Glory Of The Football Manager System

Nya Kirby was still smiling on the coach. He fell asleep against the window before we were out of Brent, with his mouth open and his phone in his lap showing Oleksandr Zinchenko with both arms in the air.

On Wednesday night Chelsea played Bournemouth at Stamford Bridge, and Eden Hazard came off their bench and won it in the 84th minute. The draw was straight after it.

I watched it on the sofa in Dulwich. Emma had 6 days left on her clause. She sat at the other end with her feet under her and a cushion on her knee, and when the presenter picked the first ball out she put the cushion over her face and held it there with both hands.

Tottenham against Chelsea came out first. Then Manchester City, and the ball after it.

[CARABAO CUP SEMI-FINAL. MANCHESTER CITY v CRYSTAL PALACE.]

Nya Kirby had what he had asked the television for.

First leg at the Etihad in the week of the 7th of January. Second leg at Wembley 2 weeks after that.

I sat and did the sum. City on Saturday in the league, 47 points against 48. City twice in January for a place in a final at Wembley. 3 matches against the same football club before the end of January, and the first of them in 3 days’ time.

Emma took the cushion off her face, looked at the screen, and put it back.

I went into the kitchen and rang nobody. I put the kettle on. While it boiled I wrote the City back 4 on the back of an envelope from memory, with the 3 men in their midfield under it, and then I sat looking at what I had written. It was no use to me. I knew their names. What I did not know yet was what I was going to ask my own players to do about them on Saturday.

I knew by the time the kettle clicked off.

Marcus was in at 6 on Thursday. He always is the morning after a draw. City had been half of his wall since the 17th, and by 9 it was all of it.

City had won 16 of their 17 league matches. The 1 they lost was at Stamford Bridge. Marcus had that match cut down to 9 minutes, and in all 9 Chelsea were sat in 2 lines on the edge of their own box while City passed round them.

He had stopped the film on 1 frame and left it there: a Chelsea midfielder standing still, 25 yards from his own goal, while a City pass went across the front of him to nobody. He had no need to move. Chelsea had let City have the ball for 90 minutes and beaten them 2-0.

Guardiola had played John Stones in front of the back 4 at Leicester on Tuesday, and Marcus had a second version of the wall in case he did it again on Saturday. He had 3 clips of Stones in that position. In all 3 he was very good on the ball and slow on the turn.

I called the staff in at 10 and told them once, in that room, with the City wall behind me.

”We give them the ball,” I said. ”All of it. We sit, and we wait, and we go when they give it back.”

Nobody argued. Sarah had said it in our canteen on Monday morning, and I had been hearing her say it for 4 days.

Kovačić had told me what Atlético do to you on Monday. Now I was going to find out whether I could do it to somebody else.

Bray did not wait to be asked. He went straight out to pitch 2 with his laminated card and the 11 he expected, and spent 40 minutes on free kicks that he did not want to score from. He wanted them headed out. He put Andros Townsend 28 yards from goal, in the D, where nobody stands for a free kick, and fed ball after ball into a crowd of tall men who headed each 1 away from goal. Townsend stood in the D. The ball came back out to him, bouncing, and he hit it. Bray kept him there until he stopped mishitting them.

Michael Steele had Nick Pope on pitch 3 with a laptop on a chair and 11 free kicks from Leroy Sané on it. He did not explain them. Pope watched each 1 and went and stood in the goal, and Steele put a ball down where Sané had put his, and hit it.

Rebecca passed all 18 on Friday morning and wrote nothing next to any of them. Deano left at 6 with the kit in the van. Deano does not fly with kit, and he does not trust a train with it either.

CRYSTAL PALACE: Pope. Wan-Bissaka, Konaté, Sakho, Hakimi. Neves. Townsend, McArthur, Kovačić, Eze. Zaha.

Bench: Krul, Tarkowski, Chilwell, Højbjerg, Rodríguez, Benteke, Perišić.

Christian Benteke saw his name on the bench on the Friday and came to my office. He did not sit down. He asked me who was going to win the ball in the air when Pope kicked it long, and I told him nobody was, because Pope would not kick it long. Zaha would be on his own up there, and the ball would go into the grass behind the City full backs for Zaha to run onto. Benteke listened to all of it. Then he nodded once and went to the gym.

I grew up 3 miles from the Etihad, on the other side of Manchester in every way there is. We came up on Friday on the train, and on Saturday at 1 the coach went east out of the city centre, past the canal and the old mills, and I sat at the front and did not look at the streets.

There was a minute’s silence before kick-off for the people connected to Manchester City who had died that year. The whole ground in sky blue, and our corner of red and blue at the far end, and all of it still. Then the referee blew, and the noise came down off the roof at once, a wall of it.

MANCHESTER CITY: Ederson. Walker, Otamendi, Laporte, Delph. Stones, Gündoğan, Bernardo Silva. Sterling, Sané, Jesus.

No Fernandinho. Sergio Agüero and Kevin De Bruyne were on the bench.

Prrrp.

70 seconds in, Fabian Delph hit a half volley from the edge of the box and Nick Pope tipped it over the bar.

Tk.

That was the afternoon. I knew it after 70 seconds, and so did every 1 of ours in the far corner, and you could hear them knowing it. City came down the pitch at us in waves. They moved it from Walker to Silva to Gündoğan to Sterling and back. They were quick and they were clever, and I have never in my life seen a ball move round a pitch the way it moved round that 1. Leroy Sané hit the side netting from 12 yards. Bernardo Silva got a shot away from 6 yards out and Mamadou Sakho threw his body across it.

Thud. Sané hit 1 from 25 and Pope held it on his chest.

My players stood in 2 lines and let them.

It is a hard thing to watch. I had spent my whole working life telling footballers to go and get the ball back, and now I had my toes on the paint at the Etihad, watching 10 of mine refuse to. Rúben Neves sat in front of the back 4 and moved 5 yards left and 5 yards right and did nothing else. Kovačić and McArthur stood shoulder to shoulder in front of him like 2 doormen. Mateo Kovačić has told me every week since August that he wants the ball, and for 27 minutes he did not ask for it once. Townsend and Eze ran back to the full backs every time and stood next to them. Wilfried Zaha was on his own on the halfway line with his hands on his hips, waiting.

I had chosen that. I kept my hands in my coat pockets and I kept choosing it, every 30 seconds.

On 27 minutes Kyle Walker switched it right to left, 50 yards, to Sané. Delph came round the outside of him, Sané gave it to him, and Delph whipped a cross in with his left foot. Ilkay Gündoğan got in front of Neves at the near post and headed it in.

Thump.

1-0.

The whole of that ground came up at once. City’s players ran to the corner, and Guardiola walked a few steps along his touchline with his fist clenched and walked back.

I wanted to change it. There was no use pretending otherwise. Every instinct I have went up through my legs at once. Push Neves on. Get Kovačić onto Stones. Send the full backs. Get it back. I could feel my right arm wanting to come out of my pocket.

I looked at Sarah. She had the sheet on her knee and her pen still.

”Leave it,” she said, to the sheet.

I left it.

6 minutes later Ederson rolled it to Laporte, Laporte went long, and Sakho headed it straight back over the halfway line before it had stopped spinning. Zaha was already running. He got to it a yard in front of Laporte and turned him, shhk, and the whole of our end came up out of its seats before he had done anything else.

He did not go on his own. He gave it inside to Townsend, Townsend gave it to McArthur, and McArthur slid it square across the edge of the box to Eberechi Eze, who had run 60 yards to be there.

Eze took 1 touch onto his right foot and drove it low into the bottom corner past Ederson.

Swsh.

1-1.

Our end went mad. Eze ran to them and slid on his knees, and Zaha got there and fell on him, and McArthur stood with his hands on his hips and laughed.

2 minutes after that we won a free kick 35 yards out on the left, and Bray stood up.

He did not hold up a number. He held his hand flat, palm down, and pushed it towards the floor once, and Townsend walked away from the ball. He walked back to the D, 28 yards from goal, and stood there on his own with City’s whole team in the box and not 1 of them watching him.

Neves curled it in. Konaté went up with Laporte. Bernardo Silva got his head to it first and headed it out, high, the right thing to do, away from the danger.

It came down in the D.

[ANDROS TOWNSEND. LONG SHOTS 16. TECHNIQUE 15.]