Glory Of The Football Manager System

Emma was in the kitchen when I came in. Big light off. Just the spots above the sink. She had the slip dress on with the left strap halfway down her arm and a grey cardigan over the top that she had not bothered to button. She was holding a glass of red wine that had not moved much.

She turned when she heard the door.

”Wembley.”

”Wembley.”

She came round the island and took my jacket off my shoulders. She did not say anything for a long beat. She just looked at me with her hand still on the front of my jumper. Then she kissed me. The not-polite kind.

”Aviero.”

”Aviero.”

”You sang the song.”

”Reg picked the song.”

”I know who picked the song. I am ringing him tomorrow. He is the lead in my piece.”

She went back round to the kettle. Made me a tea. No sugar. She could see I needed the tea and not the wine. She put it down in front of me and got up on the stool next to mine with her bare feet on the rung of my stool and her chin on my shoulder and she let me sit. The slip dress strap stayed where it was.

After a while she said: ”Steve Parish texted me twice on the way home. He is ringing Welshly Arms’s management at nine on Monday. He used the word swashbuckling in the second text.”

”He did not say swashbuckling.”

”He did. I have screenshots.”

I drank the tea.

She watched me for a minute and then she said, very quietly: ”Bed. Now.”

”It’s a quarter to one.”

”I know what time it is. Bed.”

We did not sleep for an hour. When we did she put her leg across mine and her hand under my shirt flat on the small of my back and went out properly, and I lay there in the half-dark with her breathing slowing on my collarbone, and I thought, very clearly: I am not going to take this for granted.

[Dulwich. Sunday March 18. 10:14 GMT.]

She was watching me when I woke up. Hair across the pillow, hood of my academy hoodie pulled up over her head because the room was cold, one bare shoulder out of the duvet where the hoodie had ridden down. She had propped her head up on her hand. She was just looking at me.

”You watched me on Saturday night,” she said. ”I had one eye open the whole time.”

”Liar.”

”Bring the papers up. I am not putting on trousers today.”

I went down and got six papers off the doormat and one off the kitchen island because Steve Parish had couriered the South London local on a Sunday morning again. I dropped them on the bed.

She sat up cross-legged in the hoodie with her bare legs underneath and pulled them open.

”Look at Reg.”

The line photograph was on every back page in the country. The Sunday Times had it across a double-page spread. Twenty-three men and one woman across the width of Selhurst Park with their hands linked.

Reg the PA man in the corner of the wide shot in front of the corner flag, in a blue Crystal Palace jumper, with two academy kit assistants holding him under the armpits with his feet off the ground. Steve Parish in the middle of the line between Dann and Tomkins with his tie crooked.

”Reg got carried out of his booth.”

”Reg got carried out of his booth. There’s an interview with him on page four. He says, ’I had a feeling that song was the right one for the night. The lads play it in the dressing room after a win. The gaffer doesn’t know I know that. Don’t tell him.’”

”How does Reg know what we play in the dressing room.”

”He eats with the kit assistants on a Tuesday. Reg knows everything. There is a whole quote from him about Aaron Wan-Bissaka. He says: ’I watched that boy sweep the floor in the kit room when he was nine. I told Steve Parish back then. That boy is going to play for England before he’s twenty.’”

”He’s told Steve that.”

”He’s told Steve and anyone else who’ll listen since 2009.”

Welshly Arms had gone from a hundred and forty thousand streams a week to three million between eleven on Saturday night and seven on Sunday morning. UK iTunes had Legendary at number two on the rock chart.

Mum called at half twelve crying. Frankie called at one with hay fever that does not exist in March. Tommo did not call but he sent a photograph of the Crown and Cushion with a Crystal Palace scarf hung above the dartboard for the second time this year.

[Beckenham. Monday March 19. 09:00 GMT.]

Sarah met me in the corridor.

”Steve’s here.”

”Steve’s here every day.”

”The other Steve.”

I stopped.

”Coppell.”

”He’s been here since eight. Brought his own coffee. He’s in the analysis room with Bray. He’s watching the under twenty-threes.”

”You knew.”

”Steve Parish rang him on Saturday night in the directors’ room. Coppell said yes before Steve had finished asking. He didn’t tell you because he wanted you to find out the way Coppell found out about the records, which according to Coppell was off Sky Sports News on a treadmill in Reading.”

”Right.”

”And Daniel. Don’t be cleverer than him.”

”What.”

”Don’t be cleverer than him. You do it with me. Don’t do it with him.”

He was in the second row of the analysis room next to Bray. White hair, lines at his eyes, a slight stoop in his shoulders that I had not noticed in any photograph because photographs are taken from the front. Flat cap on his lap. Coat folded over the seat next to him. He stood up when I came in.

”Daniel.”

”Steve.”

He held my hand half a beat too long.

”I owe you a thank you. I’ll get it out of the way first.”

”You don’t owe me a thank you, Steve.”

”For breaking the record.”

”That isn’t something to thank me for. That is something I should apologise for. I never wanted to break anyone else’s record.”

He grinned. Small. Tired. Real.

”That is exactly the answer my wife predicted. He will say something humble. She was right. Sit down. Watch this with me.”

The under twenty-threes were doing a phase of play in front of us. Eze was playing in the ten because the senior squad was scattered and Eze was the only senior outfield player at the building. He was running things at three-quarter pace. He was making the youth boys look slow because he was not slowing himself down enough for them.

Coppell watched for two minutes. Then he leant slightly forward and said quietly, not to me but to the air:

”Your number ten plays with his head up.”

”Yeah.”

”That is rare in a twenty-year-old. He’s been coached. By somebody who knew what they were doing. Probably your academy coach. Probably you, when he was sixteen.”

”Yeah.”

”He’s expecting runners in spaces that aren’t there yet.”

I looked at him.

He pointed with his pint glass at the pitch. Eze had just turned with the ball at the top of the eighteen-yard area and had not played a pass. The forward had not made the run.

”There. He turned because he was expecting an inside-out run from the eight. That isn’t a 4-3-3 movement, Daniel. That’s a 4-2-3-1 movement. He’s been coached to expect a 4-2-3-1 environment. You play him in a 4-3-3.”

I did not say anything.

”You have a choice. Either he gets coached to fit the formation you play, which will take him eighteen months and he might never quite get it. Or you change the formation, which takes you eighteen days. Or you sell him to a 4-2-3-1 manager and let him be brilliant somewhere else. Those are the three options. There is not a fourth.”

Bray was looking at his shoes.

I said: ”What would you do.”

”I’d change the formation for the right matches. Not every match. There are matches where his ten-ness costs you and there are matches where it wins you. Pick which is which. The ones where it wins you are the matches against pressing teams who leave space between their lines. The Salzburgs of the world.”

He did not look at me when he said that.

”Are we going to lunch?”

”Wherever you want.”

”There is a pub in Eynsford. The Five Bells. They do a steak and ale pie. I have driven past it for forty years. Today I am stopping.”