Glory Of The Football Manager System

[Sky Sports HQ. Isleworth. Friday April 13. 08:00 BST.]

The Sky Sports News Friday morning panel.

Round table. Coffee mugs that nobody drank from on air. The graphic across the bottom of the screen running on a loop: CRYSTAL PALACE - UEFA EUROPA LEAGUE QF WINNERS, 4-1 AGG VS SALZBURG. FA CUP SEMI-FINAL: WEMBLEY, SAT APR 21. PL: 2ND, 77 PTS, 7 GAMES LEFT. EUROPA LEAGUE SF DRAW ANNOUNCED 12:00 BST.

Three pundits in the chairs across the desk from the presenter.

Thierry Henry on the left in a charcoal three-piece suit. Jamie Carragher in the middle in a navy crew-neck. Gary Neville on the right in a black turtleneck.

I was watching it in the kitchen at home with my second coffee in my hand and Emma still asleep upstairs and the door to the hallway pulled to so the noise would not wake her.

The presenter ran the numbers first. The graphic put them up side by side the way the graphic was going to put them up side by side on every channel for the rest of the day.

Walsh, summer 2017: forty-eight million.

Mourinho, summer 2016 and summer 2017 combined: one hundred and ninety-six million.

The numbers sat there for ten seconds. The presenter let them. Then he turned to Carragher.

”Jamie. We’ve talked about this club for six months. What do we add today?”

Carragher put both hands flat on the desk in front of him. He shook his head once.

”What can I add. Fifty million. Sit with the number. We’ve all been on this panel a long time and we’ve all said things to wind a chairman up for a laugh, but I’m not laughing today. Fifty million. The squad you watched against Salzburg on Thursday night. Fifty million.”

”Gary.”

Neville did not lean forward. He sat back and looked at the camera the way Gary Neville sits back and looks at the camera when he is going to say something he has been preparing to say.

”I want to push back on the frame before we go any further. I’m not going to defend Manchester United. I don’t need to defend Manchester United. José Mourinho is a grown man on five hundred grand a week and he can defend himself. But I am going to push back on the frame, because the frame is wrong.”

Carragher: ”Here we go.”

Neville: ”Jamie.”

Carragher: ”Gary.”

Neville: ”We have two stories on this graphic. Story one is Crystal Palace. Story one is the bigger story. Story one stands by itself. It doesn’t need a story two to make it work. The minute we start telling story one as a stick to beat story two with, we’ve made story one smaller than it is. We’ve turned a story about achievement into a story about embarrassment. And what Daniel Walsh has done at Crystal Palace deserves the first kind of story. Not the second.”

The presenter: ”Jamie.”

Carragher: ”Gary, I’m sorry, but you’re doing the thing again.”

Neville: ”Which thing.”

Carragher: ”The thing where you tilt your head and ask the rest of us to remember that United is a difficult job. They’re all difficult jobs. Liverpool is a difficult job. The job at Burnley is a difficult job. Tony Pulis on twenty quid a year is a difficult job. They are all difficult. You have a soft spot. You’ve always had a soft spot. The viewers know you have a soft spot. Own it and move on.”

Neville: ”Jamie.”

Carragher: ”I have a Liverpool axe to grind. You have a United axe to defend. The viewers at home have known what we are for a decade. I am not going to pretend I don’t have the axe. I have the axe. I brought the axe to the studio. The fifty million pound number, Gary, is the axe sharpening itself without me having to lift it. I have not put a finger on it. The number lifted the axe.”

Neville: ”And you’re sitting there with it in your lap looking forward to swinging it. Be honest about that part too.”

Carragher: ”I’m being honest about that part. Of course, I’m looking forward to swinging it. What do you want me to do, pretend I’m not?”

The presenter, dry, to camera: ”We’re going to break in three minutes whether either of you is finished or not.”

Henry, finally, raised one hand. The hand was the hand of a man asking for the room. Both of them stopped.

”Can I?”

Carragher: ”Go on, Thierry.”

Henry: ”Both of you are missing the football.”

A beat.

Henry: ”We have been on this panel for six minutes. We have spent five and a half of those six minutes talking about a budget. I want to spend the next two minutes talking about the football. Then we can come back to the budget. Yes?”

Neville: ”Yes.”

Carragher: ”Yes.”

Henry: ”When I watch this team, I see a manager who has decided what kind of football he wants to play and who has built the side around the idea.

The idea is the press resistance in the middle of the park. Mateo Kovačić was signed in January because he beats the press by carrying through it. Eberechi Eze plays in the channel because the idea wants him in the channel.

Sakho drops onto the back foot to receive the press because the idea wants him to. Aaron pushes one yard higher than usual because the idea wants the angle. Konaté splits wide right because the idea wants the angle on the other side. Every position is the same idea applied to the position. That is the thing I have not seen in English football for a very long time.”

Neville: ”Klopp.”

Henry: ”Klopp has it at Liverpool. Pep has it at City. Walsh has it at Crystal Palace. Three managers in this league with the same level of coherence of idea. Two of them are the most talked-about coaches in the world game. The third one is twenty-eight years old and is managing a club whose annual budget is one twentieth of the other two.”

Neville: ”That’s the line. That is the line.”

Carragher: ”That is the line.”

The presenter: ”And so the football matters more than the spending.”

Henry: ”Of course, the football matters more than the spending. The spend is a number. The football is a decision. The football tells you who the manager is. The spend tells you what the chairman did last summer. Daniel Walsh is the football.”

Neville: ”And the football makes the age impossible to leave alone.”

Carragher: ”Don’t start with the age, Gary.”

Neville: ”The age matters.”

Carragher: ”Pep was thirty-seven when he started winning. Klopp was forty-one. Conte was forty-four. Twenty-eight is the headline, sure, but the achievement doesn’t require the age. It would be the same achievement if Walsh was thirty-five.”

Neville: ”The achievement would be the same. The story would not.”

Carragher: ”Fair.”

Neville: ”Twenty-eight years old. He came down from a semi-pro side in the Manchester county league two years ago. He took the under-eighteens at Beckenham. He won the FA Youth Cup last spring with a group of seventeen-year-olds. He saved this club from relegation in the five-match interim job in May of last year.

He has put them second in the Premier League and into two semi-finals in his first full season as senior manager. He also won the EFL Cup. He’s twenty-eight. He’ll be twenty-nine in June. We are watching a manager who has the next twenty years ahead of him at the level of Klopp and Pep, and we are watching it on a Thursday night at Selhurst Park, and we are pretending it isn’t the story it is.”

Henry: ”Twenty-eight is not the headline.”

Both of them turned to him.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.