Glory Of The Football Manager System

The Main Stand was all still there. White cladding from 2013, every seat in, and nobody in any of it. Archibald Leitch drew that stand and it opened in 1924, and in June it comes down first.

Behind it, over its roof, you could see the backs of the houses in Wooderson Close. 3 of them had boards on the windows. The families had gone in the summer, to the houses the club found them.

The 4th still had curtains up, and a Christmas tree in the front window with the lights on in the daytime.

”That 1 goes in March,” Steve said. ”They wanted Christmas. We said have Christmas.”

I went and stood in the technical area out of habit. The paint was still there, white lines on grass that had not been cut since August.

I stood inside them with a coffee and thought about April 2017. 5 matches, and a squad 5 points off the drop.

Was I as frightened as I remember? Or have I added that since, because it makes a better story at a dinner? I could not tell, stood there, and I did not like not being able to tell.

The grass at the Holmesdale end was up past my shoe, gone pale and wet.

At the Whitehorse Lane end they had lifted the turf from the goal line back to the hoardings. The earth underneath was brown and cut straight, with pegs and orange string across it where the new goal line will go.

We were 101 and a half metres long. UEFA want 105. Steve looked down the length of it and said the next time somebody from Europe came to Selhurst, they would get every 1 of the 105.

Under the Whitehorse Lane boxes the Sainsbury’s was open, doing Christmas trade, with a full car park.

The club sold the back of that terrace to them in 1981 and built the boxes on their roof in 1991. On the 27th of December 2018 the busiest thing in Selhurst Park was the checkout.

Lorraine from the ticket office had a gazebo and 2 trestle tables at the bottom of the Holmesdale, and a queue.

The club had written to every season ticket holder in November. If you want your seat, it is yours. Come on the 27th or the 28th and bring the letter.

Lorraine had a list on a clipboard of every block and every row. She had a lad from the ground staff with a socket set, who went up the steps, took the seats off their brackets and brought them down 4 at a time, stacked.

There was a man of about 60 at the front of the queue with a younger version of himself beside him, and a car boot open on the road outside the gate.

”Block 122,” he said to Lorraine. ”Row K. 19.”

Lorraine did not need the list. She had sold him that seat every summer since she started.

”Since 1979,” Terry Dolan said, to me, because I was stood there. ”I have sat in that seat through administration twice. I lost a shoe at Wembley in August and I am not losing this.”

The lad came down with it. It was red. The back of it had been scratched with a key, a long time ago. Somebody had written a name into it that had worn down to half the letters, and Terry Dolan ran his thumb along it.

”My dad,” he said. ”1981. He was not supposed to.”

He put the seat under his arm.

”I sent a photograph of this ground to a man in Dortmund who has been on a gate for 47 years. He wrote back. I told Ron. Ron has not told you, has he.”

He had not. Terry Dolan looked at the Arthur Wait with its front rows gone and did not say anything else about it.

His son carried the seat to the car, and Terry carried the bracket. They drove off down Holmesdale Road with the boot tied shut with string.

Steve took me up into the Main Stand. Up the back stairs, past the boardroom, along to the end of the directors’ box. It looks down the whole length of the pitch. He stood there with his coffee gone cold and his back to me.

He had rung the architect at 8 o’clock on the night of Dortmund, he said, the way he had told everybody he would.

”I told him the east side comes forward. All of it, same time, no phases, no borrowing.”

He turned round.

”He asked me what the room on the east side was for, the 1 with nothing written on it. He has asked me that every month since 2016. I told him what I told you. I do not know yet.”

He looked across the pitch at the Arthur Wait, half bare.

”But it is getting built in the first year now, so I had better know by 2020.”

Then he talked about the roof for 9 minutes, and I let him.

Marcus had Fulham on the screen on Friday morning.

Claudio Ranieri had been in that job since the middle of November. He had them in a back 3 with 2 wing backs and Aleksandar Mitrović on his own, and nothing went past Mitrović in the air.

”He is 67,” Marcus said. He put the clip up of Ranieri on the touchline at Craven Cottage, coat on, waving his whole side up the pitch with both arms. ”They are in the bottom 3, and he has been the loudest person in the ground every week since he got there.”

Dougie Freedman came into my office at 4 on Friday with a form in a plastic wallet, and put it on the corner of the desk.

”Dion,” he said. ”It goes at 1 minute past midnight on Tuesday. I have the email written. I have checked it 3 times and I am going to check it again on Monday night.”

He did not sit down.

”He has asked me what time it goes 4 times. The 4th time I wrote it on his hand.”

I named the team for Sunday on Saturday at 11, in the canteen. The wall Marcus built in October was still up behind me, with Fulham’s section stapled on the end of it.

CRYSTAL PALACE: Pope. Wan-Bissaka, Konaté, Sakho, Mitchell. Neves. Olise, Kirby, Kovačić, Eze. Zaha.

Bench: Krul, Hakimi, Tuanzebe, McArthur, Townsend, Benteke, Blake.

Tyrick Mitchell read his name and went straight to the analysts’ room. Marcus gave him 11 minutes of Cyrus Christie on a laptop. Mitchell watched all 11 twice with his hood up, and asked for the 3rd minute again.

Nya Kirby read his, then went and stood next to Rúben Neves at the hatch and did not say anything. Neves gave him half his toast without being asked.

FULHAM: Rico. Odoi, Mawson, Ream. Christie, Seri, Chambers, Bryan. Cairney, Vietto. Mitrović.

Ranieri was out in front of his technical area before the anthem had finished, coat buttoned. He stayed out there the whole afternoon. Every time a Fulham player won a header, he turned round to the away end and punched the air.

Fulham pressed for 25 minutes the way a side at the bottom presses. Everybody, high, nothing held back for later.

Mitrović hit the post with a header in the 11th minute, off a Bryan cross that Konaté should have been nearer. Konaté knew it and held his hand up to the bench. Sakho shouted at him in French for 20 seconds and then hugged him.

Kirby got the ball off Seri in the 38th minute, on halfway, by standing where Seri was going to put it before Seri had decided.

He did not look up. He took it 15 yards and gave it to Olise, and Olise gave it straight back with the outside of his left, into Kirby’s stride at the top of the D. Kirby hit it first time, low, through Mawson’s legs and inside the post.

Fwip.

1-0.

He ran to Olise. They had been in the same building since Olise was 8, and they had been arguing about Christmas dinner on a train 8 days before.

They stood in front of the Holmesdale end with their foreheads together and shouted at each other, and nobody else could hear a word of it.

Mitchell went past Christie twice before half time. The second time he got to the byline and put it back across the 6 yard box, and Zaha was half a yard short of it.

Zaha got up, went to Mitchell, held his face in both hands and said something into it.

60 minutes. Ranieri sent Ryan Sessegnon on, 18 years old, the fastest thing they have got, and put him straight on Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s side.

Sessegnon went at him in the 61st minute and the 63rd and the 70th. Twice he stopped dead on the ball and went the other way.

Aaron stood on his toes through all of it and did not plant once. On the third, he took it off him with the outside of his boot.

Sessegnon is very good. He shook Aaron’s hand at the next throw, and Aaron shook it back.

70 minutes. Townsend for Olise.

Zaha made it 2 in the 74th minute. Kovačić turned Seri on halfway and ran 30 yards at the back 3 until 2 of them came out to meet him, then slid it into the gap. Zaha went round Rico and walked it in.

Then he ran 50 yards to Tyrick Mitchell, who was doing his laces, and pulled him up by the collar.

Swsh.

2-0.

80 minutes. Blake for Zaha.

86 minutes. Tuanzebe for Sakho.

Prrrp. Prrrp. Prrrp.

Crystal Palace 2 Fulham 0.

Ranieri did not come for the handshake straight away. He went to the away end first, all the way across to it, and stood in front of them with his players and applauded them until they applauded him.

Then he came back across the whole pitch to me with his hand out.

”Next time,” he said, ”you play at our house.”

City won at Southampton the same day. Marcus put it on the board under the Leicester result and drew a line under both.

[PREMIER LEAGUE. CRYSTAL PALACE 56. MANCHESTER CITY 51.]

On the coach out of Wembley, Kirby was asleep with his head on Olise’s shoulder, and Olise was asleep with his head on the window. Tyrick Mitchell was 2 seats behind them, watching his cross on a phone with the sound off, over and over.

At 11 o’clock on Monday night Emma and I were on the roof of the building in Dulwich with the neighbours from the second floor, and a bottle of something the neighbours had brought back from Spain.

You could see half of London from up there, grey and orange at the edges. Somebody 3 roofs along was already letting fireworks off early.

At 2 minutes to midnight my phone went.

DION ASARE. 23:58.

2 minutes.

At midnight the sky to the north went white, then red, then gold. The neighbours were kissing. Emma had both arms round my neck and her face in my coat when the phone went again.

DOUGIE. 00:01.

Sent.

I held it up so Emma could see it. She read it and put her face back in my coat.

Then a 3rd.

DION ASARE. 00:01.

When is the first match I can play.