Glory Of The Football Manager System

”The left back situation,” he said, without preamble. ”It’s a bust.”

I waited.

”Kolarov is off the table,” he said. ”City have decided to sell him to Roma. The deal is done. He flies to Italy for his medical tomorrow.”

I nodded. I had seen the rumour on Twitter that morning. It was not a surprise. Guardiola was rebuilding, and Kolarov was a valuable asset. Roma was a good move for him.

”Baines?” I asked.

”Everton won’t budge,” Freedman said. ”Koeman wants him in his squad. He sees him as a leader, a key part of the dressing room. They were polite, but the door is closed. Non-negotiable.”

”And Grimaldo?”

Freedman sighed. ”Benfica hung up the phone. Not literally, but close enough. He’s not for sale. Not at any price we can afford, anyway. They see him as the future of their defence.”

Three calls. Three dead ends. The three best options we had identified, all gone. I felt a familiar knot of frustration tighten in my stomach. We were six days away from our first competitive match of the season, and we still only had one senior left back in the entire squad. It was a structural vulnerability that was going to get us killed.

”So what’s next?” I said.

Freedman leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his face. ”I’ve been making some calls,” he said. ”There’s another name. A long shot, but it might just work.”

I pulled up the System’s transfer intelligence on my tablet. A single, quiet notification had been sitting in my feed since the day after the Atlético game, a piece of information that had seemed irrelevant at the time but which now felt like a lifeline.

> System Alert: [Transfer Opportunity]

> Player: Lucas Digne | Age: 24 | Club: FC Barcelona

> Status: Third-choice left back at Barcelona, behind Jordi Alba and the newly signed Theo Hernández. Seeking first-team football to secure his place in the French national squad for the World Cup.

> Availability: Loan with buy option. Barcelona are open to negotiation. They need to reduce their wage bill and Digne is considered surplus to requirements.

> Assessment: Technically excellent. Left-footed. Strong in possession, comfortable on the ball, good engine. Needs regular minutes to fulfil his potential. A move to the Premier League would be a significant step up in his career trajectory.

I slid the tablet across the desk to Freedman. He picked it up and read it, his eyes scanning the text. He looked up at me, his expression unreadable.

”Loan with a buy option?” he said.

I nodded.

”Barcelona’s third choice,” he said, almost to himself. ”Is still a hell of a player.”

”And he needs to play,” I said. ”He’s twenty-four. He can’t afford another season on the bench if he wants to go to the World Cup. He comes here; he’s our second choice behind Chilwell. He gets minutes. He competes. He pushes Ben, makes him better. And if he’s as good as we think he is, we trigger the buy option at the end of the season.”

Freedman was silent for a long moment, his eyes still on the tablet. He looked up at me. ”Barcelona,” he said, the word tasting like a risk. ”They’re not easy to deal with. And his wages will be... significant.”

”We’re not buying him,” I said.

”We’re loaning him. We cover his wages for a year, he gets the minutes he needs, and we get the cover we need. And the buy option is just that, an option. If he’s not worth £8m at the end of the season, we shake his hand and send him back. It’s a one-year solution to a one-year problem, with the potential to become a long-term solution if everything goes right.”

Freedman nodded slowly, the logic of it sinking in. ”And if he’s brilliant?”

”Then we find the £8m,” I said simply. ”That’s a problem I’d like to have.”

He finally smiled, a small, tired, but genuine smile. He reached for his phone. ”It’s a smart move,” he said. ”It’s a very smart move. Let me call his agent.”

I left him to it and walked out of the office, leaving him to make the call that could solve the biggest remaining problem in our squad.

The drive home to Dulwich was a slow crawl through the evening traffic, but for the first time in weeks, I didn’t mind. I put the radio on low, opened the window, and let the familiar, unremarkable sounds of South London wash over me the distant siren, the rumble of a bus, the chatter of people on the pavement.

My mind, for once, was not racing. It was quiet. The Digne solution felt right. It was smart, it was low-risk, and it was exactly the kind of move a club like ours needed to make to compete. It was not a headline-grabbing, statement-signing like James.

It was a quiet, sensible piece of business that made the whole squad stronger. It was the kind of signing that wins you points in February when the fixtures are piling up and the injuries are starting to bite.

I thought about the Europa League qualifier in six days. A trip to Romania. A team I knew nothing about until this morning. A potential banana skin. But I felt a quiet confidence that I hadn’t felt before the Singapore tour.

We were a better team than we had been two weeks ago. We were more organised, more cohesive, more confident. We had options. We had depth. And now, if Freedman could pull it off, we would have a proper, international-class left back to push Chilwell and cover for him.

For the first time in two weeks, I felt the tension in my shoulders begin to ease. The constant, low-level hum of anxiety that had been my companion since we boarded the flight to Singapore finally began to fade. The work was not over. It had barely begun. But for the first time, I felt like we had all the pieces. Now we just had to put them together.

The penthouse was quiet when I let myself in. The late afternoon sun was slanting through the floor-to-ceiling windows, throwing long shadows across the wooden floor. I could hear the faint sound of music from the kitchen, and the smell of garlic and tomatoes and something else, something warm and familiar and good.