11.

  Sunday, January 9

  ***

  XP balance: 2,990

  ***

  Dagenham was bursting with places to play football on a Sunday morning: Castle Green, Mayesbrook Park, Parsloes Park, Goals, Powerleague. The population of Dagenham, one little slice of the capital, was about the same as the population of Chester. It was paradise for me and my Playdar, a giant breakfast bar in the biggest buffet of all - London.

  I took a map from my hotel's reception and divided the area around the Victoria Road Stadium - where the women would play their vital FA Cup match in a few hours - into three zones. I would jog around the parks and five-a-side pitches, adding as many players to my database as possible, before hitting Playdar in the exact middle of the zone. That would make sure I got the most return on my time investment.

  That was the plan, anyway. In the end, I massively underestimated how vast the place was, and didn't try to chase the second Playdar hit - it was taking me south, towards the Thames. I jogged north, back towards my hotel.

  I would have to come back with a scooter or a Smart Car so I could really whizz around. A couple of weeks just scouting London? I didn't know when I would have the time, but purely in terms of adding entries to my mental database there would be nowhere better.

  There was talent, too. Lots of guys I'd love to have at Tempsford or even West, but such moves weren't practical and I didn't have a London outpost. Yet.

  Did I want a club in London? It would mean going to London. On a regular basis.

  Nah.

  Nah, I would enter the nation's capital one time and plunder it like the Brits plundered [insert reader's country name here]. Bit of reverse colonialism. I would steal London's Dragon Balls and its Black Star Dragon Balls and sell them back to London clubs for a hundred million pounds a pop.

  Mwa-haha-HAHA!

  "Nice to see a big smile in the morning."

  I stopped jogging. The woman who had spoken was out walking a tiny dog and she was very cute. So was the woman. "Yeah, I was just thinking that London has loads of talent."

  She gave me a wary smile; she wasn't sure she liked my answer. "You're a talent-spotter, are you?"

  "I spot talent," I said. "Not sure if that makes me a talent-spotter."

  "What's my talent?"

  I had misread her expression; she was a cheeky flirt! "World-class smile and you always remember to cover your leftovers in the microwave."

  Her lips twitched. "You're good at this."

  I laughed. "Yeah. I'm great." I looked up the street to show that I was about to depart. "And there are worlds left for me to conquer. I must away."

  "Enjoy your run," she said.

  "Enjoy being a smokeshow."

  She twisted her lips in the most delightful way, but seeing that I didn't leave, she gave me a slightly nervous look - with a hint of a blush - and said, "What?"

  I spread my arms. "Maybe I will buy a club in London!"

  With that, I jogged away - one might say I floated off - thinking about how great life was, how easy, and how utterly brilliant and lovely it was to be surrounded by the fairer sex. Women were wise, women were easy to manage, women had high emotional intelligence. Women were uncomplicated.

  ***

  The team bus was nearing the stadium, so I joined up with Livia, Pascal, and Vikki and as we made our way there, I reflected on just how huge the afternoon's match was going to be.

  The women were enjoying their season, feeling that every match was exciting and vital, but from my point of view there were only three interesting games left. Today's FA Cup Fourth Round against West Ham United was one. The Hammers (AKA The Irons) were in the bottom half of the top tier. If we could beat them, it would give me all kinds of faith in what the current group would accomplish. It would also give us the confidence that if we did get to a playoff against the lowest-placed WSL team, we would smash it. Importantly, it would also give us at least one more fixture, one more chance to get training boosts.

  The second interesting match was coming in two weeks, when we would play the Nando's Cup quarter-finals against Man City. We would be at home in that one, and Brooke was marketing it pretty hard, but realistically we would struggle. It would show me what was needed, though, in terms of our tactics, coaching, and player recruitment.

  Assuming we lost both the cup games, the entire season would boil down to our away fixture against league leaders Birmingham City. If they drew just one of their matches before that day, we could win the league and avoid a playoff by beating them.

  Yeah, it was pretty tense in the league, but today our attention was entirely focused on the cup. I wasn't sure what West Ham's average CA was, but we had to be close-ish. Close enough to give them a scare, surely?

  Ideally, I would have used Bench Boost to narrow the gap, but messing about with lineups and subs was getting harder and harder. We would pick our strongest eleven and see what happened.

  West Ham (or their landlords, Dagenham and Redbridge) had graciously allowed us to use one of the stadium's meeting rooms for our final debrief. These sessions were normally pretty tame affairs, relaxed meetings where the players and coaches could clarify some tactical questions that had come up on the drive, could float some ideas, could tell jokes about a teammate's taste in music or something funny they'd seen on social media. The real motivational stuff was done in the dressing room after the team sheets had been handed in and the first warm ups had taken place.

  "Max Best!" I cried, sliding into the DM (domain of meetings). I did a 360 as I crossed the room, applauding all sides of an imaginary arena in which a hundred thousand imaginary cute Londoners were calling my name. "An arrival without rival!" I said, as I got to the front-middle of the room, facing the rows of chairs that had been laid out.

  My goofy smile died as I took in the scene. The players of Chester FC's almost-all-conquering women's squad looked like they were at a funeral. Stony faces, worried faces. On the far left of the room, Charlotte had a hoodie covering her head but I could see she was devastated. On the far right, Angel, looking haggard. In the middle, Kisi and Dani, confused. Something big had happened, but that particular pair didn't know what.

  "Shit," I said.

  I pulled up the women's squad list. From the default page, which was simply a list of their names and positions, everything looked normal. But then again, why wouldn't it? There was a perk in the shop called Full Frontal that would bring important info from inner tabs to the main squad page. I had lived without it for a long time but suddenly it looked well worth 2,000 XP.

  I clicked into a couple of names and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I sorted the squad list by Morale and had one of the biggest shocks of the season.

  "The fuck?" I said. Yesterday, the average Morale had been solid at 5.5 out of 7, the kind of level it had been for ages. There were always individual players going through tough times at home, dealing with sick relatives, or feeling bad because they got left out of a starting eleven, but while that was cyclical, the average was quite stable. So how had it plummeted to 4.4?

  I glanced to my right. Jay Cope was holding a coffee, giving me a weird smile. He had been on the team bus with the ladies but hadn't spotted anything amiss. Pascal, Vikki, and Livia were getting drinks at the back, but had turned when I spoke. Livia reacted first, abandoning whatever drink she was making to take up a position against the wall, level with the first row of chairs, and her jaw dropped when she spotted the looks on everyone's faces. She gestured. What the fuck?

  I shook my head. No fucking clue.

  Pascal had finished Livia's coffee; he handed it to her before eyeing the group. He looked from me to Jay, who was very slightly freaking out now.

  "Where's Haley?" I said. Could it be that our goalie had done something horrible?

  "Doing media stuff," said Jay. "She's a Lioness, so the broadcasters requested her and she's more than happy to oblige."

  Not Haley, then.

  Charlotte on the left. I opened her profile and yelped.

  Charlotte's Morale was abysmal - the lowest - and there were some astonishing things in the Future tab. 'Thinks Emiliano is a talented player.' 'Is proud of the club's league position.' 'Is unhappy with Max Best.' 'Dislikes Angel.'

  Angel on the right. Her profile was not quite as crazy, but it was strange enough to draw a 'confused Scooby Doo noise' out of me. "Urr-ugh?!"

  Her Morale was superb - the highest - and the comments in her Future tab were 'Is proud of the club's league position', 'Happy to stay at the club', and 'Thinks her manager should be more patient with his staff.' But the mind-bending thing was that her Condition score was only 85%. She didn't have an injury. Yesterday it had been 100% - I had been through the entire squad twice, as I did every day.

  "What the actual fuck is going on?" I said, voice rising, staring at a spot at the back of the room while I quickly checked through everyone else's profiles looking for new entries. Five or six of the ladies had a new one: 'Worried by the lack of harmony at the club.' I put my hands on my head and tried to stay calm. With team spirit like this, we would certainly lose today's match, but what else were we going to lose?

  Livia said, "No cameras."

  Sophie was there with one of her lackeys. "Yeah," I said. Sophie never made a big deal out of being denied access. She was actually a great team player and knew that the documentary had to serve the team and the club and not the other way round.

  She put her camera down. "Can we stay?"

  I looked to Livia for help, but she barely knew more than I did. She shrugged; it was my call. "Um... yeah." I made eye contact with a few of the women. They were all clammed up. "Is no-one going to talk to me?"

  Tumbleweed.

  I pushed my thumbs into my temples. What was this, a detective story? I had two main clues: One, Charlotte hated Angel. Two, Angel was exhausted. I shook my head. I had more clues than that. One was depressed, the other elated. I knew that most of the players knew what was going on. I also knew that this was new. This had happened today, after I woke up, because I had checked the women's squad in detail before I even got out of bed. I did that first thing most mornings, but always on a match day. If someone had picked up an injury I could start to reconsider my tactics hours before I would be officially informed by the physios that such-an-such a player was unavailable.

  My attention drifted to Dani and Kisi. Dani wouldn't know anything that wasn't shared on the main chat group. Clearly, this particular gossip hadn't reached her yet. Kisi would have been one of the first to tell her, but Kisi didn't know.

  I pointed at her. "What were you doing on the team bus?"

  Her eyes widened while she herself shrunk. "I was doing my course with, like, my headphones on. So I didn't hear..."

  "Course?" I said, while scanning the others to see how they were reacting.

  "I'm doing an online course, Max."

  That was news to me. "What course?"

  "Just a course."

  She didn't want to tell me and in most situations I wouldn't have pressed but at least someone in the room was talking to me. "What course?"

  She wriggled and looked wretched but before I could withdraw the question, she answered. "Bachelor's in Sport Coaching and Development."

  The words briefly snapped me out of detective mode. "That's fucking mint. Why are you keeping it secret?"

  Kisi glanced to her left, in the direction of Angel, Meghan, and Sarah Greene. "Just, like, people might laugh at me or whatever."

  I looked at the space above Meghan and Sarah. "Anyone who laughs at you for going to university can and will get in the fucking bin." Looking at Kisi, I spoke more softly. "I'm sorry I pressed you but now that I know, I'd love the chance to support you on that journey."

  She looked down, which without the curse I might have taken badly, but I saw that her Morale had shot up.

  One down, almost everyone else to go.

  I let the silence stretch out while I considered my options. The curse giving me information was useful but I had to be careful what I did with it. It was amazing that this was happening with Pascal right there in the room. He had once had 'Dislikes Henri Lyons' in his profile and it had nearly cost him his career. I had known what was in his heart, but I had gathered some real-life examples of Pascal showing his dislike before acting on that supernatural information. I would need to do the same with Charlotte.

  There was more reason to tread carefully. Charlotte was running my block of flats, earning over a grand a month in extra cash. She wouldn't play another minute for Chester while she had that hateful message in her profile, that was non-negotiable, a line in the sand I would never cross, but I didn't want to ruin her life completely. I could threaten to drop her from the team or to sell her, but if my big gob flapped open all the way to threats about not letting her stay in charge of my lets, that would basically be bullying, right? But after this, how was I going to keep employing her? Every time I looked at her, I would see the woman who had turned on a teammate, destroyed team Morale, and cost us the chance of beating West Ham.

  And then there was Angel. As the main shareholder in the agency that represented her, I personally would get 5% of her lifetime earnings. 5% of a lot.

  For the first time ever, I saw a downside in being financially tied to my subordinates.

  My job now was, as tactfully as possible, to find out what had happened. To get started, I needed to take a risk, and I thought I knew the best way. I lifted my chin towards the woman whose Condition had dropped so suddenly and so mysteriously. "Today's one of the most important games of our season. I can't take any chances with the line up. Angel, I need you to take a fitness test."

  Wow. You know that phrase, to stir up a hornet's nest? Almost all of the squad reacted to my statement in one way or another. Some shock, some glee, some nudging of a neighbour's arm. Charlotte's profile got a new entry. 'Is pleased to see her manager taking action against Angel.'

  Angel herself was the only hornet who looked ready to sting. She got angry and turned to the others, scanning their faces, looking more like Elizabeth Taylor, the tempestuous Hollywood beauty, than ever. "Who told you?" she demanded of me.

  I didn't want to answer that question because I was on shaky ground, but I didn't want more in-fighting so I had to address it. "No-one told me anything. I was out scouting all morning, jogging around Dagenham, grinding, and we just got here from the hotel." She was still glaring across the room, which made me snap ever so slightly. More division incoming. More strife. "Hey!" Angel looked at me and as I pressed my middle finger into my thumb in a show of patience, I repeated, with aggressive clarity, "No-one told me anything."

  She was resolute for a couple of seconds, but then sank into her chair. She nodded.

  I shook my head. "I don't know what's going on but I would very much like for you to tell me. As for your fitness, Angel, I'm using the evidence of my own eyes. You look like shit and this is the first team meeting where you don't have your phone out filming everything. If I had to guess, I'd say you have that cold that was going round." She kept her mouth shut. "If no-one will talk to me, I have to go with my gut. And my gut is telling me the team is fucked." I looked behind me to my right, then my left. The tactics board was there. I dragged it to the right-hand-side of where I was standing. Jay had laid the magnets out in our usual 3-4-3 formation. I put my finger on the one that represented Angel and slid it off to the side. I looked at Charlotte, then slid her magnet off the pitch.

  I thought about asking Femi, the captain, to spill the beans, but if she didn't I would have to slide her magnet off, too, and before long I would be down to the minimum number of players I needed to play the match and avoid a sanction.

  "Do we need seven or eight players to fulfil the fixture?" I mused.

  Angel said, "I'm fit. I'm ready to play."

  I turned to stare at her, which I did wordlessly.

  She continued. "I don't have a cold. I'm fit. I didn't get any sleep last night, that's all."

  Her words stirred the hornet's nest just as mine had done earlier. There were sour looks, snickers, women pulling down their hoods and hats like they were helmets.

  Some of the pieces started to fall into place. Angel had been banging some dude all night. Before a big cup match? Not ideal but it wasn't any of my business, really. What was the sequence? Angel gets to the team bus and she's grinning from ear to ear. The others instantly know why, of course, but she doesn't want to say who. (Or maybe she does. Maybe she brags.) She tries to sleep on the bus but it's too noisy or she's still on a high. She gets her phone out and calls the dude and they do soppy 'baby talk' together. That's when everyone finds out who the dude was. That's when it all kicks off.

  Emiliano.

  Blind fury enveloped me.

  "The fucking prick!" I snarled, which was an unfortunate choice of words, all things considered. I looked for something to smash. The nearest thing was the tactics board. I could give it a solid level 9000 front kick, send it flying, magnets everywhere. That would be satisfying. I tried not to let my aggression out around the women, though, so I merely paced around digging my hands into my skull, hoping that would ease the building pressure.

  What had he done? Gone back to Chester, met up with Angel, and seduced her in order to get revenge on me? He'd done it in a way that would divide the squad. I imagined him Instagramming a picture of him and Angel together, his tattooed arm draped around her in a possessive way that would wind up all the red-blooded British lads who had a crush on her. Maybe he had 'accidentally' tagged Charlotte...

  He saw, he conquered, he came. He sowed the seed of division.

  We had been divided by a zero.

  I got my phone out and dialled Briggy. She picked up instantly; I turned to my right so that the ladies would be able to see from my screen that I was really making a call. "Please find out how much it will cost to send him back."

  "The penalty clause for ending Emiliano's loan?"

  "Yes."

  Briggy had gone right into her most professional mode. "There isn't one. You can't end it."

  "Euros or pounds?"

  Briggy's voice relaxed all the way to horizontal - she may well have collapsed onto a sofa. "Ohhh. You're doing a performance. You're using me as a prop."

  "No that's not what I mean. Full release, so he's not there in the morning. Yeah, right away, please."

  I could hear the smile in Briggy's voice. "Your energy is manic. There must be at least one beauty in the room. I assume you're going to just hang up on me like in a movie, even though you claim to hate those scenes."

  I responded to a 'break clause' number that only I could hear. For the record, the imaginary number was ￡200,000. "Is that all? Worth it."

  I hung up.

  Angel was in a state of mild panic. "What are you doing?"

  I put a knuckle to my mouth and bounced it from lip to lip while I thought about how I had set the club up. I had wanted Bumpers Bank to be integrated, so that the men, women, and youth teams would share the facilities, would bump into each other. Where better to bump into someone than Bumpers? I hoped they would chat, grab a coffee, share tips. Oh, yeah, I had that problem when I was coming up. You keep getting caught offside? There's a trick for that. What's up? Nah, you're not dropped, you're rested. Train hard and it's all good. And so on.

  That was the dream but in fact, I had created a nightmare zone where bad actors could destroy the club from within, where contagion would spread across multiple teams at multiple ages.

  So what did you do when it was so easy for people to sow division?

  You divided.

  Phase Two of Bumpers would have a gym, but it would be for the women and only for the women. The new pitches would be for the women. They would no longer train on the 'main' pitch.

  We would take some of the space I had allotted to the new media centre and we'd turn it into showers, changing rooms, and a new Sin Bin so that we could truly split the sexes. Christ, we could segregate the car parks. Men in Phase One, women in Phase Two. We would exist on the same site, but separately. Players spotted socialising with the opposite sex would be fined and suspended.

  The canteen? It didn't make much sense to build a new kitchen to serve the women's half of the compound. What if there was a dining area in Phase Two, and the ladies ordered what they wanted on some kind of touchscreen interface, and the food was prepared in the current kitchen and sent across the road? Trays could be sent through clear plastic tubes five yards above ground level, like that old system of sending messages around an office building. Or what about an underground tunnel with a conveyor belt?

  "Max," said Livia.

  I came back into the room. "Yeah," I said, feeling my face harden like cement. "Just dealing with a small dose of sabotage. No big deal."

  "You're the saboteur," came a tiny voice from the left. Charlotte had woken at last!

  I gave her daggers - we were in Dagenham after all - but I'm going to give myself some credit because against all the odds, I kept my mouth shut. The only sound I made was that of my back teeth grinding against each other.

  Angel spoke. "It is your fault."

  I felt my hackles rise, my eyes widen, and my blood begin to travel faster. The scales fell from my eyes and I realised I was in a fight. A pincer movement from the left and the right. I held up a finger. "Before any of you say anything you regret, you'd better check there's a women's team in fucking Pescara."

  That got the attention of the rebels. My boy Julius Caesar had taught me to attack hard without hesitation and Christ, did it work. With some heat in my voice, I went on.

  "I don't tolerate mutinies, I don't tolerate infighting, I don't accept that I'm to blame for what's going on in your heads." I was pacing around. "I will have unity here, even if I have to bin you all off and start again, so do not come at me with this weak shit, especially not in a fucking transfer window. If you like being paid to be a professional footballer, if you like being overpaid compared to your peers, if you like being in a successful team, if you like playing in the same stadium as the men and being treated better than pretty much any other team in this country, then be very, very careful about blaming me for whatever the fuck this is." I rolled my eyes from left to right and back again. "Charlotte, you're on the thinnest ice. Take one for the team and explain yourself."

  "Why is she on the thinnest ice?" said Femi.

  "Now is not the time to find your voice," I said, pissed. "You could have nipped all this in the bud twenty minutes ago. Charlotte, speak."

  She didn't.

  "Mari, you're starting today. Make sure you're ready." The drop from Charlotte to Mari was 21 points of CA. I would have to buy a midfielder and soon.

  "Max, stop," said Kisi.

  I ignored her. When you had gangrene, you had to cut it off as fast as poss. I sorted my database of women's midfielders by Technique and opened a few of the top results. There were some really tidy players in the list, ones with higher PA than Charlotte. I would be able to get at least one for cheap, and better still, she would never meet Emiliano.

  Victoria Rose said, "We need our best team to beat West Ham."

  I had my phone out, looking to see if I had the number of anyone at Hashtag United. They had a midfielder who had low CA but a high ceiling. "I don't see any sort of team here," I said.

  This was the third stirring of the hornet's nest, but this time there were sharp comments, barbs, stings.

  Mari Hughes stood, causing me to look away from my phone. She took a breath. "I will tell you what I heard and what I know, but then the girls will be angry with me and they will force me out of the team and you'll have to put Charlotte back in."

  This statement was met with nods of agreement from some, complaints from others.

  "Wow," I said. "He has really done a number on us, hasn't he?"

  "No," said Angel, speaking over the din. "You have. You did this." She paused, but then told Mari to sit before plunging right into it. "You've been horrible to Emi from the start, subbing him off at half-time, subbing him off earlier and earlier. Half-time, twenty minutes, eight minutes. You want to humiliate him, break him down or something, and we don't like it. How do you expect us to react?"

  Charlotte found her voice. "He scored two goals in eight minutes!"

  I shrugged. "So?"

  She said, from underneath her hood, "What do you mean, so?"

  I pointed to Angel. "Your first day at Chester, I told you not to shoot in that training match. If you had shot, do you think it would have mattered if you had scored or not?"

  She tutted and sighed and mumbled, but finally said, "No."

  "No," I agreed. "There's a right way to play and a wrong way to play. That's it. Who gives a shit if he gets lucky?"

  There was some snickering in the area around Meghan, but I didn't know for sure if it was from her. I took a step closer and bored into her with my eyes. Her part of the room fell silent.

  I lifted a finger, then pushed it down. "Anyone who has a problem with me subbing Emiliano Ferrari from the pitch, you can sleep easy because I promise you, I cast iron one hundred percent promise you that I will never do it again."

  Angel scrunched up her face. "That's it, then? He scores two goals and that's it?"

  "There's the goals thing again," I said, amazed. "Has everyone seen the goals? Have you seen the replays?" They had. I went to the tactics board, swept everything aside, and laid out four blue magnets near the penalty area. "This is Pascal, Emiliano, Colin, Wibbers. The defenders are doing their best, one between two. Forcing a decision. That's good, by the way. So Pascal plays it to Emiliano, who should pass to Colin, and if the ball goes through him, Wibbers is up here, right?"

  I slid the third and fourth magnets up, creating a rising line.

  "Player X passes to Z while Y dummies. That's the classic Relationism ladder. Even before he ever heard of Relationism - long before, in fact - Colin knew the power of this setup. He can let the ball run between his legs and Wibbers has an open goal, or he can take the ball on his left foot and have a decent chance himself. They're two of the best chances you will ever get on a football pitch. What does our resident heartthrob do? He shoots with three oppos between him and goal! The last fucking thing anyone should do! If Kit did this two matches in a row I'd make fun of her in a team meeting. Wait - I did do that, and I didn't have a fucking squad meltdown about it because you all agreed with me. Emiliano's getting the same treatment I gave to Tyson, Angel, and Kit. Why's it suddenly a drama?"

  I bit back some snarky comments about his soft eyes and his tattoos. Stick to the football, Best.

  "Second goal. It's amazing movement, brilliant play, and all the prick has to do is pass the ball. Christ, he'd even get an assist for it! He turned the most beautiful piece of play this year into a crater, a scar on the face of the Earth. Rubbish. Absolute trash." I clicked my head to the left, licked my lips, and looked around. "Hey? Do I get any pushback on this? Any agreement? I thought I was in a room of professional footballers."

  Jay Cope had been blindsided by the whole discussion, but he saw a chance to steer the chat towards a positive conclusion. "Pascal, you were there - in the eye of the storm, so to speak - and the ladies know you and trust your opinion. What's your take?"

  Pascal smiled slightly, but it was a thin smile. He had been as surprised and affected by the bad vibes as anyone. "You'll forgive me if I don't throw away my career on account of a good-looking Italian boy..."

  That landed incredibly well with the 'neutrals' in the room. "Mate," I said, "Jay's right that the ladies trust you and they know you don't have a dog in this race. Is that the expression? It sounds weird. Please say what you think."

  Pascal thought about it. "I think it's horse in this race, dog in this fight."

  "Brilliant," I said, snarkily. "Brilliant accuracy. And what about the situation?"

  He scratched the side of his mouth, which I think was to help him hide a smile. He looked at the tactics board, then at the players. "I do think it matters that Emi scored. I wouldn't react as strongly as Max but with the first goal, the shot is a three percent chance to score and the pass to Colin creates a ninety, ninety-five percent chance. The second is similar. Five percent from the shot, sixty percent from the pass. Against Forest Green, you might say who cares? But in the Championship, we might only get one opportunity like this in the whole match. We can't throw it away."

  "Hold up," I said, stepping closer to Pascal but still looking at the ladies. "That's part of it, but that's not it. We've been struggling the whole season. We had negative goal difference until recently. It has been hard to score goals. While you ladies have been smashing loads of chumps, we've been fighting for our lives against massive clubs. Clubs who have been at various points in history the Team of the Decade, the Team Of All The Talents, the Bank of England Club, the fucking Invincibles! Massive clubs, massive stadiums, good managers, teams with parachute payments. It's fucking hard. When we finally get an easy match, we don't go, oh, hey, last day of school, everyone bring your toys in! We reward the players who have been grafting by padding their stats. Emiliano stole a goal from Wibbers and then he stole a goal from Colin. That's why I subbed him off. Is it bad character to sub off a bad teammate? You're welcome to think so, but I think it's bad character to shoot when you should pass."

  I closed my eyes to try to calm myself a little, but the opposite happened and I got more animated.

  "Going into that match, Dazza had three goals. Three goals for all his hard work, all the running around, all the holding the ball up. Putting his body on the line to let us get up the pitch, to let the defence get a break from being battered non-stop. If you're a Championship club, are you gonna buy Dazza? Three goals." I looked at Charlotte, weaving my head around like a boxer. "Dazza. Remember him? I know he's not the new boy, he's not the flavour of the month, but Dazza. Yeah? Australian guy?"

  I clicked my teeth in disgust.

  "It does matter that it was against Forest Green, because the players who have fucking given me everything all season deserved some goals. This isn't Teamiliano. This is Chester. As director of football, I want Dazza to get to 10 goals asap, then maybe with a late flurry we can get to 15. The club has bills due in the summer - one less, now that I think about it - and we need money. How much can I get for a Dazza with three goals? A million? Dazza with ten goals? That's pretty tasty. Ten goals plus all the other stuff he brings to the team? Five million, mate. Fifteen goals? I mean, who knows, but let's say seven million. Joel Reid no goals, one million. Joel Reid five goals from midfield, three million. That's your wages sorted, by the way, in case you thought your salaries just appeared by magic. Every match matters. Every goal matters. You want some fucking brat to snatch goals from serious grown-ups who have daughters to feed?"

  I jabbed my finger at the group as a whole.

  "Colin Beckton loves his daughters but he gave up so much time to manage you when we were short. He's so diligent and hard-working and he put his heart and soul into those matches, and he spends hours preparing for those training sessions with the strikers - Angel - and you'd take his goals and put them in the hand of some guy you barely know." I threw my right hand up. "Fuck that." I waved it from one side of the room to the other. "Fuck this." I jabbed the air. "This is Teamwork FC and I will never, ever compromise on that. If you think I'm wrong, I don't want to be right."

  I couldn't look at any of the players, so I turned to the tactics board, which still had the magnets arrayed in the flow of the first goal against Forest Green. I put my hands on my head.

  "We train this. Four-on-two, four-on-three, four-on-four. Work the ball forward at speed, play the pass at the right time. The fucking under 14s were doing this yesterday morning before the game and if one of them had fucking blasted the ball towards the net before the drill had even started he would have been sent to get changed. I mean, what the fuck! We wouldn't accept it from the kids but we have to accept it from a supposedly grown man? Nah, nah, nah, nah. Nah. It's time to change the subject, permanently, because I feel like I'm about to get seriously angry."

  Angel said, "So why did you put him in the team?"

  I eyed her, but she seemed less belligerent than before. Slightly. I slid eight magnets to the bottom of the tactics board. "Remember Tyson from the youth team? Abysmal Team Work. I cut him from the squad, he came back, begged for a second chance. I think it was a third chance, even. It finally clicked. I got through to him." I nudged the fifth magnet higher, and did the same with all the ones to the right, turning them into an ersatz graph. "Number goes up. I did that. I helped him." I slid the magnets back down. "Angel. Same thing. To be fair, it didn't take long with you."

  I nudged the second magnet up, making them rise until the sixth one, after which the 'graph' flattened.

  "I don't always want strikers having mega team work. You should be a little bit selfish, especially if you're the best at finishing. But I fixed you. Kit, similar. Pascal's graph looks like this." I shifted every magnet almost to the top, then nudged the final half all the way to the edge. "In Soccer Supremo terms, Pascal went from Team Work 19 to Team Work 20 under my management." I rubbed my chin, then my nose. "I've been able to intervene in every player so far. Emiliano started training with us at the end of November. Call it the first of December if you want to be picky. In that month he improved in every respect except one. We did the usual things. He did the same drills as Tyson and Angel and Kit and Pascal but there was no improvement in his Team Work. I put him on extra coaching. He's had 50 hours of extra sessions, one-to-ones, video sessions, with half a dozen different coaches. No-one can get through. Okay, I thought, it's not terminal, necessarily. He might be one of those players who doesn't really respond to training but is more motivated in matches. I'll do my usual thing. I'll shout at him, I'll give him death stares, I'll sub him off and try to provoke a reaction."

  I waved my finger from Angel to Charlotte.

  "This is the reaction I provoked. Okay, so I'm quite a lot shitter at this job than I thought. That's gutting, but I've learned a lesson. I've learned there is a percentage of players we can't have here. The Chester advantage has been that we can sign anyone and fix anyone. You've got a bad injury record? Your decision-making is bad? You don't like sharing the ball? I would have said come here, we'll fix you, but this has been like driving at a hundred mph into a bollard. Airbags everywhere." I clicked my neck left and right. "At least I learned it now instead of on a 20-million-pound player."

  Jay said, "Is there no hope, Max?"

  I brought all the magnets down the bottom of the tactics board. A straight line of epic failure. "I knew what he was like when I signed him. I knew it would take time. It must be a personal failing of mine that I can't conceive of..." I waved my hand across the flat line. "Of this." I rubbed my forehead. "And now we've spent all this time talking about him instead of today's match. Just once I'd like one of my conversations to pass the Becksdel Test."

  "What's that?" said Livia.

  "It's where two characters in a football story talk about someone who isn't a walking tattoo." I twirled my finger around, slowly, sadly. "Cut that," I sighed. "That's terrible."

  While I shook my head gloomily, the door opened and a beaming Haley Goodhew came in, munching on a tube of what I guessed was wasabi-coated peanuts. "All right, gaffer?" She looked at the tactics board. "New formation? Love learning new things. I was just saying that to the beeb when they asked how I liked it at Chester." She looked from me to the rows of glum women. "Oh, told you about their love lives, did they? I said to 'em, boss, don't let a man get between you and your friends."

  "Well, Haley," I said, in a reasonable tone, "that's easy for you to say. You're gay."

  She popped a wasabinut into her mouth. "You know what my favourite thing about being gay is?"

  I thought of about twenty incredibly funny but potentially offensive replies. "No, what?"

  "The complete and utter lack of drama," she said. She plopped herself down in a free chair, grinning massively. "So. West Ham. What's the plan?"

  ***

  Time was running out to fill in the team sheet, so I told the squad to go to the dressing room. With two exceptions. "Angel, fitness test. Charlotte, you're not part of my plans. Go find a spot in the main stand." The good thing about players with abysmal Morale is that it can't get any lower. Life hack!

  As the room cleared, I asked Jay for a team sheet and sat at a tiny table while I stared at the blank spaces. A fractured, divided team against a tier one side.

  "Jay, this could get grim. We'll co-manage as usual but I'm gonna front up today and I'll take the blame in the media. If we win, you're back in charge and you're back on media duties."

  "But - " he said.

  I don't think he continued, but I might not have heard anyway. This was one of the toughest selections in recent memory, because the only way to counter losing Charlotte and Angel was to go full Bench Boost. Name a weak starting eleven, defend for our lives, try to restore Morale on enough players, have five Bench Boosted ladies on the pitch towards the end and make a real fight of it.

  I had been expecting to do our usual 3-4-3 with an all-time high CA of 97.5 and be within 10 points of our rivals.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  That was out of the window.

  West Ham's manager, Karen Taylor, liked to play a solid, compact, defence-first 4-4-2. The two strikers, Lobban and Trusty, were explosive but clueless - West Ham were bottom of the WSL table in terms of how well they converted their shots into goals. They might blitz us in the first ten minutes, but if they missed a couple early doors, their confidence would plummet and we would have a very palpable chance.

  The skin on my neck tingled, but the sensation stopped as quickly as it started.

  "We need an angle," I said.

  "Why don't you go into West Ham's dressing room, flirt with one striker, then give her the cold shoulder and turn your attention to the other one?" He thought I was glaring at him; he showed me his palm. "Sorry. Bad joke. Poor taste."

  I leaned back. "Divide and conquer," I said, tapping the table.

  "Do you mean it in the sense of dividing your forces to fight on more fronts, or do you mean divide the opposition so they can't unite against you?"

  "Um, both, I guess. The first one isn't divide and conquer, is it? It's divide and rule. It's a different saying. Wait, I'm getting confused. We will divide our forces, though..." I shifted, sat up straighter, felt the tingling on my skin again. "First half, second half. Starters and subs. Yeah, that works. But mostly I was thinking divide and conquer. Stir up divisions in the oppo. I don't like to do it too much but today seems apt." I shook my head. "We need to win to get more high-quality games for Haley. We need to win to get closer to the WSL teams. Gamesmanship mode activated. West Ham, long united, must divide. Soz, nothing personal, but today you're the enemy. You're West Hameliano, and that's bad news for yous. I have to destroy you to save my empire. Right, one second."

  The first thing I thought was that Meredith Ann and Kit Hodges - our forwards - needed to be Bench Boosted. If we could do the same with Dani and Sarah Greene, that would be great. Kisi Yalley had a particular talent that meant she needed to play the whole 90.

  "Shit," I muttered, as I tried to make my idea work. We didn't have enough players. I crushed the sheet of paper into a ball and threw it towards the nearest bin. It missed. I kept mentally adding names to the eleven, but it didn't seem very fair to use the youngest players, Jenni Fairbrother and Taz Murphy, who were both CA 30. "Christ. This will have to do."

  I showed Jay the list. His eyes darted around crazily. "What's... Is this 5-4-1?"

  "Yeah." I didn't actually have 5-4-1 in my locker, but I would get Jay to set it up. One of the perks of having a co-manager was overcoming a lack of perks.

  Jay's phone beeped. A warning. "There's no time to do anything else. I'll finish it and take it to the ref."

  "Kay," I said. I got up, stretched, and glared at a spot on the wall. Someone was gonna fucking get it today. Ideally it would be West Ham. Jay dropped his pen and rushed out with the team sheet. I packed away his things and checked the room for misplaced items. All good. I spotted the crunched up paper on the floor and picked it up. I opened it to see what it said, even though I had written it - I kinda had to know. Funny how the brain worked.

  Funny.

  The hairs on the back of my neck went fucking haywire.

  ***

  Women’s FA Cup Fourth Round: West Ham United versus Chester

  "All right," I said, striding into the dressing room, "shut the fuck up." I checked that Angel and Charlotte weren't around. With them gone, we had a better chance. Addition by subtraction as the solution to division. Call me Maths Best. "All this bickering and aggro has got me worked up and now I'm feeling frisky. Yeah, weird, innit? So look, my favourite movie is... Nope, got nothing. My favourite album... eeeee. Okay, my favourite tool of geopolitical power is divide and conquer. The Romans go to Greece and start wrapping up city-states one by one, and every time, the next city is going yeah, smash those Athenian bastards, smash those Spartans! Thanks to an olden-days disinformation campaign, probably involving fake omens, no city realises they're next in line even though it's obvious. You're reading the history book just screaming 'help each other, you twats, or you'll serve under the Romans for a thousand years!'

  "I don't want to read a history book that goes, ah, if only those Chester women had stuck together. I want the books to say, yeah, they had wobbles but they stood side by side, shoulder to shoulder, and never more so than against West Ham United. That was the match that made everyone sit up and take notice. That was the match that silenced the doubters.

  "So here's what I've done. I've pulled all our ships onto the beach and burned them. There's nowhere to go but into battle, ladies. Into war. I've devised us a tactical plan that demands absolute togetherness. We have absolutely no choice but to unite, to struggle, to suffer, as one. Here's what it is."

  I moved the tactics board more centrally, angling it slightly because of the shape of the dressing room. I moved the magnets into a 5-4-1 shape.

  "Haley in goal." CA 126; it would have been amazing to Bench Boost her. "Dafina left back, then it's Meghan, Tanwen, Femi, and Amy's at right back." CA 77, 97, 71, 96, 57. "The idea is that Tanwen, you're the extra man in the middle, and the senior defenders are close to the youngsters and can support them. We can't put too much stress on Amy, so think of it as having a back four, but she'll dribble the ball out of defence and get free kicks. You watch - they won't have a clue what to do about her. The midfield four goes Fioled, Victoria Rose, Mari, Kisi." 73, 92, 76, 90. "Again, there's a strong player next to an inexperienced one, and Kisi, you'll be helping Amy defensively, too. Up front, Alwen." CA 75. "You're getting the shittest job of the season, alone against a WSL back four. There's good news - West Ham are one of the oldest teams in the top tier. Our average age will be six years younger than theirs. Six years! If we're still in the game late on, we will one hundred percent will be able to pass the ball around and to press them into mistakes."

  West Ham's average age would be 26.5. Ours was 20.8. Their CA, based on the curse info I was now getting, would be 109. Our starters had 84.5.

  "Here's how this works. We get to half-time at nil-nil. If we do that, we win. To get there, we have to make the game horrible and ugly. We have to slow everything down. We're going to frustrate them, annoy them, and wind them up. Kisi, you'll be our secret weapon. You'll be playing the Emiliano role."

  She looked surprised. "You mean you want me to shoot from wherever I get the ball?"

  There were some giggles at that. "No, I want you to go around making as many women cry as humanly possible."

  Pascal sucked air through his teeth but laughed. "Fucking hell, boss."

  "Savage," grinned Queenie, the backup goalie.

  They weren't the only ones who were amused. The joke had eased some of the tension, reshaped it into something useful. Kisi said, "What do you mean, exactly? I'm not as good at flirting as, er..." She turned her head. "As everyone."

  "Bullshit," I said. "You're way better than Dani. She just bashes boys on the head and drags them to her cave." More laughs. "Don't tell her I said that. Anyway, I'm talking about mental disintegration."

  "Oh!" said Kisi.

  I did a sweet little girl voice. "Hey, why don't you play at the same stadium as the men? Don't they respect women's football at this club? A minute later. We play at the same stadium and our boss thinks we're more interesting than the men's team so we get a documentary. You get shipped out to, what is it, Dagenham? How does that make you feel?"

  "Right," said Kisi, nodding.

  "That sounds fun," said Tanwen. "Can I get in on it?"

  "Sure," I said. I did a sweet little Welsh girl voice. "Sorry to bother you, I've never met a big WSL star before. Our manager says you're more effective on the wing and when you joined West Ham they promised to play you out wide. So why are you in the middle?"

  Tanwen's eyes were big. "Is that true?"

  I shrugged. "Probably not. If she says, that's not true, you go, oh, it must be the other one. You're the one who's bad at one-on-ones."

  Tanwen said, "That's evil. I love it. What else?"

  "I'll try to dig some stuff up," I said. "Look, get under their skin, annoy them. They'll already be on edge because we're borderline cheating, right? We're slowing everything down, doing some fake injuries that are obviously tactical time-outs. Wrestling at corners to get the ref to come over and give you a lecture, but only before the ball's kicked so that you don't give away a pen. Anything that annoys you on a football pitch, do that. That will make them receptive to mind games. If they've got a corner that number 7 is about to take, you can shout, hey watch out for number 11, she's 7's best friend and they like to pass to each other. Maybe they are best friends, maybe they're not. Maybe no-one takes any notice, but maybe the number 8 is there going, wait, I thought I was her best friend, why do Chester think it's not me? All that fun stuff. Just, like, keep it about football, right? It's not, hey, why are you so fucking ugly?" Quite a big laugh on that one. Morale was very slowly rising. "It's, hey, why didn't you pass to the right on that break? Is it because that winger didn't invite you to that party in the summer? I heard it was epic."

  "That's about football, is it?" said Mari Hughes.

  I counted on my fingers. "Pass, break, winger, party, summer. Three out of five. It's 60% about football. Maths Best strikes again!"

  "What?" said Mari.

  "What about us?" said Sarah Greene. "Are we in the bin?"

  I pointed to the outside world. "Bin's out there. This is unity corner. Are you in the right place, Sarah?" She didn't like the question, but she nodded. I tapped the tactics board. "Teams expect us to play attractive, passing football with decent end product. Instead, the first half is gonna be horrible, slow, bitty, fractious. West Ham are gonna get in at the break livid, breathing fire, and they're gonna come out with a new gameplan. They're gonna set themselves up to fight the Chester that has turned up, not the Chester they prepared for. But that's the problem with these amateur generals, ladies. They're always fighting the last war. I have divided my forces, and you, Dani, Meredith Ann, and Kit are my shock troops. You're going to go nuts in the second half. We're gonna play the Chester way, but by then we have made it a bit easier for ourselves." I looked around, making particular eye contact with the young Welsh players and Amy Shone. "We have to dig in and suffer so that we can drink the wine of victory and nibble on the tartlet of glory."

  "The tartlet of glory?" said Haley, with a big grin. "That sounds - "

  "No," I said, shutting her down. "No, thanks." I tapped the magnets of the weakest players. "Dafina, Tanwen, Amy, and Alwen. You're coming off at half-time. If you get a red card in the first half, we lose the match. Simple as that. But if you leave the pitch without a yellow card, I'll be almost as pissed. How much time can you waste on a free kick? Be smart about it. Twenty seconds for the first one. Twenty-two seconds. Push the referee. Try to needle the oppo. As we get close to half-time, I want us taking six minutes to do a short corner routine that we kick against someone's shins to get another corner." I laughed at how annoying the very sentence was.

  Pascal said, "West Ham's men's team had problems with spot-fixing. Betting on yellow cards and what time is the first throw-in and things like that. While Amy is taking too long on a free kick, Kisi can ask if they are angry because they are going to lose their bets."

  "Intriguing," I said. "Can we find out which of the women's team were closest to that player who got caught spot-fixing?"

  "I will check who likes his Instagram posts," said Pascal, getting his phone out. "But he wasn't caught, Max. He was innocent."

  "Not today," I said. "Today he's guilty as fuck. Oh, while we're talking about crimes, real or imagined, one thing that bothers me a lot is littering. I just never understood the mentality of someone who throws a can out of their car or drops a crisp packet when there's a bin there right. I'd lock them all up. I get very right-wing about it."

  "Okay," said Kisi. "And?"

  "Hmm? Ah. I will be writing notes during the half. I want you to read the notes, crunch them up, and chuck them onto the grass."

  Kisi closed one eye. "Won't they be secret tactical things?"

  "Yeah, probably. Right, that's it."

  "Hang on," said Meghan. "What about Angel and Charlotte?"

  "I don't comment on individual players," I said, snootily.

  Meghan understood what I meant, but pushed past the barrier I was trying to erect. "You've got four subs planned. Who's the fifth?"

  "Keeping one spare in case of injury," I said. "If we go deep into extra time and we're heading to penalties, I might think about using Angel. Maybe. Depends what the fitness test says."

  "Christ, Max," snapped Meghan. "She's fit enough to kick one ball."

  "One shot, no passes," I said. "You know what? That's actually poetic. They can train separately together, either side of a great divide of cones, doing star jumps so that they're star-crossed lovers. Skipping around, doing little kicky-hops in ballet shoes. That which we call a bomb squad, by any other name would smell as sweet."

  "Holy fuck," said Meghan.

  ***

  The physio said Angel was fit to play, so she got the ninth and final slot on the bench, along with two goalies, two randos from the street (pretty much), and the best player in the world. Kind of a strange day. It was all a bit frantic, a bit disjointed. I was riddled with doubt about what I was doing - on and off the pitch - but I had to press forward and act as though I had complete faith in myself.

  I stood on the touchline with my arms stretched wide and looked at the sky. "Carpe diem, ladies!" I cried. "Caesar the day! I'm Caesar," I added, which got some laughs. Haley and Amy were the closest players to me, and their Morales nudged higher.

  I hit Bench Boost, but then examined Femi more closely. Her Morale was low, probably because I had told her off. Using Triple Captain on grumpy players could multiply their negative energy, so I decided against activating that perk. I even briefly thought about making Mari Hughes the captain, but that kind of messing about had already cost me enough grief for one weekend.

  As the ref counted the players, I set the 'game speed' slider to the minimum, and the 'shithousery' slider to the maximum. I created a hot key that would make us go ultra, ultra defensive.

  1'

  West Ham get us underway.

  The ball goes back to the goalkeeper, who kicks long.

  Meghan wins the header...

  But goes down clutching her face.

  The referee summons the physio.

  Chester's players jog to the sideline to listen to their manager.

  "Hey, ladies," I said, as they gathered around me in a circle. "I would normally hate this kind of football, but you know what? Today I think it's gonna be pretty funny. I reckon we should stay here as long as poss. What's the ref gonna do, book all of us?" I looked at Fioled, our left midfielder. "Fioled, you're playing great."

  She rolled her eyes. "I haven't even touched the ball yet."

  "I know, but the way you're not touching the ball is, mwah!"

  Despite what I was saying being objectively stupid - literally nothing had happened in the match so far, Fioled's Morale rose. "Thanks, boss. I appreciate it."

  "Does anyone know any jokes?" I said. "Let's invent a joke right now! Why did the Australian... hang on..."

  Peep! Peep! Peep!

  The huddle disbanded and my players made their way to their positions.

  5'

  A very stop-start match so far.

  Max Best is taking advantage of the most recent break to pass information to his players.

  I sent on my first note, via Fioled, who took it to Alwen, the lone striker. She was going to work hard but see very little of the ball. A thankless task, so to thank her, I sent her a pep talk.

  She opened the note and read it.

  WHY DID THE AUSTRALIAN EMIGRATE? BECAUSE OF THE SPIDERS.

  SOZ CUT THAT. TERRIBLE.

  Alwen shook her head, laughed, crushed the note into a ball, and tossed it over her shoulder.

  West Ham tried to get some patterns of play going but were clearly not expecting us to play as defensively as we were. They looked quite lost.

  Every time one of their players went near the note, I tensed, and then finally the right back picked it up, unfolded it, and pulled a face. She shoved the note down her sock. "Jay, did you see that?" I said, grabbing him and shaking him gently.

  "I did," he laughed. "She hates litterbugs!"

  "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

  "Flood the zone," he laughed. "Send enough notes and her socks will be full of paper."

  "Think how itchy it would be," I sighed, happily. "But nah. Less is more."

  7'

  Good pressure from the home team.

  Lobban gathers under pressure from Femi. Good touch to a midfielder.

  The ball's clipped over the top.

  Chance for Trusty...

  Great save by Goodhew!

  The ball isn't cleared. More pressure from West Ham.

  It goes behind Chester's lines. Tanwen does well. She hits the ball to the right.

  Amy Shone will collect, but she's under tremendous pressure.

  She goes to clear...

  But rolls the ball under her foot and dribbles down the line. She touches the ball to Yalley.

  Shone runs to get into position for the return pass, but runs into the back of a midfielder.

  Shone is hurt!

  Foul, says the referee.

  That looked a generous decision.

  While Jay praised Amy, I bit my nails, worried. We were doing pretty well, on the whole, in that there had barely been any action in 8 minutes. But when the WSL team pinged the ball around, they did it at speed and with decent accuracy. They had carved us open quite easily.

  Worrying.

  On the other hand, Haley Goodhew was the best player on the pitch. That save had been pretty routine - for her - but it gave a boost to our defenders and everyone watching on TV must have relaxed, just a fraction. Haley had that aura.

  I glanced up, spotting that Kisi was up to mischief on the far side of the pitch, while to my right, Tanwen was having a chat with Lobban, one of the two strikers. I could almost lip-read as she went: Oh! I must be thinking of the other one. You're the one who misses one-on-ones.

  Lobban looked pissed.

  Heh.

  12'

  The plan was working, more or less. We had played 13 successful passes in the entire match, but that's over one a minute. What more do you want?

  16'

  Karen Taylor, West Ham's manager, made a tweak, pushing both her right-sided players one zone forward. Quite an aggressive move, and one I didn't have much of a counter to. I didn't have more left-sided defenders, and if I tinkered with the formation I wouldn't be able to restore us to 5-4-1. Jay could, but while I was happy to ask him to set things up before a match - suggesting that such petty things were beneath me - it didn't make a lot of sense that I wouldn't do it myself during a match.

  No, we would have to suffer.

  We suffered.

  20'

  The closed caption on this phase of the match reads simply: suffering intensifies.

  22'

  West Ham were getting more and more free kicks and corners, and were constantly loading the box. I was in such a defensive, survive-until-half-time mindset that I couldn't think straight.

  After one corner that was just penalty-area carnage, Vikki came up to me and said, "Leave some players forward on corners, Max."

  "Erm," I said.

  "Leave three players forward and West Ham will keep three or four players back. That's less danger, plus it will give Haley more space to run and catch the crosses."

  "Right, Haley's good," I said.

  "Yes," said Vikki, giving me a curious look.

  I tried to reassure her with a smile. "I'm not used to having incredible goalies," I said. "Yeah, but she's good. We should clear the space. Yes! Okay, who do we leave forward?"

  Vikki knew the men's team better than the women's, but she had spent some time with the latter. "Kisi, Alwen..."

  "Amy Shone!" I said, smiling. "Yes," I nodded. "Can you sort that out for me, please?"

  "With a note, or?"

  "No, with shouting. But yeah, it's time for a note."

  While Vikki called out to the various sections of the pitch, I fell into a crouch and scanned West Ham's player profiles looking for hot goss and dirt.

  I scribbled a note and passed it to Fioled, who carried it back to Meghan. The Mancunian opened it, laughed hard, and chucked the note. Trusty, one of the star strikers, picked it up.

  MEGS CAN YOU CHECK SOMETHING WITH THEIR STRIKERS? LOBBAN GETS A 500 POUND GOAL BONUS BUT TRUSTY ONLY GETS 50 QUID. IS THAT BECAUSE WEST HAM THINK LOBBAN IS TEN TIMES BETTER OR DOES TRUSTY JUST HAVE A SHIT CONTRACT?

  I watched for a minute as Trusty walked around, making the runs she was supposed to make. Okay, that one had missed. It was pretty optimistic to cook up such a half-baked plan and expect it to -

  Jay grabbed me. "Look!"

  Trusty was talking to Lobban. No lip-reading skills necessary! "Are you on 500 quid a goal?"

  Jay shook my arm. "Divide and conquer! You're like Emiliano. Every shot you take goes in!"

  I groaned. "Mate. I hadn't thought about him for 20 minutes and those were the best 20 minutes of my life. Oh. Maybe he's Romeo but the story is Romeo and Jul...ius Caesar. I'm Caesar," I added, for clarity.

  24'

  Corner to West Ham.

  They are sending their defenders into the penalty area to attack it.

  Chester are moving some players to the halfway line.

  West Ham bring back a few players.

  The corner is swung in.

  Goodhew claims it easily!

  She throws the ball to Yalley, who skips forward.

  Yalley evades the first challenge, and now Chester are three-versus-two!

  Yalley picks her moment, and passes to Shone.

  Shone makes a diagonal run... but dummies the ball!

  Alwen has an almost open goal!

  Alwen can't miss!

  It's literally impossible for Alwen not to score!

  Building the tension at this moment can't possibly work because this one is nailed-on!

  And Alwen has put it wide!

  Wide of the goalkeeper's despairing dive!

  But not wide of the post!

  Chester are ahead.

  Against the run of play, but they won't care about that.

  Alwen, the Welsh starlet, is in dreamland!

  We have a cupset on our hands!

  Vikki, Jay, and I hugged each other so hard we ended up going round in a circle, like we were dancing around a May Pole. Pascal was celebrating with the subs, and then he came over and shouted. "That's the goal! That's the goal!"

  It took me a second to realise what he meant. The move we practised. Four-on-two, three-on-two - we did them all. It was all about the timing of the pass, the weight of the pass, but most importantly, the willingness to do the right thing. Amy Shone on her left foot in a big cup match against a WSL team? No way should she have taken that shot, but West Ham couldn't know that; they had to cover her. "Argh" I yelled. "That's it. That's how it's done. COME THE FUCK ON!" I stomped around for a few seconds, more like a gorilla than a panther, and then roared again. Vikki's plan. Haley's talent. Kisi's quick feet, decision-making, and timing.

  A quick look at the other side of the pitch showed me that the home team were bickering. We were chipping away at their Morale and they were fraying around the edges. Cracking up.

  I hissed something I hadn't chanted in many, many years. "There's only one United!"

  ***

  29'

  I really wanted to change the formation, to mix things up, to give the Hammers a new challenge while they were on the back foot, but we had sacrificed some flexibility at the start of the season in order to build an awesome 3-4-3 squad.

  Tough shit, Best. Grind it out.

  I got to work in a serious way, triggering perks, using hot keys, tweaking individual settings, optimising our defensive positioning via the 'without ball' screen and the 'pitch margins' option. It was a case of shutting down some passing routes, then quickly changing the setup so that when West Ham adapted, we were already stopping their new way of playing.

  Mentally draining, but every uptick of my mental clock released a surge of good chemicals.

  30'

  Hmmmm that was a big one.

  31'

  Ooh, baby.

  32'

  You got any more of that time wasting, girls? Hit me with that good stuff.

  I sent out a note.

  MARI, ASK THEIR NUMBER 6 IF HER PASS COMPLETION RATE IS ALWAYS THIS LOW BECAUSE I HEARD MAN CITY WERE INTERESTED AND THEY WON'T BE IMPRESSED BY THIS.

  33'

  The referee was starting to get really pissed off with our gamesmanship, so I completely flipped the switch, making us play super clean, super fast.

  The change in tempo surprised West Ham, and we put together our best passing move of the day so far. We got a throw-in and instead of sending someone from the other side of the pitch to take it, we chucked it into play quickly and darted forward. We killed a good two minutes by playing with good, old-fashioned Chester values, and when the ref was happy with us, I slid everything all the way back to 'anti-football'.

  Heh.

  34'

  We got our first yellow card for being cynical.

  35'

  We got our second yellow card for being cynical, which Meghan celebrated by giving Lobban a little push, which was the trigger for our players to run into the melee to do more pushing and shoving. Haley rushed from her goal to act as a peacemaker, and everyone knows that peace talks can fucking drag.

  36'

  West Ham's number 6 took a pass from a defender, moved into space, saw good movement ahead of her, but turned and passed sideways.

  I covered my mouth. "Gotta get those pass completion stats up!"

  Jay shook his head, grinning. "It's so insidious because if you didn't know why it was happening, you wouldn't even know it was happening."

  I gripped him by the shoulder and spoke with complete sincerity. "That's why we can't keep players who put themselves first or players who have fallen out. Every minute they stay, the corrosion spreads. Trust me, I've seen it. I've seen it up close and I've watched it from a safe distance. I know I seem extreme, Jay, but I'm not. You have to socially distance the players and stop the spread." I let go of his shoulder. "No-one's bigger than the team. No-one's irreplaceable."

  37'

  We got our third yellow card. So far, the performance had been pretty solid in terms of pushing the oppo and the ref to their limit, but we had a crazily young side and we were in dangerous territory.

  Soon after, we got the fourth card, which was the signal to stop being quite such dicks. I moved the 'shithousery' slider to neutral, then decided we should push it towards the 'angelic' end of the spectrum, since the ref might well decide to punish us retrospectively for what we had been doing until that point.

  As though we had opened a flood gate, West Ham's attacks came faster and more consistently.

  All I could do, really, was set us to 'counter-attacking'.

  41'

  Our defences were creaking, so I tinkered with Jay's formation for the first time, dragging Victoria Rose from central midfield to DM, the position where she was so outstanding.

  I wouldn't be able to restore her, not without changing formation completely, and there wasn't any other formation that made sense with the current lineup. But we just had to hold out for a couple more minutes.

  43'

  So close now...

  44'

  So close...

  45'

  The fourth official decided that there would be six minutes of time added, to make up for all the time lost to our cheating. Six! When the board went up and the announcement was made over the public address system, West Ham's fading Morale shot all the way back up.

  All I could do was bite my bottom lip, wryly amused. Sometimes you get punished, sometimes you don't.

  45+2'

  We got punished.

  Instead of spamming high balls into the box for Haley to catch, which West Ham had done for really quite a long time, they had switched to playing one-touch passes around the edge of the penalty area. Victoria Rose had rebuffed them a few times, but they finally got through, moved beyond our defence, and played a simple sideways pass to the far post, where Amy Shone could have been more alert to the danger. She was only CA 57. To say it wasn't her fault was an understatement.

  West Ham's celebrations spoke of much, much frustration being vented. It bordered on over the top, but I couldn't really blame them. I would have done the same in their shoes.

  45+6'

  A gruelling half came to an end with the scores level. Four of our players had picked up yellow cards, but all four would be subbed off during the break. My dream of the home team spending the break angrily plotting our destruction hadn't come to pass. Karen Taylor would calm them down and tell them to go again because they would surely win.

  Half Time

  The male staff waited in the corridor outside the changing room while the women counted their chromosomes or whatever they did. I didn't mind these interludes because it gave me a chance to co-ordinate with Jay. Most of the time these sessions involved Jay going over his impressions of the first half and suggesting things he wanted to say to the women, but today I was in the lead role.

  "That was mint," I said. "I'm really happy with that. Having the mission seemed to be helpful. It made it us versus West Ham instead of us versus us, and it was something the youngsters could do just as well as the older players. Meghan's the expert, of course, but almost everyone chipped in."

  Pascal said, "Five more minutes and we would have conceded two more."

  "Yeah," agreed Jay. "It was pretty unsustainable."

  I tutted. "You kids with your sustainability and your solar panels and your electric cars. Human society only has to survive until I die. Right?"

  "Wrong," said Jay, with a smile. "It has to survive for Jamie Lane-Beeks, too. But I get what you're saying - we only needed to drag ourselves across the line."

  "It we'd made it to half time without them scoring, that would have been a force multiplier on everything we did. But realistically, if we were 2-1 down right now, given the fucking drama..."

  Pascal stepped back because the drama had arrived. Cleopatra herself, Morale very poor, had crept up on us. "Can we talk?"

  "Now's not a good time, Angel," I said.

  "But even if you were inside you'd make us all be quiet while we reflect on the first half."

  "I'm reflecting on the first half right now. Look." I pointed to my temple and half-closed my eyes. "If you listen closely," I whispered, "you can almost hear the machinery."

  Angel folded her arms and looked down. "I want to talk."

  "I don't. I want to win a football match. Your shit can wait."

  She nodded a few times while her Morale dropped to abysmal. "I need to talk."

  "Guys," I said, which caused Pascal and Jay to scarper. I put my back to the nearest wall and leaned against it, one leg up, arms folded, just about the most powerful yet comfortable pose known to man.

  Angel shoved the end of her thumb into the top of her eye socket, which was probably just her triggering an acupressure point that Magnus had told her about, but it also triggered my fear of seeing someone's eye pop out. She did that for a while, then mumbled, "I didn't do anything."

  It felt like a good time to keep my gob shut, so I brought up West Ham's tactics board to see if Karen Taylor had changed anything or tweaked any instructions. She was quite a good tactician, I thought, but nothing special. My instinct was that she had been over-promoted. I couldn't find any changes so far, but sometimes they were hidden in a sub-menu or in a player's individual instructions.

  A perk that highlighted all changes would be good. It would be something like Full Frontal, the perk that would summarise problems on the main squad screen. That perk would have shown me in half a second that we had a crisis brewing. If that was in the store, why couldn't there be a perk that logged all changes, like you got on word processors? In the 60th minute, Karen Taylor told her left back not to make forward runs. In the 73rd minute, she returned to the default. That would be useful. I'd probably pay 2,000 XP for that.

  "We didn't do anything," said Angel, worn down by my silence. "We just sat up all night and talked." She looked wretched. "It was nice. Special. Boys don't normally just talk to me." She had tears welling. "We didn't do anything."

  I opened my mouth to reply, but thought better of it.

  "What?" she said. "Say it."

  I tried to get control of a cheeky grin, but couldn't suppress it. "It would have been better if you had done something. At least then you'd have got some sleep." She sighed and shook her head. I can't believe my boss is such a boy. "That was stupid, I'm sorry. Angel, your private life is none of my business until it, you know, impacts the team." I looked to my right, down the tunnel. "Why did Charlotte freak out so much?"

  Angel's expression was hard for me to read. "She jumped to conclusions and when she had a go at me I had a go back." Her eyes rolled. "Like she ever had a chance with Emi."

  "Oh. There was me thinking you were blameless."

  "I am blameless. She was... It was chat shit, get banged. She came at me so I went at her twice as hard. Don't fuck with me."

  I drew a slow breath, wondering if this was what I looked like when I spoke that way. I didn't much care for it. "I would take it as a personal favour if you could be a bit less gleeful about winning that battle. Charlotte's Chester career is over and it's going to be painful to, ah, consciously uncouple. I don't want her to leave with twenty daggers in her back, you know?"

  Angel's face fell. "Her career is over? What? No."

  "Yes."

  "Max, no, we need her."

  I stared straight ahead, looking at the words 'Dislikes Angel'.

  "Max, don't. It's nothing. It's just a bit of drama. We'll sort it out."

  Is unhappy with Max Best.

  "Max, please, you're freaking me out."

  "You won, Angel. Enjoy it." I pushed off the wall, and wrapped my fingers around the door handle. I had been developing the skill of ending one mental process and switching to another. I did it now. West Ham 4-4-2, attacking, fired up, no changes at half time. Chester moving from 5-4-1 to 3-4-3. Our new average CA? 94.1. Our new average PA was sensational: 149.5.

  This eleven could win the WSL, I thought. And with four Bench Boosted players on the pitch -

  Angel grabbed my hand as I pulled the door wide. "What about Emi?"

  My reply was a tiny shake of the head.

  "Don't do anything stupid. Pleeeease."

  I looked right into those amazing eyes. "Right back atcha, kid. Right back atcha."

  ***

  Second Half

  As grim and horrible as the first 45 minutes was, the second was fast, fun, and an incredible advert for the sport.

  The ladies had that rarest of things at a Chester team - continuity of formation. They knew 3-4-3 inside out and it showed. We defended with five, attacked with five, and our new players looked incredible.

  Sarah Greene, CA 101, had been boosted to the levels of her opponents, which meant they had to foul her to stop the dribbling, had to throw themselves at her shots, and could do little to nothing about her incisive passing.

  Dani, CA 98, was less immediately effective because she had to be diligent defensively. When she controlled a high pass, flicked the ball past one oppo then over the head of the next one, even the home fans applauded.

  Kit Hodges, CA 101, quickly got her match rating up, and for the first time the home defenders didn't have everything their own way. Kit won some of her duels, created space, caused panic with her movement, and when she got shots away they were struck with power and accuracy.

  Meredith Ann, CA 84, glided around, playing one-touch passes, creating triangles, linking superbly with Dani, Sarah, and Kit. She was still something of a glass cannon, but what a cannon.

  One piece of clever interplay drew a foul on the left. Meredith stepped to it left-footed, and I was pretty sure she was going to shoot, despite the mad trajectory the ball would have to follow. There was something about the set up that led me to use the Free Hit perk. Meredith crossed - mildly surprising - hitting it with speed, curve, and dip, right onto the head of Kit, who nodded the ball down, far to the left of the goalie.

  Joy uncontained in the Chester ranks. The players frolicked like musicians at the Triumphs of Caesar, while the home players trudged to their positions like captives. I daydreamed of trophies and bullion.

  The next five minutes were all Chester, as we popped the ball around at will against our demotivated opponents.

  Karen Taylor was no mug, though, and she made four changes of her own.

  The fresh legs had lower CA but more Team Work and Determination. They ran, tackled, geed each other up. They tried to attack Mari as a weak point in the team, but she got support from Sarah and Victoria Rose. One for all, all for one! Fucking yes!

  The Hammers showed their mettle, nailed us back, and with time running out, they had no choice but to attack.

  As well as we were playing, their pressure told. A mistake from Femi let Trusty shoot with her trusty left foot.

  Two-all.

  Amazingly, the Hammers retreated. Why? They wouldn't be happy to take it to penalties, surely? I urged our players forward and we battered them, creating chance after chance. I didn't want extra time, but I couldn't get too adventurous. I slid Victoria Rose forward into the DM slot, trusting our two centre backs to deal with high balls to West Ham's two strikers.

  In the final five minutes we had three incredible chances to score the winner but we just couldn't get that last, decisive touch.

  As the whistle blew, I squinted, already starting to think about how we would approach extra time. Something weird was happening, though. Pascal and Vikki were sneaking around close to West Ham's technical area. They nodded at each other, and sped off, giggling. What the hell?

  Extra Time - First Half

  The main worry now was fitness. Six players had played 90 minutes and would play 30 more, and those included Mari and Alwen, who didn't normally play full matches. I had to tweak our tactics to make it so those two in particular didn't run as much, which of course reduced our threat. Better that than an ACL tear, though.

  After 8 minutes of nothingness, I tried changing us to 4-2-3-1. My vague idea was that I could keep six players back while attacking with four, but the problem was that two out of Dani, Kisi, and Sarah Greene had to play as full backs, which meant two of my most creative players were stuck at the back.

  I tried it until half-time in extra time - another 7 minutes of play - because it was helping to keep things fresh (physically and tactically).

  I was talking to Jay about what to do - he favoured going back to 3-4-3 and I tended to agree with him - when Angel came to me. "I'm fit. Use me. There's only fifteen minutes left. Put me on; I'll win this."

  "Jay, can you give us a second?" I waited until he had gone out of earshot, lowered my voice, and covered my mouth. "No."

  Angel covered her mouth. "Why?"

  "If I were in your shoes, I would probably have done exactly what you did, but you didn't put the team first last night and you didn't put the team first this morning."

  "Let me help the team now."

  "You getting minutes isn't helping the young players learn what's what. You taking a high-pressure penalty so that someone who's likely to miss doesn't have to... That's helping the team."

  "But - "

  "Conversation's over."

  Extra Time - Second Half

  The final 15 minutes passed much as the previous quarter of an hour had done - two tiring, cagey sides playing cat-and-mouse, neither side willing to overcommit. In the middle of the period came two crazy minutes of wild, end-to-end action that made me wonder if someone was blasting me with an anti-curse ray, because what other explanation could there be for the sudden lack of structure?

  We recovered from that mad wobble, though, and so did West Ham. The match was finishing with something of a whimper on the pitch, but in the stands, the fans were buzzing. Who didn't like a good penalty shoot-out?

  I made one final sub, taking off Mari Hughes and putting on Angel.

  Penalties

  "Who's taking and what's the order?" said Jay, hyper organised, with Pascal and Vikki nearby. They looked ready to go into everything in depth, to really nerd out over it. On another day, that might have been fun, but I knew about Bench Boost.

  I said, "Angel, Meredith Ann, Kit, Sarah, Dani."

  "In that order?" said Jay.

  "In that order."

  "What about the narrative?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's all about Angel, isn't it? She should take the fifth penalty and then it'll be super epic about whether she wins the match for us or sends us spiralling to defeat."

  "Um, nah, it's not about Angel," I said, "It's about the team and everyone having a role to play. Emiliano's role is to teach us that Brexit wasn't completely stupid. Angel's role is to take the first penalty and score it."

  Pascal said, "What about divide and conquer? Are we still doing that?"

  I frowned. "We did that, didn't we? It's done. We destabilised them juuuuust enough to maybe swing a couple of moments. A couple of through-balls that weren't played. A pass to the left when it should have gone right."

  He pointed to West Ham's goalie. "She's got graphics about where our players took their last five penalties. They're taped to a water bottle."

  "Okay..." I said. "You want to steal it or throw it into the crowd or whatever?"

  "No," said Vikki. "We want to swap their bottle... for this one." She produced a water bottle that carried the brand used by the home team. It had multiple 'last five penalties' graphics taped to it, with the names of the Chester players who were likely to be involved in a penalty shoot-out.

  "What?" I said, taking it and spinning it around. "I don't get it."

  "Look closely," said Pascal. He was practically vibrating.

  I obeyed, but didn't see anything strange, until I did. "Oh, what!" I said, laughing. The graphic labelled 'Meredith Ann' had five red circles rising in a horizontal line on the left-hand of the goal. West Ham's goalie would look at this and think that Meredith always hit the post! I mean, she wouldn't think that - she would know she had been pranked almost instantly, but the bottle was so realistic that the goalie would surely think she had been sabotaged by someone on her own team. I turned the bottle. Angel's last five penalties were in an impossibly tight circle in the very centre of the goal, while Dani's showed every kick going in the extreme corners. Top bins, top bins! "This is amazing. How did you do this?"

  Vikki said, "This isn't West Ham's home! This is Dagenham. We went to their office and told them what we wanted to do. We promised we wouldn't, ah... What was it?"

  "Dob them in," said Pascal.

  "They printed it for old time's sake, as the man put it. Said us non-league clubs have to stick together."

  "Wow," I said, trying to remember how much of a dick I had been against Dagenham in the past. Quite a lot, I reckoned, but I couldn't summon the memory. "We need to send him a hamper."

  "You're always going on about hampers," said Vikki. "What is a hamper?"

  "Er, a gift basket thing, but it's English so it's got stuff you don't really want. Marmalade and shit. I don't know, I've never actually seen one." I couldn't stop turning the bottle around. "It's a work of art. It's genius."

  "So we'll tell Haley to change the bottles?"

  "No," I said, standing taller. "That would be unethical and wrong. There has been far too much of that today." I looked left and right, then covered my mouth. "Just hand it to her. She'll know what to do."

  Pascal and Vikki ran off, cackling.

  ***

  Penalties

  West Ham will take the first kick in the shoot-out.

  Goal! Despatched with aplomb.

  1-0.

  Chester's first penalty will be taken by Angel.

  She doesn't look confident. She stares at the ball, hands on hips.

  Finally, she's ready to shoot.

  Goal!

  It was never in doubt!

  1-1.

  She doesn't celebrate.

  West Ham to try next.

  Goal!

  2-1.

  For Chester's second, it's Meredith Ann.

  She strikes it left-footed... and it's in.

  The keeper dived the right way, but didn't get close.

  2-2.

  Lobban will take the next one.

  She had a good game.

  Here she comes...

  Saved!

  Haley Goodhew guessed right and batted the ball away.

  She leaps with joy!

  2-2.

  Kit Hodges can give Chester the advantage.

  She points to the left.

  She licks a finger and holds it up.

  She points to the right.

  She scores to the right!

  What was that all about?

  2-3.

  Here comes Trusty.

  She kisses the ball, then places it.

  By the way: ew.

  Trusty... scores!

  3-3.

  Sarah Greene to take Chester's fourth.

  All the pressure will be back on if she misses.

  Will she miss?

  She might miss.

  I could totally see her missing this.

  She counts before starting her run-up.

  One Mississippi.

  Two Mississippi.

  She makes no mistake!

  Great hit!

  3-4.

  The Hammers must score to stay in the FA Cup!

  Here comes their captain.

  Goodhew stands tall and points to her left.

  Here comes the kick.

  Goodhew dives to her left...

  And gets a big hand behind the ball.

  She's done it!

  Chester have done it!

  They're into the next round of the FA Cup!

  For United, the inquest begins. What went wrong?

  ***

  Five great penalty takers supernaturally boosted, plus we had one of the best goalies in England between the sticks - it was never in doubt. Karen Taylor had massively miscalculated; she should have pushed much harder to win in extra time. I shook her hand and said, "Well played," but I can't say I really meant it.

  Winning got me off the hook for media duties, so I slunk back to the dressing room, and while I snacked on energy gel and wasabinut to replace the calories I had burned, I consumed some other resources.

  For managing against a top-tier team I got 14 XP per minute, and because the match went into extra time and beyond, I got over 1,800 XP, which I was pretty sure was a single-match record. It smashed me way past what I needed to buy the next Attribute.

  XP balance: 4,830

  I didn't buy it, though. I needed to get the Full Frontal perk urgently so I could make sure nothing like this happened again, and so that I could start cleaning up this mess. It wasn't just Charlotte and Angel. Femi had been off, Meghan had been getting snarkier, and Victoria Rose didn't seem to be sold on my methods.

  I bought the perk - 2,000 XP - and opened the women's squad list.

  I groaned. There was a lot going on! Many players had TIR next to their names - they were tired after playing such a tough match. Some had a red-boxed INJ, because they had picked up injuries. These seemed to be minor.

  Several players had the letters UNH by their names, which turned out to mean they were unhappy. In most cases that was because they were worried about the lack of dressing room harmony, while Angel and Charlotte were more seriously UNH.

  A couple of players had a yellow-boxed YEL, which meant they would get a suspension if they picked up another yellow card.

  Then there was WNT, which meant clubs wanted to buy that player. Meredith Ann was 'wanted' by Aston Villa, who were in the WSL, a couple of places in the table above West Ham.

  And guess who we drew in the Fifth Round of the FA Cup?

  I felt more drained than after managing any game since my stint in Munich, and seeing all the problems and issues listed in one place was actually tiring and demotivating. I clicked through to the men's team, the under 18s, the other clubs in the Max Best Universe... there were even more types of issues and I just felt overwhelmed and tired.

  Max Best TIR.

  Max Best happy?

  Yeah. It had been a rough ride, rougher than normal, but we had pulled a win out of the bag. That actually meant a lot. Especially today, the W had value.

  "Nice to see you smile after all that."

  Vikki was watching me. I wondered what her Future section would say, if she had one. Happy to stay at the club? Thinks Max Best is his own worst enemy? "I think I'm gonna look back on this one very fondly. Okay, we had to get a bit naughty but we also straight up slugged it out against a WSL side. With young players with less than perfect Morale. That was good. I'm proud of them." I closed my eyes and smiled. In the aftermath of a match there was so much to do, but on the long drive back north I would be able to process what had just happened, would be able to enjoy it. My eyes popped open. "The museum!"

  "What?" she said, amused at how random my outburst was.

  "I want that water bottle for the club's museum. It'll be absolutely hilarious."

  She grinned and tapped her backpack. "Way ahead of you."

  As if to emphasise the point, she hurried off towards the exit and our car. "Outstanding," I said, pulling my own backpack a little closer.

  "Can I help with that?"

  I looked up at Pascal. He was offering to carry my pack for me, which makes me sound feeble, but the context was that he was thinking ahead to the car park, where there would be some Chester fans - and some football fans in general - who would want a selfie with me. That process would obviously go smoother if I was unfettered. I flicked through my screens, looking at all the tasks I had coming up, all the conversations, all the phone calls, all the decisions.

  Delegate.

  Divide and rule. Put your best people in the right place and prosper.

  Who knew what Charlotte was going through better than Pascal? If anyone could save her from the bin, it was him.

  "Can I help with that?" he repeated, patiently, because all the players knew I was almost useless after matches.

  "Yeah, bro," I said, feeling the weight lifting from my shoulders already. "I think you can."