Glory Of The Football Manager System

I did the handover at 6 o’clock on Thursday night, in my office, with Sarah and Bray and Rebecca and Marcus, and it took 40 minutes.

I do not go anywhere on the Friday before a match. I have not done it once in 14 months.

So I did it properly.

”Right. I am gone from 7 tomorrow morning until about 5, and I am not contactable, and I want to say that part out loud so nobody finds it out at 11 o’clock.”

”Not contactable,” Rebecca said.

”They take the phone off you at the gate. It goes in a bag and you get it back when you leave.”

”Danny.”

”I know.”

”No, say it back to me. There is a Community Shield on Sunday and you are going to be 30 miles away with no telephone.”

”There is a Community Shield on Sunday and I am going to be 30 miles away with no telephone,” I said. ”Which is why we are sat here for 40 minutes.”

Sarah takes the session. Not Bray. Sarah, because she took Thursday and it was the best we have had, and because 30 men have already got her voice in their heads this week.

Nobody does anything new. No new pattern, no new shape, 2 days out. We had the City work in on Thursday and it holds until Sunday.

Benteke on Fernandinho, 14 more reps, and Bray runs that on his own on pitch 3 with Marcus filming it.

Zaha does 45 minutes and no more, and Rebecca has an absolute veto on that number and does not have to ring anybody to use it.

And then the one that mattered.

”Rebecca. Jack.”

”Go on.”

”If that ankle does anything at all tomorrow, anything, I want him off the grass inside 10 seconds and I want a scan the same morning. Not Monday. That morning.”

”He is fine.”

”He took a knock on it on Wednesday and you had him off in 20 minutes and you did not discuss it with me, and I have known you 18 months and you always tell me.” I looked at her. ”You did not tell me because you did not want it in my head before a shoot. So tell me now.”

Rebecca did not blink.

”There is 4 millimetres of swelling that should not be there,” she said. ”It has been there since Wednesday and it has not moved and it has not got worse.”

”Right.”

”And if you had asked me on Wednesday I would have told you on Wednesday.”

”I know. I am asking on Thursday.”

”He is 80 per cent likely to be fine,” Rebecca said. ”And I do not like giving you a number like that on a Thursday, and you know exactly why I am giving it to you anyway.”

So that is 4 people in a room who all know what to do, and 1 of them with a veto she does not need my permission to use.

That is the job. You cannot be in 2 places, so you make the place you are not in able to run without you.

I have been doing that since April 2017 and it has worked every time.

Tk tk tk. A diesel idling in that car park at half 7.

The driver was called Mo and he has been doing this for 11 years.

”Do you know where we are going?”

”I know where I am dropping you.” Mo pulled out onto the A222. ”I do not know anything else, I have not been told anything else, and I have signed a thing about it. You would be amazed how many people ask in the first 4 minutes.”

”Sorry.”

”Everybody does it.” He looked at me in the mirror. ”You are the Palace one.”

”I am the Palace one.”

”My brother in law is Palace. Season ticket at Wembley this year, and he has told me about it 9 times.” Indicator. ”He says you are going to win the league.”

”We are not going to win the league, Mo.”

”That is what I told him,” Mo said, and did not say another word for 40 minutes, and put me down on a street off Park Lane at 10 past 8.

I am not putting the name of the hotel in.

A man met the car. Not a doorman. A man in a suit with a list who said my surname as a question, took the bag, and walked me past reception into a lift without either of us stopping at a desk.

Clk.

The room had 2 rooms in it.

There was a piano in the second one.

I stood in that doorway and worked out that my mother’s front room in Moss Side would go inside it about 3 times, and then I sat on the end of the bed and rang Emma.

”Where are you?”

”There is a piano.”

”Danny.”

”There is a piano in the room, Em. Nobody is going to play it. It is a piano, in a room, on a Thursday, in case somebody wants one.”

”Have you rung your mother?”

”I rang her at 5.”

There was a pause on that phone.

”And?”

”And she asked whether I was eating and I said yes, and I asked whether she had watched it and she said she had, and then we did her boiler for 6 minutes.” My shoes were off by then. ”We did not go near it. Neither of us. 6 minutes on a boiler and she said goodnight.”

”That is the 2 of you all over.”

”It is.”

”Danny.” Emma puts my name down like a coin on a table. ”You are going to have to say something to her about episode 6, and I am not telling you what is in it, because you are going to watch it yourself.”

Knock.

The sides came at 9 exactly, in a folder, with a woman called Priya who waited in the corridor while I read them and took the folder back off me when I had finished.

Not a script. 4 pages.

FALL OF GEORGE. SC. 118. EXT. LONDON STREET. DAY.

That is what it is called. Fall of George.

It is a Spider-Man film. I know that because Jessica told me in May, and because you cannot build 40 feet of a bridge on a backlot in Hertfordshire without somebody working it out.

It is not going to be called Fall of George. Nobody has told me what it will be called and I do not think anybody on that production knows yet.

I have got 1 line. It is 5 words.

I read those 4 pages 6 times and gave them back, and Priya put them in a bag with a zip on it, and I did not sleep for about 2 hours after that because of a number Rebecca had given me at 6 o’clock.

80 per cent.

Then I did the thing that made the difference, and I did it because there was nothing else in that room except a piano.

Bip.

I put the first one on. Spider-Man: Homecoming, 2017. I had not seen it. In 2017 I was doing 3 sessions a day at an under 18s and I did not see anything that year.

And before I say the rest of it, it is a good film. I watched all 133 minutes and the bit at the end in the car with the girl’s father is as good as anything I have watched in 10 years.

Michael Keaton is doing something in that film that has nothing to do with a cape. He is a bloke who got a contract cancelled and lost 40 jobs and has been angry about it for 8 years, and every single thing he does after that makes sense.

Tom Holland is 21 and carrying a 175 million dollar film and you cannot see him doing it.

But.

I watched the other ones at 13 and 14 and 15, on a settee, off a video shop, and then off a laptop with my mother asleep in the chair.

The Tobey Maguire ones, then the Andrew Garfield ones a few years after.

And in the old ones, everybody had their own thing going on.

Harry Osborn is not in those films to help Peter Parker. He is a lad whose father does not love him, and he is losing his mind about it for 3 films, and by the end he has become the thing he was frightened of.

Mary Jane wants to be an actress. She is bad at it. She waits tables. She gets engaged to somebody else because Peter keeps not turning up, and that is the correct thing for her to do.

Aunt May nearly loses the house.

None of that happens because Peter Parker needs it to happen. It happens because those people are also alive, and it comes back round, and about 8 times in those films somebody who is not Spider-Man does something that changes what happens next.

In the new one, Ned is Peter’s mate.

That is his job. He is good at it. He is funny and I laughed 4 times.

But he does not want anything. Nobody at that school wants anything except Peter Parker. The girl at the back, MJ, notices things and says a dry line and she is the best 8 seconds in the film every time she is on, and she has not got 1 thing of her own going on.

They are stood in that film waiting for the main character to need them.

I have spent 14 months telling anybody who will listen that there is no such thing as a squad player.

James McArthur is 30, he has made 250 appearances for this football club, nobody has ever written a paragraph about him, and if you take him out of that midfield the whole thing falls over inside 20 minutes.

Deano counts the kit twice. Ron has been on that gate at 71 for 19 years. Ellis Cartwright came in at 7 in the morning for 6 weeks after we let him go and nobody in that building noticed.

None of them are stood there waiting for me to need them.

That is not a nice thing I say in meetings. A dressing room where 14 men are alive and 11 are furniture finishes 14th. I know that because I walked into one in April 2017.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.