Glory Of The Football Manager System

[AXEL TUANZEBE. CA 118. PA 152.]

152 is a top Premier League centre-half. 152 is not a superstar and it is not supposed to be. 152 is a man who plays 300 matches and nobody in a pub ever argues about him.

And he is 20, and he is quick, and he covers the exact 40 yards of grass that Ibrahima Konaté left empty on Wednesday night 4 times in 45 minutes.

”Does he want to come?”

”He wants to play in the Champions League,” Dougie said, ”and Aston Villa are in the Championship, and I did not have to say anything clever at all.”

So that is the window. A goalkeeper on a free, a centre-half at 5 million, and a right back who arrived on Monday with a Golden Ball in a flight case if you do not count Mateo and James.

3 men bought outright and added to a squad that finished 2nd, and 2 of them are 20 and 19.

I am not signing anybody else this summer and I have told Dougie to stop sending me names.

I had about 2 hours of feeling clever about that, and then we went to work at 2 o’clock, and Sarah took the session.

Sarah is my assistant manager. She has been since the day they made me permanent, and before that she ran my under 18s with me, and before that she was writing team sheets in a school exercise book at 11 years old in a house in Thornton Heath.

She had the group in 4 units on 2 pitches inside 6 minutes. I have never been able to do that in my life.

”Right. Reds with me, greens with Bray, keepers with Michael, and the 3 who played 90 on Wednesday are with Rebecca and they are not touching a football.”

”Sarah.”

”They are not touching a football, Danny.”

”I did not say anything.”

”You were going to.”

Prrrrp.

45 minutes of possession work in a 30 by 30 with 2 bounce players, and the rule was 2 touch and the rule after 15 minutes was 1 touch, and by minute 25 Nya Kirby had stopped shouting and started pointing at people instead.

Tk. Tk. Tk-tk.

Ellis Cartwright gave the ball away 3 times in the first 5 minutes and did not give it away again.

Antoine Semenyo did 40 minutes of finishing with Christian Benteke stood behind him telling him where to put his standing foot, unpaid and unasked, because Christian Benteke is 27 and has decided that is his job now.

Michael Olise did the whole session with the seniors and was not the worst player in it.

And Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Achraf Hakimi did 25 minutes of 1 v 1 work against each other on pitch 3 while I watched from a bank.

[ACHRAF HAKIMI. PACE 17. ACCELERATION 18.]

[AARON WAN-BISSAKA. TACKLING 18. POSITIONING 16.]

Hakimi went past him twice in 25 minutes. Aaron took it off him 9 times.

Neither of them said a word to the other for the entire thing, and at the end of it Hakimi put his hand out and Aaron looked at it for about half a second before he took it.

Bray came and stood next to me on that bank.

”You have got a problem there.”

”I have got a European Cup tie in Madrid in March there.”

”Aye,” Bray said. ”And a problem first.”

We got in at 6 and I put a laptop in front of Steve Parish at 20 past, on a call, with Sarah sat next to me and Dougie on a second line in Croydon.

”I want to spend money.”

”You have spent money.”

”Not on players.” I turned the screen. ”Steve, I have got 17 association-trained players and 8 club-trained, and I found that out this afternoon off Sarah and not off a scouting department, because we have not really got a scouting department.”

”We have got 9 scouts.”

”We have got 9 scouts for England and 2 for everywhere else on earth, and 1 of them is a man in Belgium called Piet who I have never met.”

Sarah slid the sheet across.

She had done it in about 40 minutes on a hotel wifi, and it was 1 page, and it had 3 numbers on it.

”Go on then,” Steve said.

”Aaron Wan-Bissaka cost this club nothing. Somebody bid 40 million for him 8 days ago and you said no in 25 minutes.

”Eberechi Eze cost nothing. Connor Blake cost nothing. Nya Kirby, Tyrick Mitchell, Michael Olise, Reece Hannam, Ellis Cartwright. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

”Antoine Semenyo cost us an 8 week trial we did not honour and then a phone call to a college in Gloucestershire.

”9 footballers in a Champions League squad, and everything we have ever spent on the lot of them together is less than 1 transfer fee for a 3rd choice goalkeeper.”

”Danny, I know all of this.”

”Then here is the bit you do not know.”

I put the second page up.

”In the same 3 years, Chelsea have spent 60 million on strikers who are 19. City have spent 40.

”And there is a category in the UEFA rules that says 4 of my 25 have to be men we raised ourselves. I have got 8. Half that competition will be scratching around for 4.”

”You want more scouts.”

”I want 6 more scouts, 4 of them outside England. I want a full time psychologist for the 16 to 19s, because we released Ellis Cartwright in June and nobody in that building noticed he was still turning up at 7 in the morning for 6 weeks.

”I want the Bouknadel money doubled, because the academy Morocco are building with us has 60 beds in it and a country of 35 million behind it and it opens in 14 months.

”And I want a category 1 residential block at Beckenham that does not leak.”

Nobody said anything for a second.

”How much?” Steve said.

Sarah told him.

It is a number that will not make a back page and it is about 4 per cent of what Manchester City spent on 1 midfielder in June.

”Is that all?” Steve said.

”That is the entire pitch, yes.”

”Danny, I have got 250 million pounds going into a stand.”

”And in 3 years that stand holds 60,000 people, and I would quite like there to be 6 lads from Croydon stood on the pitch in front of them.”

Steve Parish did not answer for about 8 seconds.

”Dougie,” he said. ”You have been quiet.”

”I have been quiet because he is right,” Dougie Freedman said, ”and I have been trying to tell him that since March and he would not sit still long enough to hear it.

”Steve, we sold Gnabry for 75 and Bojan for 60, and we replaced them with a 22-year-old at 10 and a boy who cost nothing.

”Nobody is that lucky twice. It is the one thing this club has ever been properly good at, and we do it with 11 scouts and a man in Belgium.”

”Sarah?”

”I put the sheet together,” Sarah said. ”I am not going to sit here and pretend I am neutral about it.”

”Right.” A chair went, 3,000 miles away. ”Do it. All of it. And Danny.”

”Steve.”

”Do not tell me about it again until January, because I have got a stand to build and I would like 1 conversation this year that is not you asking me for something.”

We came off that call at 10 past 7.

Sarah shut the laptop and looked at me.

”Do you want the honest version?”

”Always.”

”You have just spent 6 days panicking about a rule you already complied with twice over,” she said, ”and the only good thing that came out of it is Ellis Cartwright, and you did not find him. I did.”

”I know.”

”So next time, ask the building.” She got up. ”It is why you hired me, and you have not done it since May.”

So we did it out loud in a hotel lobby, 10 days out.

Sunday. Bayern Munich, in New Jersey. Niko Kovač, 6 weeks in the job, and a squad of Germans who went out of a World Cup in the group stage and have had a month of their own country telling them about it. Manuel Neuer. Joshua Kimmich. Thomas Müller. Robert Lewandowski.

They will not be pretending it is July either.

Tuesday. Home.

Sunday the 5th of August. Wembley Stadium. Manchester City. The Community Shield. This football club has won it once in 113 years. That was 1990, and it was shared.

Saturday the 11th. Selhurst Park, and a Premier League season, and 25,486 people who have been waiting since May.

And Wednesday the 15th of August. A stadium in Tallinn, in Estonia, in front of 14,000 people, and Real Madrid, who have won the European Cup 3 seasons running and have never once played Crystal Palace in 113 years of either club existing.

The UEFA Super Cup.

I have to pick a team to play Real Madrid in 20 days.

I thought I had a right back problem and I have got 2 right backs. I thought I had a homegrown problem and I have got 17 of them. And on Monday a centre-half lands who has played 4 senior matches in his life.

And an 18-year-old in Lisbon with a release clause that will not exist in September, who does not want to come, and whose agent wants him in Madrid in 2 years.

Bzz.

Dougie. 16:52.

Mendes took the call.

Bzz.

He says September, Lisbon, 20 minutes, and he wants to know which 19-year-old.

I stood in a hotel lobby in Pittsburgh and typed 1 word back with my thumb.

Hakimi.