12.

  "This frigging game is ruining my life." Sylvester Stallone as 'Hatch' in Escape to Victory.

  ***

  Monday, January 24 (Two Weeks Later)

  I gripped the wire mesh of the prison fence and stared at the vast expanse of the outside world. In here, endless work, sweat, and toil. Out there, freedom, fresh air, and a lifetime of opportunities. Out there, organisations were working on medical breakthroughs, frantically trying to save the planet from microplastics and climate change, attempting to communicate with life on distant worlds. In here, just as much effort was being spent working out how to break Leeds United's press.

  I was definitely on the wrong side of the fence.

  A Texan voice called out, "Are you admiring your new plot?"

  I watched as Brooke approached, fast but unhurried. "Plotting my escape, more like."

  She gripped the mesh of the fence and gave it an experimental shake. "You can't escape this prison - you're the warden."

  "Ugh," I said, resting my forehead against the mesh. "I need that zen garden here yesterday."

  "Soon, Max. Come off that," she said, smiling as she pulled me by the hood. "I need you looking pretty, not with a zigzag all over you."

  I frowned; there was nothing public on my agenda for the evening. My only action item was to make a decision and communicate it, but I didn't need to look good for that. "What's happened?"

  She glanced to her left. Towards the gym? Towards her office? "I just heard from Owen Elmham. He's had a car crash."

  "Shit!" I said, panic mode activated. I had his player profile open instantly, and was relieved and amazed to see his Condition was 81% - just as it had been when I had checked at lunchtime. His injury tab was also unchanged - he was expected to return to full training in the first half of February.

  "It's okay, Max," said Brooke. "It was a minor ding, a fender bender, but he's had to go to the shop. The only issue is that he was due here to meet the Senior Seals. He was going to talk to them about anger management and how he's coping with his recent issues and the aftermath and so on."

  "Remind me what the Senior Seals is. Are. Is."

  "It's free football sessions for adults from an S.E.N.D. background."

  "Top. Remind me what S.E.N.D. is. Are."

  "Special educational needs and disabilities."

  "Oh, right."

  "Mondays at 5 p.m., free training, coffee, chat. For some people it's transformational."

  "Why do you keep saying it's free?"

  "It's really important that it's free, Max. Even the slightest barrier keeps people away. This group is forming bonds, going to Chester matches together, improving their lives."

  I checked the time on my phone, even though I had it in my head. "It's nearly 5. Do they normally play first and chat later?"

  "Yes, but today they won't have brought their boots and kit, I don't think, because they were expecting to talk to Owen."

  "They will one million percent have brought their kits, but okay, you want me to do the talk instead?"

  "I came out of my office to see who was in the gym who could step in, and found you here looking moody. If you have time, you'd be my first choice. You're really good at this kind of thing and, being cynical - sue me - it would play amazingly with the wider fan base and sponsors."

  I put my back to the fence. Why not? The group would ask the usual questions and I would give them the usual answers. What do you eat for breakfast? (The opposite of whatever Henri is having.) Who's the best player you've played against? (Mirror universe Max Best.) What's your favourite drink? (The salty tears of my defeated enemies, shaken and stirred, no ice, paper straw, tiny umbrella.) "Do I have mesh imprinted onto my forehead?"

  "Yes."

  I scoffed. "I'm still hotter than Owen." Brooke winced and looked away. I couldn't believe it. "You have got to be joking."

  She got an unusually dreamy expression. "He's got that wild man look."

  "He looks like a bin man." She didn't react, so I doubled down. "A trash collector, Brooke. He looks like a bin man who got fired for eating leftover bananas he found in the bins and now he lives in a forest and he forages for food and he scrumps apples."

  She shrugged. "I'm into it." She paused. "Don't tell him I said that."

  "I fucking won't."

  ***

  The meeting was in a corner of the downstairs restaurant next to the players' canteen. A group of chairs had been arranged in a circle, and although the environment was perfectly pleasant and everyone looked friendly, it did make me think of a support group in a prison.

  My appearance caused a bit of a stir, which was gratifying. I did a few fist bumps and tried to get a feel of the vibe. There was quite the range of ages, 18 to 50-odd. There were a couple of women. To use an inappropriate word, everyone seemed normal. Brooke said, "Do you want a cup of tea, Max?"

  There was always something about the way she said 'cup of tea' that made it feel like she was mocking me. "Yes, please."

  "Coming right up," she said. "Liam, can you get us started? Owen had to take his car to the, ah, garage, so Max is stepping in." That got a big buzz from the group.

  Liam was a short guy with a round face. He had a pretty good stubble thing going on, but his haircut was terrible - it looked like he had gone into a sauna in a baseball cap and only remembered to take it off when he was getting out. He was in a Chester training tracksuit but where my one of those said MB in big letters with (Max Best) underneath - yes, in brackets - Liam's simply said Community Foundation. I scanned my database and found him - he was CA 10, PA 10, and was listed as a midfielder; he had the lowest UEFA badge. "Oh, wow, Max is talking to us today. What a treat!"

  "I know some people would prefer Owen," I said, glancing at Brooke, who didn't react in the slightest. "But he doesn't know how to work his car. He's used to more, ah, primitive technology. Ropes," I added, miming a guy swinging through the jungle. The group was smiling at me, but only because I was the big star.

  Liam's eyes had widened at my opening gambits. Never meet your heroes. He said, "Shall we take our seats?"

  We did so, but then I realised I didn't like where I was. I pointed to one of the women. "Soz, can we swap? I don't like having the back of my skull facing the walkway, if you get me."

  "Why?" she said.

  "Because a guy hit me with a metal bar and now I'm scared of that happening again."

  "Oh, right," she said.

  We swapped places. "Also," I said, pointing at the TV screens, which were showing DigiWorld Sports News HD Plus with the sound off, "I can check the news ticker to see if Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle have released a new single yet. It's way overdue in my opinion."

  There wasn't a lot of laughter. One guy said, "Are you really afraid or just joking?"

  "Um, a bit of both. I think about it less these days but I still think about it. I was in a coma and when I woke up I couldn't feel my legs and all that. It was really scary." I rubbed the back of my head. "Maybe I should think about it more. Get some perspective on all the trivial bullshit that's piling up."

  A guy in a yellow Brazil shirt said, "You've got a very high-pressure and stressful job. How do you deal with the anger?"

  "Oh my God," I said, sweeping my gaze around the circle. "I thought you'd be asking normal, safe football questions."

  Liam thought I was complaining, so he moved to change the subject. "Does anyone have a question about football for Max?"

  An older guy, tall, thin, with silvering hair, said, "Why do you rotate your goalkeepers?"

  Liam stiffened, but I said, "It maximises the talent in the squad, which means we increase our net asset value over time. It also means we don't have a cold backup goalie, so if there's a red card, injury, or suspension, it isn't a total disaster. Rotation might cost us points in the short-term but benefits the club in the long term, so it's really a no-brainer."

  The silver guy said, "I didn't think you'd answer."

  "Why?"

  "You don't like the question."

  I steepled my fingers. "I don't mind the question, especially the way you asked it."

  "How did I ask it?"

  "Like you wanted to know the answer."

  "Isn't that how all questions go?"

  "No," I said. "Most people who ask about the goalies, what they're really saying is 'you're doing it wrong'. They're saying they know better than me. I reckon there are 20 or 30 guys in the world who do know better than me, but they aren't in a dingy, cramped corridor in Luton with an old iPhone that can only charge up to 15%, which describes my encounters with most reporters."

  Liam said, "Max, we were planning to speak to Owen about his recent issues and how he controls his temper - or doesn't, heh - and what he's doing to work on that. Many of us have similar struggles so that was a natural topic but I think we'd all be happy to talk about whatever's on your mind. Why don't you take the lead?"

  The group was nothing like what I had expected. I leaned forward and peered at the yellow Brazil top. There was something strange about it. It didn't take long to realise it had a Chester logo instead of the usual CBF badge. "Is everyone here a Chester fan?"

  "Almost," said Liam. "We don't discriminate. Football's for everyone."

  "Okay," I said. "Brazil top, what's your name?"

  "Everyone calls me Brazil Top." That got a much bigger laugh than anything I had said.

  Liam chimed in. "That's Frankie."

  "Frankie, was your question again?"

  He had to think for a second, but then it came out word for word the same as before. "You've got a very high-pressure and stressful job. How do you deal with the anger?"

  "Were you going to ask that to Owen?"

  "Yes."

  That's why it sounded so rehearsed. I shifted on the chair, crossing my leg, but then I uncrossed it straight away. "The physios tell me not to sit like that," I said. "It twists the hips. It's hard to remember all the things we're not supposed to do. Don't cross your legs, Max. Don't kick balls with your bare feet, Max. Don't drink loads of your father-in-law's delicious red wine at Christmas, Max. Don't defy the gods with your supernatural talent, Max. It's just like, uhhhhh. Do you know what I mean? This guy gets it," I said, pointing to the one person who hadn't spoken even in the time before we sat down. "Oh, thanks, Brooke." I took the cup from her, checked the tea's colour (within the range of acceptable) and depth (there was over an inch of wasted space at the top of the cup) before giving it an experimental sip. "You know in prisoner of war movies where the inmates make their own whisky from, like, old socks and things?" I looked up at the ceiling, then at the TV screen. "Let's turn that off, actually. It's distracting. No-one cares who Chelsea are wasting their money on next."

  Brooke went over and pressed a button on the underside of the screen, then joined the circle and sat. She sipped on a drink. "Mmm. A Houston hug in a mug. That's a real drink."

  "Are you staying?" I said.

  "Yup. I thought it would be Owen opening up, speaking from the heart, so I cleared my diary."

  She had pronounced Owen's name as Oh-en, I was sure of it. Just to wind me up! I couldn't work out why it was working. "All right. Frankie says I've got a high-pressure and stressful job. Let me think about that for a second." I sipped tea while I interrogated myself. "Most of the time it's all right, actually, but yeah, when it's stressful the stress goes all the way off the charts. As the season gets to a close, there's no room for mistakes, every match becomes more vital, and by the end you're living every kick, every header, and it's so epic you wonder how the players can even move under the weight of all the expectation. The hope and dread and the need. Yeah, it's stressful then.

  "But most football managers have that all the time, even at the start of the season, because they can be sacked any minute. There are three clubs in the Championship who expect to finish in the top two, so obviously there's one manager who's in line for the sack even if he misses out by one point or one goal. Then there are maybe ten clubs who expect to get into the playoffs, but only four can, so there's six more managers at risk of the sack. Go down to the bottom of the league and almost any manager there is in trouble.

  "The higher Chester are, the more teams are displaced, if you get me. We're massively adding to the pressure of every club below us. Which is objectively funny, okay, yes, that's true, because it means there's a rich American prick - no offence, Brooke - whose investment is getting tanked, lol, but it's incredibly stressful for those managers. Compared to them, I've kind of got the easiest job in football."

  The silver guy said, "We don't compare ourselves to others because that leads to envy, anxiety, and depression. We have to run our own races."

  "Oh, I agree," I said. "I generally try to include comparisons in my answers because it's such a specific thing that I do. You can't, um... You can't really walk a mile in my shoes. Maybe you've read a manager's autobiography or you've seen stressful jobs on TV and that can be a useful point of comparison to try to get a sense of what it's like being me."

  Silver said, "Even if you have less stress than your peers, it must be challenging. And you're very young and you have lots of other projects going on besides your main job."

  "Ah, but that's a great help," I said.

  "Really?"

  "Yeah. It's a kind of escapism. If I'm having a bad time with one thing, I can switch to another. At any one time, I've got an interest in, say, ten football clubs, and on a given Saturday, five of them have won. I can call Vimsy or Well In or Jackie - well, not Jackie - and ask them to describe how they won the match."

  Frankie said, "Recently, have you been struggling more than in the past? Because that's how it seems but it doesn't make sense from the outside because we're going better than ever so why is it you're not happy? Because we all want to be more successful but then it seems like actually what success brings is less happiness."

  Christ, this group was amazing. They talked like self-help types but with raw honesty and no bullshit. I finger-gunned Frankie. "There's one thing that makes my life harder. The outside perception. Let's take... Yeah, let's take the Owen incident and the Emiliano incident. You all know what I'm talking about, right?"

  "Not really," said a black guy in a black hat.

  "Er, short version, Owen shot his mum's phone because she was chatting shit about me on social media. Emiliano scored two goals and I threw a tantrum and subbed him off after 8 minutes."

  Black hat's eyes popped open. "I need to sign up to that newsletter!"

  Brooke laughed. "That can be arranged. Regular discounts on Grindhog products and season tickets." When the chuckles diminished, she stared at me.

  "Oh, me again. Um... okay so basically today's my deadline to make a final decision about what to do about it all. One of the reasons I told Brooke I'd come and do this is to, like, escape from that decision. Put it off like I used to put off doing homework. What's hard about those situations is that to the outside world, what Owen did was shocking and horrible, but in my head it was amazing and great and I loved him for it. And what Emiliano did, to the outside world was great and amazing but to me was horrible and shocking. The public perception makes it hard to deal with the situations the way I would really like, so what happens is a series of compromises and I don't feel that I'm really leading the team and I don't feel aligned with the team. Because they're on social media hearing about how I'm an absolute madman and I've lost my shit at players who are doing well. Which, as you know, keeps happening and happening and I feel like I'm losing control of the club and its culture and that's really a lot more stressful than the actual matches. The actual matches are an escape from everything else, at the moment."

  Brooke said, "Can I ask something? Did you want to handle the Owen situation differently?"

  I tapped the side of the cup. "No. It had to be like that. That was the perfect time to put you in charge and do a straight-down-the-middle PR campaign, no messing. It's the best result for the club and for Owen, too. You're an outstanding businesswoman but when it came to the Owen situation I had even more faith in you and you justified that faith a billion percent."

  God, I wished I could see Brooke's Morale just at that moment.

  Silver said, "So when you talk about escaping into a match, the first one after Emiliano scored the two goals was the women against West Ham. Was that an escape for you?"

  "In the sense that I could get into the work, the minute-by-minute work, and in the sense that I really had to concentrate, yes. One of the only other things that reliably helps me to relax is being pushed to my physical limits by Magnus. He makes me do these exercises where you're sort of pushing a cone against a wall, stretching, bringing it back slowly. It's a big strain on your core and you have to concentrate and after twenty minutes of that I'm just in a pure zen state. It's absolutely amazing stuff. Managing matches can be like that, too. The West Ham game was okay in terms of needing to concentrate, but it didn't give me that big rush of catharsis because everywhere I looked I kept being reminded of how my decision to withdraw Emiliano had triggered a chain reaction that was upsetting everyone. But a couple of days later, I had a Youth Cup match and that was one where I could totally throw myself into the flow of managing with no distractions and that was very healthy."

  Brooke said, "Before you talk about that, it might be useful to tell Semi what you did next."

  "Semi?" I said, pointing at Black Hat. He nodded. "Love that name. What do you mean, Brooke?"

  "I mean what you did with the three individuals involved in the melodrama."

  "Ah," I said. I looked at Semi. "There were three people involved in the story and while none of them did anything very wrong, I have to take steps when team morale is at risk because the alternative is relegation and job cuts and no more funding for programmes like the Senior Seals. Everyone in the senior squads had an opinion on the topic and you know how it goes, you take a side and you get entrenched and your opinion gets deeper and it becomes your whole personality. So I put the three individuals in a two-week cooling-off period. Basically asked them not to come here before 5 p.m. for a couple of weeks."

  Semi said, "Isn't that on the extreme side?"

  "Not really, because the alternative was me putting them in the bomb squad immediately."

  Brooke said, "That's where players are made to train on their own, separate from the rest of the group. Max asked our three players to train on their own, separate from the rest of the group, but he gave it a cute name so it was all right."

  I eyed her and tried to raise an eyebrow. "Do you think I did it wrong?"

  "I'm just teasing you, Max. I'm trying to learn more about banter," she told the group. "When it comes to British culture, I still feel like an alien in an episode of Star Trek."

  I frowned, because it seemed like Brooke had fallen under the group's spell and was opening up. "You're doing great. That was a good cuppa and you're the most popular American in England since Keanu Reeves."

  "He's Canadian."

  "Since Ryan Reynolds."

  "No."

  "Since Justin Bieber. Ryan Gosling. Alanis Morissette."

  "Max..."

  "Wayne Gretzky?"

  Frankie interrupted our banter by asking, "What was the cute name for the bomb squad?"

  "The Cool Crew," said Brooke. "One of the affected players says it's like being in the cooler in a prison movie. Solitary confinement."

  I bristled. "It's not a bomb squad, everyone. Bomb squads are for when a manager wants to bomb a player out of the club. I don't actually want any of the players to leave. In a dream scenario they would all stay and achieve their potential. That's best for the club, for me, for them. I want that. That's why they get two weeks to clear their heads, think about what's important and what they really want. And the break kept them away from me for a while, which was needed, I reckoned, because my mood was veering wildly from 'ah they're young, this happens, it's almost cute if you think about it' to 'do you think I could rip his head all the way off his body?' I don't know if you've ever had an experience where when it happened you were pretty chill but a couple of days later you realised it was really fucking infuriating?" Almost everyone nodded at that. "I know I'm not the most mature person so I was really trying to find a way to let better people deal with it and then come and say hey, it's fixed now! The players are happy!"

  Silver said, "We know you're talking about Charlotte and Angel. You're not protecting them by dancing around their names."

  "Semi didn't know their names," I said.

  "I did," said Semi, so seriously I couldn't tell if he was lying or joking or what.

  I rubbed my neck. "I called a squad meeting the Monday morning after it happened and told everyone there was no such thing as Team Charlotte or Team Angel, there was only Team Chester. I said that we all like a bit of hot goss and shit-stirring but I would go nuclear on anyone I caught making the situation worse. I pointed out that the cooling-off period included a big FA Cup match for the men, the Nando's Cup for the women, and the all-important Youth Cup match against Chelsea and if I had any more fucking distractions during that period it would go incredibly badly for everyone involved." I looked around the room and saw very little judgement, which made me feel vaguely ashamed. "I cleared the room except for coaches and senior players and I told them they had two weeks to save Charlotte." I looked down at the wooden floor of the restaurant. "Then I threw myself into training, trying to physically drain myself so I wouldn't have capacity to think about anything, and because the Cool Crew were coming at 5 p.m. every day, I found excuses to never be here."

  "What was the first excuse?" asked the woman who had swapped seats with me.

  "I went with someone from Tranmere Rovers to watch a match. An American guy from Diggy Doggy's investment group. Tranmere need a striker and the ownership group's data models highlighted this one dude, who's on the market for ￡900,000. I told the investor, this guy is worth half that, save your money. I pointed out specific things that he couldn't do that meant he wasn't worth that much. I wasn't really getting through to him so I started talking about the other lads on the pitch, pointing out what they could and couldn't do. Thing is, if you're a data-minded guy, you can study one player and decide he's undervalued and trick yourself into believing that, but when you're sitting next to an actual expert who can do that for every single player on the pitch, unless you're a complete idiot you're gonna start to think, hey, maybe I should shut up and listen. By half-time we were pretty friendly and I was telling him if you've got 900K there are two other guys you should check out. One fits Jackie's style, the other not quite as much but Jackie can tweak his system to make it work. See which one you can get." I closed my eyes. "You know what? That was actually a really fun night. Took my mind off things in a good way."

  Frankie said, "And then it was the Youth Cup. Most of us went that night, Max. We were expecting a really intense match."

  "Um," I said. "Soz?"

  ***

  Tuesday, January 11 (Thirteen days ago)

  I was trapped. Imprisoned in a cage with four walls. On the outside, young men with cruel sneers and sinister haircuts were mocking me. "Run, Best!" "You'll never get out, Best!" "Look at him scampering around like an irate chimpanzee!"

  I dipped my head and ran harder, faster. Left, right, left, double right. I had to get the ball. I had to get the ball. They had stolen my freedom and my dignity, but I would have the last laugh. I, Max Best, always had the last laugh.

  I sprinted at an opponent, whose body shape told me he was going to play it right-footed to my right. Using my ungodly powers of anticipation, I threw out my right leg to block the pass.

  The guy hit the ball right-footed, it's true, but he hit it six inches onto his left foot, which was already in the process of deflecting the ball to the other side of the prison, directly behind me.

  He nutmegged me. Tekkers 19.

  I collapsed onto my back, hands covering my face, while my wardens sprinted into each other's arms, celebrating, whooping, cheering.

  "No," I groaned. "No. I can't go out like this. I can't go out like this."

  Wibbers, wearing a tracksuit, came over. "Boss? You hurt?"

  "I'm mortally wounded."

  He laughed and turned his head. "Wallace, you've killed the gaffer. No wonder he dropped you."

  Wallace Wells, whose two-footedness made him a menace at rondos (the piggy-in-the-middle training drill), jogged over, grinning from ear to ear, and reached down to grab my hand. "Sorry, boss," he said as he helped me to my feet, "I forgot you were old."

  "Oh my God," I groaned, as I bent over, hands on my thighs. "I come here to escape reality, mate, not to be reminded of it." Slowly, I stood straight, wincing and making an old-person noise. "So very, very old. By the way," I said, changing tone to one of cocky amusement. "Don't use my moves against me."

  "That's not your move!" cried Wallace. "That's mine! That's the Wells Fargo. The Quantum of Wallace."

  I tipped my head back. "The Quantum of Wallace! That's so insane I'm gonna let you have the move just so I can say Quantum of Wallace. Holy shit, that's great."

  "Boss," said Wallace, who I had signed for ￡800,000.

  "What?"

  He pointed to the square of cones. "You didn't get the ball. You're still in the middle. Stop yapping and get back to work."

  "Mate," said Wibbers. "Don't push it."

  Wallace looked from me to his friends. Roddy Jones put his palms up and backed away. Adam B. Roberts was looking up at a floodlight, whistling. Dominic Duckham mimed eating popcorn. "I'll go in the middle," suggested Wallace.

  While still glaring at him, I took his spot on the edge of the rondo, and those of us on the outside fizzed the ball to each other while Wallace chased it. After a few rounds, the ball was passed to me a little too slowly and Wallace saw his chance. As he came at me, I flicked the ball up with my right foot so that the ball rose in a shallow arc towards the outside of my left shin. Then, striking like a snake, I wrapped my right leg around my standing left and bounced the ball downwards, through Wallace's legs. A bouncing rabona nutmeg. Tekkers 20.

  Wibbers, Roddy, Adam, and Dominic surged towards me, cheering and whooping, while Wallace copied me by collapsing onto his back, covering his face, groaning.

  After cackling for a healthy six seconds, I went over and lifted him up. "Come on," I said, putting my arm around him as we headed back to the dressing room. "We're not gonna get any more ready than we already are."

  "What about the cones?" he said, which showed good character.

  I turned back and eyed the temporary prison. "Cones?" I said, loud enough for my little warm-up group to hear. "Cones are for subs and minions."

  There was general amusement until they realised, one by one, that I was referring to Wibbers and Roddy, at which point some smiles got bigger while others faded. The players I had named were two hundred million quid in future talent, but for now they had to gather the equipment. They eyed each other, possibly wondering if they would be made to do menial work at any other club, but then Roddy said, "Bet I get more than you."

  Wibbers shook his head and pointed to someone on the other side of the pitch. "That guy could do more than you."

  Roddy turned and stared, but when he looked back, Wibbers had already picked up three cones. Roddy raced into action, and then it was chaos, with Adam cheering on his brother and Dominic yelling, "Go on, Rodders! Gowan!"

  Wallace skipped away from my side to get closer to the action. "Come on, Rod!"

  Wibbers and Roddy threw themselves at the final cone, both grabbing it at the same time, tugging. Roddy's team mates rushed to help, with Wallace pulling Wibbers's fingers off the cone one by one while Dominic Duckham scooped up the cones that Wibbers was spilling.

  "Adam," yelled Wibbers. "You gonna help or what?"

  His brother - almost a spitting image - rushed into the fray and lent his weight to Team Roddy.

  "Et tu, Brude?" I called out.

  "You what?" said Wibbers, who was on his arse, grumpily holding on to three cones. Team Roddy had the rest, and they were very happy with themselves.

  "It's Latin. It means, you too, brother? Or close enough."

  Roddy said, "You wanted him to take a side, Wibbers. So he did."

  Adam said, "The winning side."

  Wibbers got to his feet, walked over to his brother and dumped the cones in his arms. He gave him a little push. "I'm gonna remember this next time you're out of cash." Adam looked worried for a second, but picked up the pace to get in line with Roddy, Wallace, and DD. Wibbers scowled after them as he fell into step with me. His face melted and he gave my arm a little tap. "Did you see that, boss? Puts the team first even if it costs him his pocket money."

  "I saw it," I said. "Did you see what Wallace did to me?"

  "Yeah. Did you let him do it?"

  I shook my head. "No. He's just that good."

  Wibbers looked to the other side of the pitch, where the opposition was going through their pre-match routines. "I almost feel sorry for them." I glared at him. "Almost!" he said, backing away slightly. "Almost."

  ***

  FA Youth Cup Fourth Round: Chester versus Chelsea

  The time before kickoff was the worst, because there was almost nothing for me to do. I had hand-picked the players, I had given them the training they needed, I had given them early exposure to men's football. They were ready. The stadium was filling up - we were expecting over 5,000 to attend, which was staggering, plus hundreds of scouts.

  In the dressing room, watching the countdown clock eat away the seconds, I was forced to think about everything else that was going on. Emiliano, Charlotte, Angel. The fallout. The cooling-off period. The complaints from Angel. I had reminded her that I had an important Youth Cup match coming up and would like to win that and it was about time people started putting the club first. I had hinted that her punishment was an attempt to save the others, which was true enough. She had accepted it, which lifted my spirits. I felt I could count on her as one of my Dragoness Balls.

  I tutted and gritted my teeth. Why was I thinking about all that nonsense for the thousandth time?

  Football is escapism.

  Into football, I escaped.

  "Okay, lads," I said, tapping the tactics board as I brought up the under 18s squad page. No unhappiness here - only excitement about the coming match. "My favourite movie is Escape to Victory. It's set in a magical fantasy world in which Ipswich Town provide most of a worlds-best eleven, and it tells the story of how some prisoners of war play a football match against their captors. Pelé scores an overhead kick, Ossie Ardiles does a rainbow flick, and Sylvester Stallone grunts in American. All the good stuff is in the second half, right, so what I need you to do tonight is be 4-1 down at half time." There was a chorus of boos and jeers. "What?" I cried. "It's thematic!" More boos. "Do as you're told!"

  I pulled the tactics board a little to the left, then nudged it a little to the right.

  "Reminder that we're starting with 4-5-1. Aston's in goal." His unexpected professional debut - in the actual Championship! - had proved a top catalyst to his training, and he had added a squad-high 5 points in CA since the last round of the cup. He was now CA 44 and somehow looked a lot less like a boy.

  "Back four is Max Murray, Archer, Future, Lennox." All four CAs were between 42 and 44. I hadn't wanted to use Future as one of two centre backs, but we would do it for the start of the match to accommodate me using Bench Boost. It was a talented defence, but a young one - we had two 16-year-olds.

  "Then it's DD left midfield, Ben Wood, Tommy, Monty. Tommy and Monty swapping places on the right so I can get a good look at those match-ups. Adam's in the middle of the middle to start with, but I'll move him around depending on how the match is going. When we're bossing the ball, I'll slide him up to CAM, as per usual." The midfielders had a range of CAs, but the average was just a smidge over 45.

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

  "Then up front, it's the man of the hour, the man of destiny, Tommy Teamwork himself, round of applause please... it's Nine!" The striker stood and bowed left, then right. He was stuck on his limit of CA 29, but there was no-one in the world more suited to the role I had in mind for him.

  Overall, our average CA was a mere 43, and four of the starters would be 16. Chelsea didn't have any players that young in their eleven. There was a risk that we could find ourselves outfought, bullied, unable to cope, followed by the complete mental disintegration of our team.

  There was also a risk that pigs would fly.

  "Yeah, so, we're gonna, like, do our usual things and whatever," I said. "Bit of this, bit of that." I tilted my head. "Maybe a bit of the other."

  Wibbers, who was helping as a sort of coach slash big brother (literally) for the day, said, "Are you gonna mention Chelsea?"

  I eyed him. "No. Why?"

  "They're taking it really seriously. They brought all their best players today."

  "Did they?" I said, lips curling into an arrogant pout. "I didn't notice."

  The lads cheered and whooped.

  "Good. We're ready. Let me just get my half-time team talk prepared." I picked up a kit bag, let it thunk onto a table, unzipped it, and pulled out a blonde wig.

  Archer Phillips, the captain, said, "What's that?"

  "This? This is Michael Caine." I pulled out another one. "This is Bobby Moore." I pulled out a sling. "This is for Pelé. He gets injured in the first half. I think I'll be Pelé. Seems more respectful to his memory."

  Archer said, "What do you mean, you'll be Pelé?"

  "Oh," I said, slapping my forehead. "You need context. Basically, if we're losing, we're gonna re-enact the famous Escape to Victory half-time sequence and Sophie's gonna film it." I dug into the bag and pulled out some flashcards. "Look, I've got all your lines here. Who wants to say, 'We can win this!' Eh, we can decide that later. We'll do one quick run-through, then it'll be lights, camera, action. Guys, don't look so glum. TikTok's gonna love it!"

  Archer stared at the props in horror. "And what if we're winning at half-time?"

  My jaw dropped open; I tapped the bag. "You wouldn't do that to me. I bought all this stuff."

  Archer stood and pointed to a few key players. "We're winning this one."

  ***

  We gave every fan a small flag when they went through the turnstiles, and every 50th person got a massive one. In the minutes before kick-off, the McNally was a rippling sea of Chester crests, thousands of waving wolves.

  "Cracking atmosphere," said Wibbers. "It wasn't like this when I was playing Youth Cups."

  "You helped us build this, bro. They're here to see the next Wibberses. This is your legacy."

  He nodded, keeping a straight face, and went to the dugout, but his Morale had smashed to the maximum.

  Make us proud.

  I glanced to my left, at the Chelsea benches, which were stuffed with analysts and iPad guys and assistants to the assistant coaches. The Londoners had come all guns blazing, with their best prospects, and their prospects were very, very good indeed. They had an average CA of 44, which was one of the highest I'd ever seen in this competition. They had two dreamy central midfielders and a rampaging striker.

  But not one of their players had ever gone within a million miles of Chelsea's first team. None of them got personal training sessions with the same coaches who taught the club's megastars. I very much doubted that any of the first team players knew the names of these kids, whereas our goalies hung out with Owen and Sticky, Archer and his fellow centre backs got feedback from Christian Fierce and Peter Bauer, the creative midfielders had been taken under the wing of Dan Badford, and our strikers got personalised sessions from Colin Beckton.

  I hit Bench Boost and Triple Captain. I was incredibly relaxed about the outcome of this match, but Chelsea were the strongest team in the competition not called Chester, so there was no point saving the perks.

  As the whistle blew, the noise from the stands died down, the colours in my vision faded, and I gave all my attention to the pitch.

  Numbers danced. Passes completed went up; match ratings followed. Tackles and headers were missed; ratings went down.

  I nudged Adam Roberts higher, back. I swapped Tommy Thompson and Monty Holmes to see which was more effective on the right of midfield.

  I kept a close eye on Future, who was so far looking solid next to his captain. Archer's Influence being tripled was probably helping to keep Future composed, and I had told Lennox Francis (the right back who normally played in the centre) not to go forward. That meant that we pretty much always had three defenders back, so from Future's point of view it wasn't too much different from playing in a back three.

  All in all, we were competing well everywhere on the pitch, except in one position.

  I waited for the clock to tick up.

  When it hit 8 minutes, I told the fourth official that I wanted to make a sub.

  Nine jogged from his position as striker towards the touchline, applauding all sides of the ground. His mates on the pitch ran to him and clapped him on the back. He high-tenned Chas Fungrieve, who was replacing him, and when he crossed the white line, I was there to give him a massive hug. Nine walked through a guard of honour provided by the other subs and took his seat in the dugout.

  Wibbers came to stand next to me on the sideline. "Sub after eight minutes, boss. Sending a message?"

  "Don't know what you mean," I said.

  "Applause for the selfless team player, walking through a tunnel of his adoring teammates. Was it a bit much?"

  "It was nowhere near as much as I wanted. I wanted cute little kids rushing to him with bouquets of flowers and shit." I shook my head. "I'm gonna play against Cardiff and QPR. People need a refresher in what teamwork looks like." I watched as Chas competed for a header - already impacting the match more than Nine had. There was a silence from beside me, such that I thought Wibbers had gone. No - he was still there, with half a goofy grin. "What?"

  "Are you gonna unleash yourself?"

  I inhaled. "Yeah." I was planning to play my absolute best and set up a hatful of goals for Dazza. "Let me focus on this, mate. I need a break from the real world."

  With Chas on the pitch, we were now CA 47.5, three points ahead of the oppo, but our CA 78 striker was boosted. He dominated the match for ten minutes, so Chelsea's defenders moved closer to him - if they couldn't outmuscle him, they could outnumber him. That meant there would be space elsewhere. I moved Adam Roberts into the CAM slot.

  But that gave Chelsea's brilliant midfielders more space to be brilliant. Twice they combined and played delicious through-balls to the striker, who smashed the ball high and wide without engaging his brain and without checking to see if a teammate was in a better position. I was so disgusted I nearly spat - this match was supposed to be an escape from idiots with low Team Work.

  Chelsea's midfielders were threatening to boss the game, so I brought Adam back to CM and swapped Tommy Thompson infield. Tommy had 5 CA points more than Monty Holmes.

  We had the overall advantage, then, but not a decisive one. If we allowed the oppo to do whatever they wanted, they would mess us up.

  As we hit the twentieth minute, I crouched and thought about something I had noticed in recent Bayern Munich matches. When the head coach (Basti) had a spare defender, he would sometimes send him all the way into midfield - or beyond - to make Bayern's press even more intense and powerful. It was incredibly extreme, incredibly risky, but my first thought on seeing it had been to wonder how I could take it even further.

  What if I sent my centre backs into midfield to man-mark Chelsea's little geniuses?

  My centre-backs had high Marking scores, high Aggression, and high Determination. They would smash up the creative midfielders, wouldn't they? It felt like one of those tactics I would turn on and off every couple of minutes to give Chelsea problems they wouldn't have encountered before.

  I had planned to sub Max off in the next round of changes, but if I kept him on, he could play as the left-sided of three centre backs in a 3-5-2 with an average CA of 54. That was tasty, plus I could experiment with having Future in the centre of midfield, man-marking one of Chelsea's geniuses. Or if I made the two changes I had planned and subbed Max off, too, I could get us up to CA 55.8 and assign Hamish to be one of the midfield terriers - he would be amazing at that role.

  Slowly, I rubbed my hands while I thought it through. Hamish could wait till half time - Wibbers was right that I was sending a message with my substitutions. And the other changes? Chelsea's team was callow. Their coach was good but inexperienced. Was it really fair for me to go at this match quite as hard as I was planning? No. It wasn't fair. But it would be very, very enjoyable.

  I stood tall. "Wallace, Roddy, let's go. I'm ready to power cliff."

  ***

  The latest blog post from News of the Blues, the leading news and views platform for all things Chester FC.

  Are You Proud Yet? Best's Babes Mark Two Go Through, Bid Londoners Adieu. Plus: The Wells Embargo.

  Turmoil? What turmoil? Max Best guided Chester's under 18s to a stunning 6-1 win over a Chelsea side replete with England youth internationals and talent poached from all four corners of the globe. Hundreds of scouts and agents were in the Deva Stadium to see the much-vaunted West Londoners. They came to see the Chelsea Power Show. Instead they got Bestgravia in Bloom, and what a display it was!

  This was a cagey affair at first, with Chelsea creating the better chances in the opening exchanges, but the early introduction of Chas Fungrieve turned the tide. Coming on in the 8th minute, he was a handful, too much for his opponents, who resorted to fouling him again and again. The referee's leniency was gobsmacking, and when he cautioned Ben Wood for a fractionally late tackle - his first offence - it seemed like the curse of the Big Club would strike again.

  In the 22nd minute, Best made two more changes, withdrawing Wood and Holmes, who were replaced by Roddy Jones and the extraordinary Wallace Wells. More on him in a moment.

  The next phase of play was fascinating. Best's Babes Mark Two did just that - marked two. Future, the centre back slash defensive midfielder, performed man-marking duties in central midfield. So far, so surprising. But while a Max Best team using man-marking as a weapon is rare, seeing it done twice in one match is, I think, unprecedented. Archer Phillips, the youth team's inspirational captain, who has never played anywhere other than centre back, was also sent into midfield to track a troublesome opponent. That left Chester with a back three of Max Murray (left back), Lennox Francis (a centre back who started the match on the right), and Adam B. Roberts, an attacking midfielder!

  Crazy, but like most of Max Best's experiments - especially at this level - it was stunningly effective. Chelsea's brilliant midfield duo could scarcely escape the attentions of their markers and the away team's moves became more desperate, with hopeful long passes sent forward. One of these eventually led to a goal, which is what happens when talented strikers get a lucky bounce against inexperienced defenders, but it mattered not.

  While the midfield battle was being won on a tactical level, the match was won by sheer weight of talent. Roddy Jones was double-marked, as always, and since Chas Fungrieve was also being double-marked, there was space, space, and more space for Wallace Wells. He scored two and created three, winning the Man of the Match award by some distance. My favourite assist was a left-footed cross sent onto the head of Adam Roberts, who arrived in the box unmarked, with the sort of late run Chelsea's Frank Lampard would have been proud of.

  That was after Best's fourth change, which came at half time. Hamish Andrews replaced Max Murray and Chester returned to their customary 3-5-1-1. Andrews took such a grip on midfield that no fewer than three Chelsea players were booked for fouling him.

  Best seemed to enjoy himself, continuing to make tactical changes, continuing to ask his players for more. For a few minutes, Roddy Jones and Wallace Wells switched places and in the brief moment when Chelsea didn't react, Jones broke free and scored. Lennox Francis got a spell in midfield, where he was supposed to man-mark one of the away team's stars, but Francis found himself in front of goal with time and space and decided to shoot. Good choice! Max Best and his assistant for the evening (a certain William Roberts - you might have heard of him) were both booked for running to join in the celebrations.

  Best kept up the intensity until the 80th minute, when he let Roberts the Younger have a rest - he didn't want one - and the backup striker Marco Burton got a runout. He looked lively, and the minutes will have done him good.

  In the post-match press conference, Best replied to questions about Emiliano Ferrari and the women's team by staring in silence at the questioners until a new question was asked. When it was my turn, I asked the following:

  "Max, amazing result, sensational performance. In recent first-team matches, you withdrew Emiliano on the 8th minute, 22nd minute, and at half time. Today you made changes in the 8th minute, the 22nd minute, and half time. Was there a message behind that? A meaning?"

  He dipped his head and rubbed his mouth, then tried to glare at me. He couldn't do so without the tell-tale signs of a grin appearing. "I come to press conferences to escape a life of numbers, Coxy. I make subs whenever it's right for the team and don't keep track of every little data point. Ask me another one."

  "There were dozens of scouts in the crowd tonight. If you were one of those scouts, what would you have learned?"

  Best leaned back, and with a twinkle in his eye said, "I'm not sure what you're getting at, but in case any of those scouts are reading this, here's a message. Wallace Wells is not for sale."

  ***

  I took the lads back across Bumpers Lane for a special treat - a Nando's-style meal in the Get Fed and Wed Shed. We had invited the Chelsea guys as a matter of courtesy, not expecting them to come, but they did!

  I forced the two sets of players to mingle, saying they could end up as teammates at clubs and national teams one day. I ended up eating next to Chelsea's head coach, who was incredibly chatty until Emma and Brooke joined us. Emma told me off for 'being mean' to him. I couldn't tell if she was trying to cheer him up or if she was joining the pile-on - what man wants to hear that his opponent should have taken it easy on him? Especially when that man was supposed to be leading the world's best youth academy?

  Brooke munched on her food for a while, then said, "Max, can I have twenty thousand pounds?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Do you want to know what it's for?"

  I tapped my lips, which sent piri-piri sauce everywhere. "Do I wanna know what it's for?" I mused, as I dabbed myself with the napkin Emma handed me. "You wouldn't ask if you didn't need it."

  "I want to know," said Emma.

  "It's for something cool," said Brooke. "We could have it installed by the 26th."

  I squinted. "That's when Wolves are coming to the Deva."

  Emma turned to Chelsea's coach and explained. "Wolves are to Chester's men's team what Chester Boys are to Chelsea."

  "Oh," he said, trying to parse her words. It didn't look like he was getting very far.

  I wagged a vague finger towards Brooke, "Did we get the farmer sorted?" I looked at the Chelsea guy. "We're trying to buy some land without paying for it yet. Because of the zen garden," I added, helpfully.

  "Yeah," he said. His head must have been spinning.

  "I did," said Brooke. "He put the price up. 300."

  My eyes bulged. "That's fifty percent more than he said!"

  Brooke smiled. "He's rinsing us. I don't blame him."

  "What a dick," I said. "Can you get the rights to all the other land we want before he watches more YouTube tutorials about negotiation tactics?"

  "Yes," she said. She dabbed her lips. "I'd like to grind him down, Max. I haven't had a good fight for a while."

  I groaned. "Brooke, he's a farmer. He works 14 hours a day to get a penny per pint of milk. I'm happy to be rinsed by our friendly neighbourhood farmer. I'll get the money back by rinsing Chelsea." I nudged my new friend. "Won't I?"

  He looked around the room before getting conspiratorial. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about." His eyes flicked left and right, as though he wanted to talk in private.

  I looked from Emma to Brooke before lowering my voice. "Anything you say to me, I'm gonna discuss with them. Unless you want to, like, make a move." I pointed to Emma. "Her boyfriend is a smokeshow." I pointed to Brooke. "I reckon you're in, there."

  He eyed Brooke, and they both laughed at the same time. He dipped his head and came back smiling. "I wish. Max, it's about one of your players."

  I tutted and leaned back. "Wallace Wells."

  Wallace appeared on two of my squad screens - the boys and the men's first team - which doubled the chance of me seeing the large WTD icon next to his name. It was new, but I had been so focused on the match that I didn't know exactly when it had arrived. My guess was that the more Wallace fucked Chelsea up, the more someone at that club had yelled, "I want him on my team!" It felt a very American way to run a sports team - buy the player who caused you the most pain - but hadn't I done the same with Christian Fierce?

  Wallace aged 18 looked like becoming one of the stars of the future, a two-footed winger who created and scored more goals than almost anyone else in his age group - and with style, too. I knew that his PA was 145, which meant he would only ever be a squad player for a Premier League team and that his best seasons would be spent rampaging around the Championship, but it made sense that he was highly sought after. Especially after what he had just done.

  "Wallace Wells," agreed the head coach. "Honestly, we were going to eat and go home but I got the call to make first contact with you about him. We know you're not a big fan of Chelsea but we hope you'd listen to a reasonable offer."

  "I'd prefer to listen to an unreasonable offer," I said, gruffly, still leaning back. I tipped myself forward, towards Brooke. "Was that good? It felt good."

  "It was good, Max," she said, with a smile. "Maybe we don't need to discuss your negotiating skills in the middle of a negotiation, though."

  I put my hands behind my head. "It doesn't matter. Wallace is not for sale." I looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds, then threw myself closer to Brooke again. "Was that good? It felt good."

  Brooke didn't reply, but simply sipped on a drink while giving the Chelsea guy a smile.

  I looked around the room, where players from Chester and Chelsea were showing each other funny clips on their phones. Wallace was talking to one of the two brilliant midfielders Chelsea would probably sell for 30 million quid. I thought I heard someone say 'two goals in eight minutes' but I might have been imagining it.

  "We need money," I said, "but there's no way I'd sell him this window. I want to win the Youth Cup, as you may have noticed. I'd say I'm better at developing players until the age of 18 but Chelsea have the advantage from 18 to 22 - on a certain scale, anyway. You can tell your bosses I'm open to a deal but we're talking big money and we're talking the summer. Do you think they'd go along with that?"

  "The summer thing?" he said. He shrugged. "I have absolutely no idea. If it was me, yeah. We underestimated him, didn't we?" The guy narrowed his eyes and briefly looked haunted. "How are you supposed to stop Roddy Jones, Chas Fungrieve, all your attacking midfielders and Wallace Wells?"

  I gave him a friendly shake of the shoulder. "You're not, mate. You're not."

  My attempt at cheering him up failed. He stood, ready to go to the bathroom. "When I changed things, things got worse. That can happen but tonight it happened, like, every single time."

  I rubbed my lips while I hid a smile. "That's just your imagination. You'll see on the replays that it was a much closer match than the scoreline suggested." He smiled and walked away. When he was gone, I added, "If you look hard enough."

  ***

  The Senior Seals

  Frankie said, "I watched you in that match against Chelsea and it was obvious how much it meant to you. You were living every moment, kicking every ball. Even when it was 4-1 and 5-1 you were really concentrating hard. But the referee was giving every decision to Chelsea and honestly I was getting so frustrated and angry about it. The injustice is hard to take."

  He got a bit upset, so Silver took over. "You are combustible, Max. You lost your temper with a player who scored two goals, and recently there was a similar incident. But I was with Frankie for the Youth Cup and the referee barely bothered you. I have been trying to work out how you can get so angry at your own players, who are doing their best, and be so calm about the referees, who are either inept or corrupt. Could you help? Because it is really eating away at me."

  "Okay," I said. "Couple of general points. Yeah, referees are shit but they are given almost no help. If a player dives to get a penalty, his team might get three points but there's no sanction. If the ref buys the dive, the TV guys blast him for days or weeks but they don't even mention the name of the player who cheated or the manager who told them to cheat. Right? It's completely twisted. The Premier League gets a 5 billion pound TV deal and how much of it goes into refereeing? Sixty quid? When a ref gives a dubious decision in favour of Chelsea I don't get mad at the ref, I get mad at Chelsea, because they're the ones taking all the money for themselves. Ask them to give a slice to improve the standard of refereeing and they'll look at you, confused, and say why? We already get all the decisions.

  "Another thing about me is that when I'm watching a match I'm not looking at the incidents the same way you are. You're looking at the ball bouncing up onto someone's hand and you're having a passionate debate in the pub about whether it should count as handball or not. Which is fun and top and I wish I could just drink a few pints and proclaim my opinions on everything. Can't wait to get back to being a normo, to be honest. But in that incident, my attention goes fifteen passes earlier in the move, when one of my players underhit a pass or played it behind the player he was aiming at, or someone was too busy trying to kick his oppo and wasn't in position, or whatever. Do you get me? One of our players did something that made that incident possible. If my player had done his job, that incident would never have happened.

  "Can I control the referees? No. Can I control my players? I wish. But I can coach them and yell at them and insist on higher standards and if they ever fucking listen to me we'll play the perfect game and on that day, Frankie, believe me, we won't be talking about the referee because we'll have won 10-0 and there won't have been a single controversial incident in the 90 minutes."

  That got a round of applause, which brought a huge smile to my face.

  The guy I thought was too shy to speak spoke. "Did you really avoid coming here after 5 p.m. for two whole weeks?"

  I scrunched up my face while I tried to remember. "Um... I gave it a good go, I reckon."

  ***

  Wednesday, January 12 (Twelve days ago)

  On Wednesday, Emma and I went south to watch a non-league match with Vimsy. Tempsford's odious star striker had found a new club to join, so the 500 pounds a week we were paying him would be freed up soon.

  "He'll do," said Vimsy, as we watched a CA 30 striker chase a long ball. He was 10 points short of the guy I had sent to the bomb squad, but by all accounts he was a solid human being. "Yeah, he'll do."

  "I like him, too," I said. The guy was only getting 390 a week at the moment, so it was realistic that he would drop a few divisions to get a pay rise. That's how it worked at this level. "After the match, let's go and nab him in the car park. Ems, can you tell him you like his tats?"

  Emma hugged Tempsford FC's manager. "Anything for our Vimsy."

  I pointed to the side of the pitch. "I've got to say, I like that winger."

  Vimsy's face squashed up like a bulldog. "Now, Max, all things considered, I'd prefer me a striker."

  I scoffed. "Por que no los dos?"

  "You and your Latin," complained Vimsy.

  Emma leaned into him. "Max is offering you a winger and a striker."

  "Oh!" said Vimsy. "Are you sure?"

  I scanned the pitch from left to right, sucking in all the experience points and data. "Do you know what's better than having two star players?"

  Vimsy sighed. "Having someone else to take the blame when it all goes tits-up."

  "That's right," I said, as if he hadn't spoken. "Having three star players."

  "Can you afford it?"

  My sponsorship money was currently all going to West Didsbury, who were having a sensational season. Tempsford were getting the profits from my first set of flats, but that wouldn't be enough to pay for the third player. I would have to start sending the money I got as Youngster's agent, too. What were my other obligations? Saltney Town and the Gibraltar clubs were self-sufficient, while Newport County were dominating the National League. Tranmere were still struggling, but I was pretty sure they would pick up enough points to avoid relegation. That would net me a million pounds in bonuses at the end of the season and if I needed to buy a new car or something in the meantime, I had my basic wage from Chester FC, plus my share of REM's money. Sending 700 pounds a week to Bedfordshire wasn't much of an imposition and it would make Vimsy's life three hundred percent easier. "I can afford it," I said.

  ***

  XP balance: 3,556

  ***

  Friday, January 14 (Ten days ago)

  There were surprisingly few professional matches scheduled for the 13th and 14th and seeing as I only needed 444 XP to unlock the next Attribute, I decided to go old-school. Back to basics, fluttering around the five-a-side pitches of Manchester. Seven and a half hours would do it, and of course I would be able to spend some time with my mum while I was in town.

  On Thursday night, Gemma and the Triplets came with me until they got bored (which took 24 minutes), and on Friday, Youngster did the same, except he stayed long past when he got bored (which I'm pretty sure happened in the 25th minute).

  It had seemed like a good idea, and I did crawl towards my goal of getting to 4,000 XP, but it also stirred up a lot of memories. In a week where I just wanted some escapism, just wanted to bury my head in the sand and pretend the Chester project was on track, it was stupid to go to the place where I had scouted the player who had hurt me the most.

  As I glumly watched CA 1 Mancunians play their weekly five-a-sides like it was the World Cup final (to be fair, the only way to play), Youngster gamely tried to talk to me. "I hear you are going to play tomorrow."

  "Yeah," I mumbled. "Gonna fuck Cardiff up."

  "That is good. But, ah, why?"

  "Need to remind people what Team Work looks like. Need to remind people why we do what we do. Lead by example or whatever. It has been weird ever since I said I might be leaving. We need to reset. Factory reset, James. Back to basics, and if people don't get the message, they can fuck off back to Italy." I realised I had accidentally spoken from the heart. "Or fuck off to Italy for the first time. Whatever."

  Youngster eyed me nervously, but didn't know what to say. He got on his phone, almost certainly texting Meghan, asking her what to do. I got the sense that she told him to give me space, because he went off and came back with two hot drinks that we drank in silence until I hit the magic number.

  I bought the next Attribute.

  Agility

  "Ugh," I said, unimpressed.

  "What is wrong, Mr. Best?"

  I sighed. "What's the difference between agility and balance?"

  Youngster's eyes boggled. "That is..." He stared at the nearest match, hoping it would tell him something. "When Roddy Jones sprints past a player who tries to push him to the ground and he keeps running, that is balance. When Wallace jinks between two defenders and emerges on the other side, that is agility."

  That sounded about right, but it was just another Attribute I wanted to be sky-high when scouting players. I couldn't have everything! "Would you prefer perfect balance or agility?"

  He grinned. "I would prefer perfect long shots."

  I watched as some players with Balance 1, Agility 1 crashed around a football pitch, apparently enjoying themselves. "Do you have any opinions about Charlotte versus Angel?"

  "My opinion is that life is hard."

  "That's true," I agreed.

  "My opinion is that God will show you the way."

  "Why do you have to ruin these moments, mate?"

  "God will show you the way, Mr. Best. He is watching over you."

  "I don't like the way you capitalise the word He."

  "It was the beginning of a sentence."

  "You know what I mean." I rubbed my eyebrow. "You know the money I get as your agent? I decided to send it to Tempsford FC."

  His grin went so wide it looked like it had to hurt. "The club my father owns?"

  "The club Vimsy manages. You've bought him part of a striker and a winger."

  He nodded, slowly, but the idea that the money he was generating was going to Vimsy had sent his Morale miles, miles, miles off the charts. "Which part of a striker?"

  "You don't want to know."

  He tipped his head back and laughed. "I should not laugh but you are so funny."

  I put my arm around him. "Let's go to Two Taps HQ."

  "Do you mean my family's house?"

  "Yeah. I want to make sure they're suitably proud of you."

  "They are the maximum amount of proud."

  I turned him towards me. "That's not enough, bro. Not nearly fucking enough."

  ***

  The Senior Seals

  One of our waitresses arrived early before her shift and I called her over, asking if she would take a drinks order. She was happy to oblige and was soon noting the support group's requests.

  "Get her a hamper," I mumbled to Brooke.

  "I'll give her a token for a ten-pound discount on Jejune perfume, Chester Zoo, or selected PetPride products," said Brooke, nodding, as though that's exactly what I had said.

  "Hamper!" I insisted.

  When the buzz of drinks-related chat died down, Silver said, "Max, can we talk about your latest outburst? It seems like one of the most inexplicable yet."

  "Ah," I said, leaning all the way back, like I was about to get my hair washed in a salon. I imagined Livia telling me off and brought myself back upright. With a sigh, I said, "The problem is, it's not inexplicable. It's the exact same shit as every other scenario." I stared at nothing for a few seconds. "The problem is, if I'm wrong in this case, I'm wrong in every case, and I should just quit and train as a marine biologist or something. I'd love to invent a microbe that eats plastic in the sea. You can't believe how much I'd love that."

  Brooke said, "Tell us about it, Max."

  I sighed, holding my head in my hands and rubbing my hair hard, as if trying to mimic Liam's fringe. "So, we had two Saturday matches. The first was against Cardiff City, down in South Wales. Youngster and I spent Friday night with our parents in Manchester, as you've heard, and I drove him down separate from the rest of the squad. I told him that my plan was to do 4-1-4-1 with my best crossers at full back and wide midfield, centre backs who weren't likely to score from set pieces, and central midfielders who also weren't goal machines. I wanted every chance we created to end up at the gorgeous, shimmering forehead of Darren 'Dazza' Smith."

  "Why?" said Semi.

  I sighed again. "All the stuff I was angry about was players being selfish. When I was telling the women's team why I was upset with Emiliano, I gave the example of Dazza only having three goals after half a season of working so, so hard for the team. When we get the chance to play freely, I said, we should reward players who put the team first. If we can get Dazza scoring, that's good team work in itself but also we can sell him for more money and that's good for the club and then good for the players in the next round of pay rises. Do you get me?"

  "I think so," said Semi, cautiously.

  "Cardiff are not all that strong defensively," I said. "And then there was QPR in the FA Cup who are also quite porous. So my idea was, Dazza plays as the lone striker in both games and we try our best to get him scoring goals. I had my heart set on him scoring a hat trick in both games. He goes from three goals when Emiliano does his crappy selfish play to ten goals two weeks later. What could be more Chesterness than that? Plus," I added, "when he's got ten goals, I don't really need to think about him for the rest of the season because he'll be okay. If he finishes with 12, 14, whatever, he's gonna be okay when it comes to summer transfers. With double figures to his name by mid-January, more likely than not he'll go on a bit of a rampage, right? We don't need to do anything extra as a coaching staff."

  "I believe I follow," said Semi. "The one wrinkle seems to be actually getting him two hat tricks in consecutive games."

  "Nah," I said. "That's easy if that's your goal. The only hard part is getting ten other players who think that's a worthy mission. Lewis and Cheb love creating goals as much as scoring them so that's easy. Bark is similar. Then I'm doing my old mystery winger stuff on the left. The striker's gonna get chances by the dozen. Meanwhile, I picked Fitzroy Hall and Peter Bauer as centre backs. They're great players but they don't score loads. Ditto in central midfield, where it was Magnus and Andrew Harrison in front of Youngster." Average CA for that match: 126.1. Cardiff had CA 124 and competed well but lost the key duels at the key times.

  Frankie pointed and was so excited his chair shot a few inches backwards. "Max battered them! It was the Max Best show!"

  "Hold up," I said, with a thin smile. "The headlines weren't about me, they were about Darren. Let me try to remember. Um... Razzle Dazzle 'Em And They'll Beg You For More, Three-Ring Circus Chester Score Four. We basically did what we wanted, which was to get Dazza three goals, then we switched things completely, to a 4-2-3-1 formation with Youngster and Magnus patrolling in front of the defence and loads of fast, creative types everywhere else. Pascal created the final goal for Wibbers. 4-0. So far, so amazing. I was absolutely delighted, right, because everything I'm doing is a message to Emiliano and Charlotte and Angel. If you want a good career, get your head down, work, focus, and most of all, put the team first. Put the team first and Chester will lift you up, bring you to the next stage in your career, make sure you get paid. If you decide you're worth more than the team, that's why God invented bins."

  "Max," complained Brooke.

  "Sorry but that's how it is," I said. "You'd think after a week of reflection I would start to calm down but the women's team had Bristol City on the Sunday and they drew with us at the start of the season. Really good team, right, and we're down two players. We battled and fought but Mari Hughes struggled and so did Alwen, and you can't expect kids to keep producing in key matches again and again and the more I watched them try and try and try the more I was getting furious about the players who weren't there. If we had injuries it would be a totally different vibe, but being short of players because of bullshit? I was finding it harder and harder to accept. That match felt like a prison, let me tell you. A prison that we built around ourselves. Okay, Kit finally put us ahead in the 85th minute and then we grabbed another one to make the scoreline look more, ah, comprehensive, but fuck me!"

  The shy guy said, "I read in an interview that you broke the world record for a female goalkeeper because you had a young team. That match was a feather in your cap, I'd say."

  "Yeah, Haley was outstanding again," I agreed. "But being right doesn't bring me comfort. I'm right almost all the time so I fixate on the things I get wrong. Emiliano," I said, shaking my head. "The amazing thing is that when you break it down step by step, he hasn't done anything wrong. I'm not just saying that to be diplomatic - he literally hasn't done anything wrong. But there are people like Magnus Evergreen or Joe Anka who go into a new space and elevate the mood, lift everyone, make everyone think better of themselves. And then there are people like Emiliano who go into a new space and cause division and strife. He's too self-absorbed to notice but if he did, he would be upset to discover that he was the common denominator in all the shitty dressing rooms he found himself in." I mentally replayed his second goal against Forest Green and felt my face harden. I was about to announce my decision to send him to Chester's first ever bomb squad, but our drinks arrived.

  "What went wrong in the FA Cup match?" said Silver, when the waitress had departed.

  "Hmm," I said. "I'd love to know the answer to that. It was Zach's last match at Wonky Abs Camp but other than that I had a pretty full squad, but I thought fuck it, let's do it exactly the same. Swanny, Lewis, Peter, Fitz, Cheb, Youngster, me, Magnus, Andrew, Bark, Dazza." Average CA 126.6. "QPR are bottom of the Championship, so it's another chance to load Dazza with goals. Like, conditions are perfect. Perfect. So we get started, the Deva's sold out, it's an incredible atmosphere, I'm getting the shit kicked out of me - which in retrospect didn't help - and the ref's letting it happen.

  "That, by the way, is the one time I really lose my rag with the refs. Their first duty is to protect the players on the pitch. You can overlook some cheating from the megaclub because some refs are star-struck and servile by nature. I can broadly accept that, but when guys are targeting someone's ankles and the ref lets them get away with it, they should be held accountable.

  "Anyway, first half is nil-nil but we have battered them. I switch it so that Pascal replaces Bark and I'm on the right with Cheb. Now that's fucking terrifying at this level. Me and Cheb on one wing? We're multiple levels above QPR and I keep swapping places with him, so the left back who's marking me is suddenly marking Chester's right back. It's chaos, right? We're far too clever and far too flexible.

  "So we get Dazza a goal. Bosh. Then another, bosh. The fixture's won, we're into the Fifth Round, and everyone else kind of switches into energy-saving mode. Sometimes I want that, because it's a long season, but that day I didn't."

  Semi said, "You wanted Dazza to get another hat trick."

  "Yeah. I went on a personal rampage on the right wing. I went nuts out there, dribbling past guys, sending in crosses. My ankle was already the size of a melon but I kept going. I was like, this is gonna be the catalyst for Dazza's entire career. This is gonna elevate him from beefy boy to deadly weapon. This is gonna send a message to everyone at the club about how we take care of players who put the team first." I stopped and did a thousand-yard stare, seeing horrors in the shadows of my mind.

  Brooke sipped on her latest drink and said, "By the way, Max had spent a couple of weeks telling all the squads that his favourite movie was Victory."

  "Escape to Victory," I muttered.

  Silver smiled. "I know that one. They use a football match as cover for their escape from prison but at half-time, one of the players says, I don't want to escape. We can win this!"

  A guy who hadn't spoken yet clicked his fingers. "And then Pelé scores an overhead kick!"

  "That's the one," said Brooke, before sipping her drink.

  Everyone looked at me. I sucked in a breath, hoping it would fill me with patience as well as oxygen. "What do you think? Do you think Pelé scored more than ten overhead kicks in his life?"

  The group discussed that merrily enough, agreeing that the number was almost certainly more than ten.

  I narrowed my eyes. "How many do you reckon Dazza has?"

  The group came to the conclusion that the number was probably three, possibly four.

  "Zero," I said, suddenly exhausted. "None. He has never scored an overhead kick. So when I was playing through pain, my ankle the size of a yoga ball, and I got past a defender and hit a perfect cross for Dazza to score his hat trick and he fucking fell backwards and tried to do something he has literally never done before in his life... Yeah, I got a little bit cross."

  "Cross!" laughed Frankie. "You melted his face off!"

  "I simply pointed out that the score was 2-0 and oversized oafs attempting feats of great agility was - in a Max Best team - a not now, not ever kinda scenario, but even in a normal team it was more of a 'we're winning 7-0 let's all get silly' kinda thing." I rubbed my eyebrows. "I pointed out, as diplomatically as possible, that in the entire squad there were two players I would allow to try an overhead kick - Wibbers and me - but that I would never try one in a professional match until I had mastered the technique in training because I wasn't a fucking cretin."

  I shook my head, remembering how absurd it was to see Dazza throw himself upwards as he thrust his leg towards the ball. It was like an AI slop rendition of a cow on a trampoline.

  "Apart from the fact that we were only up by two goals, remember our motivation. I set up the team to increase the chance of Dazza scoring. I left our captain out for two matches in a row. Christian Fierce doesn't like that, ladies and gentlemen, but I told him it was for the team. Pascal and Wibbers didn't start either match. Gabby's been sitting on his arse. Colin hasn't been in the squads. Joel Reid hasn't had a minute. And it has all been for one purpose, to drench Dazza in goals, and when given the opportunity to do just that, he turned into Emiliano. Fuck the team, fuck the club, I want to do an overhead kick that I've never done before, not even in training."

  The brow rubbing intensified to a worrying degree but I couldn't stop myself.

  "I think I must be taking crazy pills. I just don't get it. He could get a huge transfer this summer. He could create generational wealth for himself and his family. But when you hand it to him on a plate, he goes, I've got a better idea. You know who's better than Pelé? Me!"

  There was quiet. People drank their drinks. Finally, a guy said, "You told him to get off the pitch even though you had made all your subs. We finished the match with ten players."

  "Yeah," I said. "But if he's just gonna do air kicks instead of scoring simple headers, we're better off without him." I let out a frankly enormous volume of air while feeling sorry for myself. "Do you think I overreacted?"

  The consensus was a resounding 'yes'.

  "Well, you're wrong. Dazza learned from that. He's a better player now." His Decisions score had increased. Whoop-de-doo. "And I look like a total knob. Brilliant. So what was supposed to be a two-week lesson for Emiliano just entrenches his belief that he's done nothing wrong and that I'm a clown. He'll go again at a new club next season. And again in January. And again the following summer, and the following January. In my life I'll read 20 articles about Emiliano Ferrari's new dawn and the prospect is depressing. And the women lost to Man City yesterday and it wasn't even close. There's nothing I can learn from it because I was missing two key players but do you know what's really shit? I don't care. I don't care because winning doesn't bring me peace, so what's the difference if we lose? All I can do is blame myself for my squad-building choices. It's my fault. I have to take the rap."

  There was another long silence, and I realised that this group were far more comfortable with that than most others. Frankie said, "You keep getting angry at players who have scored two goals. That's quite unusual. I don't think there's a YouTube video about that."

  I leaned back, put my hands behind my head, and stared at him. Then I laughed. Laughed hard. "Bit of a mess, aren't I?" I said, leaning all the way forward, rubbing my face with both hands.

  "Welcome to the club," said Semi.

  When I took my hands away, I noted that Charlotte and Angel had come into the canteen. They had probably glanced at the support group but hadn't spotted me. They went to the coffee station. Angel took Charlotte's order and got to work pressing the coffee machine's buttons.

  Charlotte's profile no longer said 'Dislikes Angel'. The text had vanished yesterday, sometime during the second half of the defeat to Man City. Two weeks of a needless feud. Two weeks. That was fucking ages, wasn't it? Who held grudges for that long?

  I mentally sighed and got my phone out. I texted the two women.

  Rejoin training.

  Charlotte had her phone out. She saw the message and yelped. Angel said what, what? Check your phone, said Charlotte. Angel did and saw she had the same notification. They squealed and hugged each other. They were out of prison.

  The noise from the pair attracted the attention of the support group. They smiled at the scene - how could you not? - then Silver said, "What about Emiliano?"

  The player in question was still Team Work 5, stubbornly refusing to budge from that. I sent him a text.

  Rejoin training.

  "What did you decide?" said Brooke. I showed her the message. She nodded, slowly. "It's the right thing to do."

  I felt my face starting to crack, so I stared at my phone. "We have a run of hard fixtures coming up. It will be good to have him around the place." To help us lose as many matches as possible, I thought to myself, which made me cackle.

  "What's so funny?" said Frankie.

  Clearly I had a lot in common with this group, but while they had better emotional intelligence than me, we had one thing in common - we loved a good kickabout. "Enough talk," I said. "Time for action. Did you all bring your footy kits?"

  They had. Of course they had. Brooke said, "Max, the pitch they normally play on is booked from 6 p.m."

  "Cool," I said. "So we'll play on the main training pitch."

  She smiled. "You'd allow that?"

  "I'd insist on that. We can set up mini goals and play across one half. Have you got your gear?"

  Brooke didn't follow me at first, but then it clicked. "What? I can't play soccer."

  I held up a finger, then pointed it downwards to show that I was not going to be denied. "You're in the group. You're gonna play. Liam, tell her."

  "You don't have to, Brooke, if you don't want to."

  "Brooke," I said, "stop intimidating our staff. You're gonna play and I'm gonna scout you and you're gonna solve my midfield squad depth issue. Imagine the look on Zach's face when he gets off his plane and discovers he's the least talented player in your relationship!"

  Brooke was torn between amusement and fear. "I'm honestly terrible."

  "You can go in goal. Americans are great goalies."

  "Are you teasing me in a way I don't understand?"

  "No, that was sincere. I think a generation of Americans grew up watching Sylvester Stallone in Escape to Victory and thought, yeah, I could do that!"

  "I don't think goalie's for me."

  "Fine," I said. "Midfield it is. It'll be funny to see you be as bad at something as I am at man and anger management. Everyone, get changed where you get changed, then Liam's gonna bring you to the place the first team train."

  Silver held up a hand. "Can I clarify something?"

  "Yes."

  "Are we allowed to do long shots and overhead kicks?"

  I eyed him. "Are you teasing me, bro?"

  "Yes."

  I did a chef's kiss gesture. "I've got some highly-paid footballers on my books who could learn a thing or two from you about subtlety. Now stop lollygagging. I want to kick a football and I want it now."

  Frankie said, "Are you going to get changed, Max?"

  I looked down at myself. Shit hoodie, tracksuit bottoms, cheap trainers. "Why? I could demolish you lot while wearing clogs. Or flippers. Or lead weights."

  Amazingly, this obnoxious claim had everyone in the circle grinning from ear to ear. One of the lads said, "Are you gonna knock Leeds United out of the FA Cup, Max?"

  I looked at him. "I don't know. Are you gonna wreck my ankles?"

  "I'll try not to," he said. "Can't make any promises. You didn't really give us any tips about anger management, in the end, did you?"

  The stress of the job was literally melting off my shoulders. "Guy's rinsing me! Can't I go one minute without being bantered?"

  Everyone laughed, and we were about to head outside when Brooke held her hands up. "Sorry to postpone my humiliation, but I have a genuine question. Max, how does Escape to Victory end?"

  I opened my mouth to reply, but paused, because I kept getting that film mixed up with The Great Escape. "Um... everything goes to shit but the fans save the day."

  "Yes!" said Brooke, who started high-fiving the people near her.

  "What the hell are you doing?" I said, laughing.

  "Everything goes to shit but the fans save the day." She swirled her finger around in a circle. "You're welcome, Max Best. You're welcome."