Glory Of The Football Manager System

PALACE XI v INTER: AVERAGE AGE 24.1. INTERNAZIONALE: 28.4.

”I want those 2 numbers next to each other and then somebody can argue with me,” Gary Neville said. ”The 24-year-old team had 68 per cent of the ball and did nothing with it for 45 minutes, and then their manager moved 1 player 15 yards and won the match.

”That is not a young side getting lucky. I have watched 30 young sides get found out in this competition and every one of them got found out because nobody moved anybody 15 yards.”

Thierry Henry had been quiet for 14 minutes.

”Can I disagree with Jamie.”

”Go on.”

”You are right about those nights, I have played in them.” A finger on the desk. ”But you have described a problem for a club that is frightened, and the reason this one is not frightened has not been said out loud in this conversation.

”They have already had the away night.

”On the 15th of August they went to Estonia and played the holders of this competition and were 1-0 up in 4 minutes and 5-0 up at the end, and there was not 1 moment where a Crystal Palace player looked like he thought he was in the wrong building.

”So put them in Dortmund in front of 25,000 people in October and they will be a lot of things. Tired. Outnumbered. Maybe beaten.” He sat back. ”They will not be frightened, and the fear is the part that finishes teams. I would not bet on them. I would not bet against them either, and I have never said that about a club in its first season.”

Roy Keane had his arms folded and had not moved in 19 minutes.

”Roy. You have been waiting.”

”Since the 16th of August.”

Tap.

KEANE, 16 AUGUST: ”NOTHING STOPS CRYSTAL PALACE. SOMETHING TAKES DANNY WALSH.”

”I said that on this programme 34 days ago and everybody at this desk told me I was being dramatic.” Keane did not lean forward. ”I said there is a club in Spain that has just been beaten 5-0 by a man who was coaching an under 18s side 18 months ago, and they have had 12 managers in 18 years, and their president watched it from a glass box in Tallinn.

”I said it would take a bad Sunday in October.”

He looked at the camera.

”Real Madrid have taken 1 point from 2. They have Sevilla and Atlético inside 10 days. Marca ran the list of sackings this morning, and Marca do not run that list unless somebody has asked them to. I am not being clever about it and I am not enjoying it. I would like it on the record that I said October, and it is the 19th of September, and the list is already in the newspaper.”

”Roy, he is not going anywhere.”

”Everybody goes.”

”He turned Manchester United down in July.”

”He did not turn them down. He did not answer them, and I made that point in August and nobody listened to that either.”

”This is Real Madrid, though.”

”No,” Roy Keane said. ”It is worse.”

Carragher went to say something and did not.

”Somebody asks him in January. Not September. January, when they have had a caretaker for 8 weeks and a last 16 draw has come out and Florentino Pérez has run out of famous men who will say yes.” He unfolded his arms. ”And on that day this football club finds out what it actually is, and so does he, and I hope for their sake it is boring.”

Gary Neville had been writing something on that desk while Keane talked and he did not look up when he started.

”In April 2017 I sat here and said Crystal Palace had appointed an under 18s coach because they had run out of ideas.”

”Gary, we are out of time.”

”I have been wrong about that man in public 9 times and I counted them on this desk in August. Here is 10.” He put the pen down. ”Nobody is taking him anywhere.”

”You cannot know that,” Keane said.

”No. And you cannot know the other thing, and 1 of us is going to be sat at this desk in January finding out which of us knows less about him.”

Jones got about 4 words of a sign off out before Carragher started again, and they took it off air with 3 of them still going.

Clk.

I turned it off at 8 and sat in that room for a while.

I have been asked about other clubs before. Manchester United wrote to this football club in July and that letter is still in Jessica Finch’s office and I have not answered it, and all of it felt like something happening to a man I had read about.

Roy Keane naming a month on television is different, and it is different for a reason I have not said to anybody.

He is going to be right. Not about me.

Julen Lopetegui is 52. He took the Spain job, lost it 2 days before a World Cup, and the first competitive match of his life at Real Madrid was against Crystal Palace in Tallinn on the 15th of August, and he lost it 5-0.

A man is going to lose his job in about 6 weeks and 5 of the goals are mine.

I have thought about that more than any telephone call that may or may not come in January, and I am not going to say it out loud, and I am certainly not going to say it in a press room.

Steve Parish rang at 20 past 8 and he had watched it too.

He did not mention Real Madrid. I did not mention Real Madrid.

So he talked about a stand for 11 minutes.

The rebuild is 250 million pounds, it goes into the ground in June, the main stand comes down first, and he has had a drawing on his wall of a building that will not exist until 2021 and has been looking at it for 4 years.

”Danny.”

”Steve.”

”There is a bit of it I have not shown you. A room on the east side with no name on the plan.” He had it in front of him, because he always has it in front of him. ”A window that runs the length of the pitch. Best room in the building. The architect has had it down as executive suite since 2016 and it is not going to be an executive suite.”

”What is it going to be?”

”I do not know yet,” Steve Parish said, ”and I will not know for about 2 years, and I am telling you now because you are 29 and I want you to know there is a room in that building with nothing written on it.”

Then he put the phone down.

Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.

Dougie Freedman took 84 calls from agents between Wednesday morning and Friday night, took every one himself, and put none of them through to me.

60 said the name Ellis Cartwright inside the first 20 seconds. A boy released by Reading in June. A lad at Chelsea not getting a contract. A 19-year-old at a National League club who is apparently better than the one we have got.

Dougie wrote all 84 in the notebook he has had since 2016.

”I am not throwing it away. There will be 2 in there. There are always 2.” He had it open on Friday morning. ”But all 84 of those men rang me because a newspaper told them we look at released boys, and not 1 of them rang me in June, when they had the same lad on the same books and he had nowhere to go.”

Tk.

”60 agents have just told me they have got a Cartwright, and every one of them had a Cartwright 3 months ago and did nothing about him.”

There were 3 photographers outside Ellis Cartwright’s mother’s house on Thursday morning.

Michael Cooke sat 3 rows behind that woman at Wembley and did not tell her he was there, and on the 6th of June he sat in a room with the pair of them and told her son he was finished at this football club.

He rang her himself on Thursday afternoon and did not mention it until Friday.

”What did she say?”

”She asked me whether they were allowed to stand there.” Cooke had his hands in his coat. ”I said I did not know and I would find out.”

Steve Parish put a man on that road until Sunday, paid for it out of the club, and did not mention it to anybody.

Ellis Cartwright has an Instagram account with 400 followers on it on Tuesday morning and 610,000 on Thursday afternoon.

He has put 1 thing on it in his life and he put it up at 20 past 1 on Wednesday morning. It is a photograph of the tunnel at Wembley taken from inside it, with nobody in the shot, and 4 words underneath.

Thanks for the shout.

There are 3,000 comments under it guessing.

Ron does not have an account and never has. Somebody in the ticket office printed the photograph out on Thursday morning and put it on the wall of the gatehouse in a plastic wallet, and it was still there on Friday, and he has not said a word to me about it.

I got the boy at half 11 on Thursday in the physio room with a bike on.

”Is it going to be like this every time?”

”No. It is like this because it is the first one. On Saturday you are a substitute at Bournemouth, and by the middle of October nobody rings your mother about anything.”

He worked that for a second.

”And then?”

”And then in about 3 years, if you are what I think you are, it starts again and it does not stop.”

”Right,” Ellis Cartwright said. ”So I have got 3 years.”

Then he got back on that bike without being asked and did 20 minutes Rebecca had not written down, and she let him, and she told me about it on Friday instead of Thursday.

Bzz.

Emma rang at 10 past 10 on Thursday night and we did 20 minutes and neither of us said the word Palace.

talkSPORT did 2 of their 3 hours on Crystal Palace on Wednesday afternoon. She was on air for all 3, off at the top of the second and back at 4 minutes past 5, and somebody else in that building did 58 minutes on a football club she is marrying into in June while she sat in a room off a corridor with a producer called Aisha and listened to it.

Day 24 of a clause that runs to Christmas.

She told me about her father’s knee, and about a man who rang in from Hartlepool about goal line technology and was still going when they cut to the travel.

Then at 10 to 11 she said the 1 thing that was about it.

”Did you watch Sky?”

”All of it.”

”Roy Keane.”

”I know.”

”He is right about the month and he is wrong about the year,” Emma said.

”Which year is he wrong about?”

”All of them. Go to bed. You are at Bournemouth on Saturday and you have not eaten properly since Tuesday.”