six months, but there are times I feel like I'm getting worse at dealing with other human beings."

  "If I said that was a sign that you're more aware of what you could be doing better and it's a sign of your growing skill, what would you say?"

  "I'd say that being trained to only ask open questions has made you a bit verbose."

  Alex blinked, then laughed hard. He dipped his umbrella to check how much it was raining. Answer? Enough to warrant an umbrella. "You're not getting worse, Max, you're getting more experienced. You know that you're sometimes ballsing up and you're frustrated. That's conscious incompetence and the next step..."

  "Conscious competence. Right. That's something to look forward to. Will I pencil that in for, oooh, 2037?"

  "It's only my opinion but you could start by looking for a solution with Owen, if only because it's good practice."

  "Mmm," I said. "I've already told him how I feel. It was a pretty, ah, comprehensive chat. He knows where he stands, which is on the outside of the tent. I told him he might as well get his wrist done so he's ready for action in January."

  "Get his wrist done?"

  "Yeah, I spotted him being weird in training and I made him go to the physios and he confessed that he had some pain from time to time. I wanted to make them do full scans because it didn't seem right. That made him fess up. Turns out he needs an operation but he has always put it off. I was like, well there you go, then. This is the universe telling you to finally sort this whole mess out once and for all. He was like, if there are complications, I won't be able to find a new club in January and you'll be stuck with me. I went, yeah that's not ideal but do you want to be in pain for the rest of your life? Get it sorted, you dick." The loop was nearly done. At the end, Alex could go and jump into a pile of towels.

  Someone with an umbrella came jogging towards us. Livia Stranton, physio. "Sorry, Max. Just a quick thing. Andrew Harrison has tweaked his abductor again. Three weeks out."

  "Christ," I said. "Is it the same one, or on the other side?"

  "Same one."

  I looked up. "It never rains but it pours. Did we rush him back too quickly?"

  "I don't think so. In fact, I'm sure we didn't. We don't need to panic, but we do need to be proactive. I'd recommend reducing his workload for a while, and I'll get the Brig and Magnus together and we'll design a regime to prevent this."

  I nodded. "Sounds top. Okay, thanks for letting me know."

  Livia hurried back to the medical block. I rubbed my lips hard. Andrew missing a few matches wasn't a huge deal - we had options - but I really didn't like repeat injuries, and really didn't like how many guys were succumbing to tears and strains. There didn't seem to be much option, though. We had to be able to run like a Premier League team within the next 18 months.

  It was annoying that it was Andrew, though, because I needed him to max out his CA as soon as poss. He was the only really good target I had this season for the God Save the King perk, which was the only way I knew how to increase a player's PA. Andrew was CA 114, only 7 points away from his cap, but this latest injury would delay his peak until February, maybe even March. If he got injured again - no, it didn't bear thinking about. I would trust our medical team to get on top of this problem and sort it out once and for all.

  We walked on, and the sound of the rain hitting different objects in different but equally pleasing ways lifted my mood.

  Alex stopped us and said, "Can I mention a topic I hoped would come up naturally?"

  "Sure."

  "Bethany Alban published that article about you and your trip to Poland. The two articles. The Decision and Good Grief. Amazing story. I'd love to dive into it in more detail because there's really a lot to discuss there, but it's clear how much you worry about your mum. What would you say - No. Who took that photo of Anna and your mum?"

  I pulled an exasperated face. "Angela, their carer."

  "Tell me if I'm overstepping, but it seems like you didn't want Anna to talk to your mother about what you do, and I assume that would go for Angela, too. So do you feel like Angela taking the photo was, you know, a betrayal, or something like that?"

  I looked down and stared at a leaf that had blown across Bumpers. It was yellow, pointy, and soggy. "No. I think if I had been there I would have been mad and would have told them to fucking quit it, but I wasn't there. Anna wouldn't have done anything to hurt my mum and neither would Angela. I mean, blaming Angela for that would be pretty crazy, right? I asked her about it, of course, and she looked guilty but said she came back from the shops one day and there they were, wearing their Chester tops. She said mum was having one of her best days and it was all just amazing and they could talk and she understood. No, Angela's not in my bad books, if that's the question." I kicked the leaf, which didn't move much. "I'm not mad at Noah, either."

  "Noah Harrison? The youngest Triplet?"

  "I thought about it and decided he was the one Anna would have asked to get the Chester tops. If Anna asks for it, he might suspect he knows what it's for, but he'd think like me. Anna knows best." I smiled. "Or maybe she ordered them online. Who knows? I'm not gonna get the Brig to investigate this one."

  "And Anna herself? She didn't want to tell you to your face what she had done."

  "Am I mad at Anna?" I said, checking I understood the question. When I said the words, they seemed surreal. "No. Not even, like, a tiny iota. I'm just grateful to her for helping my mum like she did. So what if she took a sledgehammer to my ankles and told me I couldn't leave Bumpers?"

  Alex frowned. "Misery?" he asked.

  "That's the one."

  "Is that how you feel about having to stay here? That you are a prisoner of your biggest fan?"

  "No." I thought about my answer after I had said the word. "She wants me, and my mum would want me, to be here. Building things. Helping people. Thriving. And I want to be here. So, yeah. It comes with a cost, though."

  "Not being able to afford the experimental treatment."

  "Yes. So, I'm really trying not to think about that because if I'm here, there are limits to how much I can earn. Mission failed. Quest marked incomplete. Hard to take but okay, good, fine, it's gone. This is where I'm staying. But it really makes it ten, twenty, a hundred times more important that it goes the right way. Positivity. Togetherness. Unity. We're all here, happy to be here, all bringing positivity to every day. That's what Anna loved. Hearing stories from the Triplets and Gemma and Aff about what we did and what we were doing. That day when the photo was taken, that's what mum responded to. She didn't ask what my pre-tax salary was or how my net worth was trending. She wanted to hear about all the Exit Trial kids. How I found the Triplets on a beach on their first trip abroad as a family. About Youngster and Kisi. And okay, it's very slightly possible I could have handled Owen's situation better but next time mum has a good day like that, if it ever happens, I don't want her hearing that Chester's a fucking cesspit now same as everywhere else, with all the players feuding and turning on each other and influencers and grown men having fake tantrums for clicks. That's not going to happen. I'm more determined than ever to run this club the right way. My way." I stopped because I was, yeah, getting a bit worked up. I pulled my hood back and let nature wash my face clean.

  A car door slammed and I looked towards the sound, checking that it wasn't some baddies come to mug me again. It was a young man under an umbrella. He looked wretched. "Mister," he whined. "The rain. It never stops."

  I covered my forehead with my hood. "Do you want to go home, mate?"

  He looked down, then into my eyes. "No."

  "Alex," I said, doing an introduction. "This is Emiliano, an attacking midfielder who currently plays for Pescara. That means fish. He's literally a fish boy and he's complaining about a little water."

  "Little water?" He clicked his tongue and splashed his expensive trainers into a puddle.

  "Emiliano, this is Alex Short, our sports psychologist. When you are sad, you can talk to him. You will say, Alex, it's not fair, Max is so mean to me! And Alex will say, that's Mr. Best to you!"

  Emiliano stared unblinkingly from me to Alex, but then laughed. "I am 'appy to meet you, Alex. I know that Mr. Best only looks for the best." He preened. "Which is why I am here."

  "Oh my God," I said. "You're one of those. Listen, mate, it's a shame you don't like the rain because I was thinking if you're not too jet-lagged, you might want to play a match tonight."

  "A match? For Chester?"

  "No, we can't register you until January. I'm going to Manchester. My team there is called West."

  "West Isby, yes, I know. I study."

  "West Didsbury," I said, even though I tried to let it slide. Another failure. "So it's West - basically their normal team - versus Best. That's me."

  Emiliano got it. "And me. Eleven against two. I feel sorry for West."

  I laughed. Why had everyone called him a prick? "There will be eleven of us, I'm sorry to say. Mixed ability, mixed gender. It will be fun and I'd like to play with you."

  Alex said, "Maybe you should say play alongside you."

  To the Italian, I said, "There's only one tiny thing. You're not allowed to shoot. If you shoot, you'll be back on a plane to Pescara before the ball hits the back of the net."

  Alex said, "Ah, wait. You did mean you would like to play with him."

  Emiliano shrugged. "I am just happy to be on the grass and by the way..." He grinned, and he suddenly looked very dashing. "Is good you know that when I shoot, the ball goes to the net. So," he said, smiling, "West versus Best. A new champion arrives."

  "Jesus," I mumbled. "Listen, the home team are sixth tier. It's fun, yeah? Entertainment."

  "Of course," he said. "I am Emiliano."

  I looked at Alex. "Did he understand what I said, do you think?"

  Alex didn't get the chance to reply. Three car doors opened and slammed shut, and a gaggle of women rushed towards me, umbrellas all over the place. "Max!" cried the closest, Charlotte. Behind her was Sarah Greene, and bringing up the rear was Angel. Emiliano's cocky attitude vanished as soon as he spotted her. "Max!" yelled Charlotte, just as loud as the first time.

  "What?" I said.

  "Have you heard?"

  Angel said, "He hasn't heard or he wouldn't be out here bantering Alex and this rando."

  I winced. When Emiliano looked up the word rando later, he would be crushed. I said, "I haven't heard. Hit me."

  Charlotte got her phone out and stuck it in my face. "They've arrested Owen Elmham! It's all over the news!"

  I took her phone in actual disbelief. Alex covered me with his umbrella so he could read the story, too. "What the shit," I said. "He got a shotgun and... blew his mother's... phone to smithereens. Neighbours heard him shout, 'That'll learn ya, now stop squitting my football club, you batty old mawkin.'" I returned Charlotte's phone and pressed my palms together, fingers straight up, like I was praying. I closed my eyes and a moment later, snapped into action. "Charlotte, you're the new captain of Best FC."

  "Right."

  "This is Emiliano. He's going to play with you. He's not allowed to shoot. If he showboats too much, kick him in the dick."

  "Happy to."

  "Emiliano, this is Charlotte. She's your boss now, okay?"

  "Yes, yes. Scusi, did you say shotgun?"

  "That's a good point," I said. "Where did Owen - ah, it's Norfolk. Farmers. They're all packing heat down there. It's like Hot Fuzz, my favourite movie."

  Sarah Greene said, "What are you going to do?"

  "I'm gonna race down to Norfolk and rescue my player. What else? Hang on, where is Norfolk? I've got Norfolking clue!"

  Alex said, "It's south, Max. Turn left at London."

  "Top, top, sounds easy. Wait, hang on." I checked the song lyrics I had saved to my photo album. "Ha, I knew it. Listen, ladies. When I look into Owen's eyes, I can see a glove restrained... Because he's been restrained. By the police."

  Charlotte said, "We get it, Max. And glove because he's a goalie. It's top-notch."

  I closed my eyes while I wondered what else I needed to do. I couldn't think of anything. "Alex, my brain's all fixed. Thanks for the session. Ladies, look after this lad. He's the future of Italian football. Maybe."

  "Max," said Alex, reaching out to grab my wrist. "Please take the Brig."

  "Why?"

  "You can't do this on your own. You can't go to a police station and persuade them to let Owen go."

  "Why not? I can be charming, you know."

  He got loud. "Because you're grinning like the Cheshire Cat!" He closed his eyes, maybe worried he had gone too far, but he was right. My Morale had gone so high it had broken the meter. "Anyway, you're always talking about the right person for the right job. When there's a free kick 25 yards from goal, everyone says, this is Max Best territory. Someone's in hot water with the police? That's Brig territory."

  Sarah Greene said, "Alex, you're smashing this, but one small detail. The correct terminology for when a free kick is 25 yards from goal is Sarah Greene territory."

  Alex nodded, happy to be corrected, and then he looked me up and down. He rubbed my sleeve. "If you're going to the police station and if you want to be helpful, wear a suit, take the Brig, let him do all the talking. Try not to be this happy," he added, with a slightly exasperated chuckle.

  "I understand," I said. "I think you're right. Suit. Sombre. Serious. John Smith to do all the talking. That sounds right. But, ah, I'm gonna need a sombre umbrella."

  Alex nodded his agreement. "Yes, exactly. The details. Just like when you're thinking of a tactical plan. Treat this like a tricky away match. Excellent."

  "I'll need a black umbrella," I said, and counted.

  When I reached three, Alex stepped away. "No, Max, I need it. No, come on, please. There are billions of black umbrellas in the world."

  Angel looked at him with big eyes. "Team, Alex. Team."

  Sarah nodded her agreement. "There's no 'you' in umbrella."

  That one made me laugh extra hard, and it utterly defeated Alex. He handed it over.

  Emiliano stepped to the side and brought Alex under his wing. "Hey, now!" I cried, smiling. "There we go! Chesterness! Unity! Togetherness! Seventh in the league is BACK ON!" I hesitated, my enormous grin fading a little. "Unless one of my players spends the rest of the season in the clink. Ah, well. If he does, I'll visit him twice a week." Inspiration struck - I burst into song. "Owen Elmham needs somebody. Owen Elmham needs someone. Everybody needs somebody - you're not the only one! You're Chester's number one! Heh. Absolute banger. Like Owen's shotgun. Heh." I paused. "I just heard myself. Let the Brig do all the talking, Max. This is serious. Very, very sewious."

  I skipped away, spinning the umbrella, tipping my hood to the T-Rex, jumping on and off low walls, splashing, whistling.

  Just kind of "singing... and dancing... iiiiiiinnnnnn the do-do-do..."

  From behind me, I heard Charlotte. "Okay, the gaffer has cracked. I'd better call the Brig since Max forgot that part."

  I heard Angel. "Hey, have we met?"

  I heard Emiliano. "Yes. You were a bottle of perfume."

  I heard Sarah. "If Max is this happy to be 12th, what's he gonna do when we make it into the playoffs?"