Soccer Supremo - A Sports Progression Fantasy

4.

EXTERIOR SHOT: What seems, from context, to be the side of a football pitch.

MAX BEST is in his trademark black hoodie, holding a football. He’s pacing around, scowling. The words: Max Best (Player-Manager) appear.

MAX

[Stops pacing to address his players.]

All right, you animals, listen up. We’ve got a tough game today. Win your headers, yeah? Today’s all about aerial duels. Get up higher than your opponent. Really stretch for it.

[CUT TO: Some giraffes.]

MAX

Are you even listening? [Exasperated, he points from one giraffe to another.] Why are your coats different? We have to wear the same kit! Guys! Get your heads out of the clouds!

[CUT TO: A cute giraffe checking if Max’s hair is edible.]

MAX

Oi! Wind your neck in. I thought you were a herbivore!

[AERIAL SHOT: A 22-acre enclosure.]

NARRATOR

Experience Heart of Africa, the largest zoo habitat ever created in the UK. Chester Zoo - we’re simply the best.

[CUT TO: Eight seconds of a blissed-out Max hand-feeding a giraffe from a special head-height platform. Text appears: The Giraffe Experience. Meet and feed our Northern giraffes. See website for details.]

***

Monday, February 1

7 p.m. One hour until the winter transfer window slams shut. One hour for teams to make their final trades for the season.

Chester FC’s mid-season Fans Forum is about to get underway.

***

Boggy was on the stage, introducing the event and introducing himself. It was a thankless task, what with eight hundred Chester fans coming back from the bathroom, coming back from the bar, noisily taking their seats. Noisily and grumpily, I thought, though that might have been me projecting.

”I’m the host of Seals Live,” Boggy was saying. ”And the official Chester FC podcast, which is really quite good, you know. We’re not as corporate as other official podcasts. It’s really worth a listen. Ahem. But someone who does run a successful pod is our guest, your representative on this stage today. From the Deva Station podcast, please welcome to the stage... J!”

There was warm applause and some cheering for J. His podcast was really good - you could tell he and his regular contributors were proper Chester fans and while they talked through issues from all angles they normally took a position that most fans could respect. J had been burned criticising my squad-building too many times and these days he was prepared to give new signings time to bed in. Recently he had been riding the wave of frustration that came with supporting the only team in English football that hadn’t made a single signing in the January transfer window.

”Thanks, Boggy,” said J. ”Really chuffed to be here. I’m representing the fans? If you don’t mind me saying, we’ll do that together, yeah? You’ve been a Chester fan longer than me.”

The crowd loved that. ”Boggy Boggy Boggy! Oi! Oi! Oi!”

No-one could see me, so I dipped my head in appreciation. J was super smart and his political skills were improving. It was easy to imagine that he could one day become a serious problem to me, and part of my brain was screaming to be careful, to stop boosting his profile, to stop turning him into an important figure.

I wanted him to be an important figure, though. He was someone I could put on that stage, who would push back when I said things he didn’t like, who would genuinely represent the fans in a way that made them feel like their voices mattered. But he was also super reasonable and - even more importantly - had just enough showbusiness chops to keep the conversation within the ’safe to consume’ temperature range.

After going off-book to have a quick chat with J, Boggy was reading from his notes again. ”Our second guest needs no introduction, but he has written one for me to read anyway.” Big laugh from the audience. That was a good sign - the evening wouldn’t be one of unremitting gloom. ”Ahem. Our second guest... is Max Best.”

I appeared from a side door and made my way across the stage to pretty generous applause. There were some whoops and whistles, too. I shook hands with Boggy and J, and took the third of the three comfy armchairs we had laid out.

When the applause died down, Boggy got stuck in. ”Right. Max likes these events to move fast, so let’s get moving. I have been collecting questions from Chester’s members and will ask them, but J, feel free to ask follow-up questions if you think that’s what the wider fanbase would want.”

”Hey,” I said. ”Have you got one about the season ticket fiasco?”

”Yes,” said Boggy.

”Let’s get that done first because that might be the most important topic of the whole day. Look, that was an example of bad communication, plain and simple. We thought we were informing people but we left out some key bits and that left space for conspiracy theories to emerge and I know there’s a slightly bad taste left in the mouth for some fans, so let me just lay it all out here.

”First up, this is all on me. It’s my mania that’s the root cause and I checked the text of the announcement and it seemed all right. So that’s something I need to learn from. But the fundamental fact is that we need to keep improving the stadium. The McNally has been a huge success, I hope you agree.” There was warm applause, lots of nodding. ”Yeah, it’s crazy to think we started this season with fourteen away games in a row. I’ll never forget that first game back in Chester. Since then we’re finished fitting out the stand and got the food and drink service up to scratch, got the hospitality section running smoothly, all that kind of stuff. Great.

”But we need to do the away end and we need to do it as soon as poss. I hoped someone would magically give us five million quid but that, surprisingly, hasn’t happened. What will happen is this. We will get promoted. In early summer, we’ll get the TV broadcast money for the following season. It’s something like eleven million quid in the Championship, right? They give it to clubs early so they’ll spend it on players and the product - that’s the new word for football - will be better.”

J got a cheeky look about him. ”Football clubs are supposed to buy new players?”

I shook my head. ”It’s not as easy as it looks, mate.” I got myself back on topic. ”Sometime in June, we’ll have money to build a new stand, won’t we? As soon as we get that cash, we can get going. Demolish the Hipkiss, the South Stand, and put up the new one. Four thousand capacity, solar panels, air-source heat pumps, huge rainwater collection tanks, plus we’re sneaking in some other cool stuff. There will be a venue for bands or comedy shows and that sort of thing. Possibly some art studios or little workshops.”

J said, ”You’re getting excited, Max. You have to finish the apology before you do that.”

I smiled. ”You’re spot on. I just think it’s going to be so cool to have some creatives around. We can’t put anything respectable in the away end, so music and comedy and art seems a good use.

”Okay so what does it mean? It means at the start of next season, we will have a three-sided stadium. The other clubs in the Championship won’t let us jiggle the fixture list so that we can start with a long string of away games. We got permission in League One because the other clubs thought they’d be getting an easy three points from us, right? But we handled that run amazingly well and in retrospect it’s clear that the real advantage would have been to go to the Deva when our noisiest stand was out of action. We can’t expect the next lot to make the same mistake.

”No, we will start the season with one stand missing and a reduced capacity. We will have to give the entire West stand to the away fans, for an uncertain number of weeks or months. So how can we sell season tickets in the West stand? We can’t.

”Now, I think people understand that, but the way we communicated it made it feel like we were trying to force everyone in the West stand to move to the McNally. That was a suggestion on how to make sure you get tickets next season, right, because the Deva will be 100% sold out every match. It wasn’t intended to be a take-it-or-leave-it kinda thing. The following season, everyone will be able to get a season ticket wherever they want, okay? If you’ve been in a certain spot in the West stand for years, you’ll get it back.”

J had been nodding along. ”I personally thought it was a storm in a teacup because you’ve proven time and again that you know what it’s like to be a football fan, but it came along with the announcement that the early-bird discount would be ending, and that made it all more explosive.”

”Yeah, that didn’t help and that was another misstep by me. Brooke wanted us to write something like, ’hey, we’re ending the early bird deals but that’s okay because we’re keeping the season tickets at the same price!’ Which in retrospect, yeah, that’s probably the right thing to say, but I just hate that kind of corporate messaging. Words get so smoothed out they become slimy, do you know what I mean? In the end it’s a price increase for people who are used to getting the early bird discount and I don’t want to pretend it isn’t.

”The thing is, I really want to keep ticket prices at this level indefinitely. I mean, we’ll have to bump them up every now and then because of inflation, but basically this is a good price point for the normal tickets.

”Brooke and MD are tearing their hair out because demand’s going up and next season the supply will be down, but you’re not customers, you’re fans, and this isn’t a business, this is a sport. And I’ve said it loads, I want a 20,000-capacity stadium that’s full every week. Bradford City had, like, seventeen thousand at every home match in League Two and that’s because they did an awesome job marketing the club and keeping prices at rock bottom. If Chester ever go back to League Two, I want the stadium full, and noisy, and even when it’s not clicking on the pitch it’s rocking in the stands.

”And it’s simple! Cheap tickets, great pies, some local lads on the pitch, some dreamweavers, and most of all, the feeling that whatever happens it’s our club, our community, our city.”

Spine-tingling applause.

J shook his head. ”Only you can turn an apology into a standing ovation.” He tilted his head. ”Sitting ovation. But Max, why don’t you communicate more? Get on a video and say what you’ve just said and there’s no crisis.”

”I’m quite busy, J, and it doesn’t come easily to me. There’s too much video in the world, anyway. Too much audio, too. People sending voice messages is an absolute plague. Your phone pings and you see someone has left you a three-minute clip. The hell is that? They’re getting longer, too. It’s like people are practicing to be podcast hosts. Most communication should be done by text.”

J smiled. ”There’s only one thing worse than wannabe podcasters - podcasters. With the new stand, though. What kind of things did you explore to raise finance and did you consider another mini-bond?”

I scratched my eyebrow. ”I went on a football finance podcast and did some twerking, which didn’t lead to much. I was hoping to do a video call with the members of Malmö, the Swedish club. I thought I might be able to pitch the idea that they would lend us the money. The guys in charge were like, bro, the idea is well strange so if you want us to talk about it, you need to come in person. I’m planning to fly out to Sweden on Valentine’s Day, the day after the Lincoln City match, and if it’s productive I might stay in the area, scouting. If I skip the Mansfield match I could have a really good rummage around.”

J frowned. ”You’d go scouting in Sweden? In February? Their season doesn’t start until...”

”I think it’s the end of March or something. It’s a summer sport there. But they have to play European matches, don’t they? The youth teams, too. There will be enough footy going on to make the trip worthwhile. When we get promoted, we will get four ESC slots. Those are the special work permits for talented players. Right now we have two, so doubling that makes it a lot easier to bring foreign players into the squad. There was one guy in Norway who was generating a lot of interest. About seven clubs bid for him, including two more today, so I very much doubt he’ll still be in Norway when I go there.”

J looked behind him. ”Can I ask about... this? What’s all this?”

I turned. ”Oh. That.”

Boggy said, ”For the benefit of viewers at home, or those listening to this on The Seals Podcast feed - which is really very good, you know, we have some great guests, including His Royal Maxness - behind us on the stage here are some rather surprising items. There’s the large screen, of course, where we have been treated to some wonderful Chester Zoo propaganda. In front of that is a different kind of screen, the sort you might go behind to get medical treatment. That’s rather unnerving, to be frank. To the left, as eight hundred Chester fans see it, sits what I presume is the club’s fax machine, where bids will arrive, and from which player registrations, er, can be sent to the Football Association.”

”Theoretically,” mumbled J.

Boggy said, ”To the right of the stage is, well, it’s a photo studio. You know the sort of thing. Large, hooded lights on adjustable stands. A plain backdrop. What appears to be a box of props. In front of that, to the left of the three comfortable chairs, is a desk, positioned in front of one of those walls adorned with the logos of our sponsors. Max, if I didn’t know better, I would say this was set up to announce some last-minute signings.”

”Oh, boy,” said J, as he shrank in his chair for comic effect.

I cleared my throat, embarrassed. ”Yeah, so what happened went like this.”

”Oh, boy,” said J again.

”There are a couple of themes at play.” I said, squirming a little. ”One is that I am a bit of a free spirit who for some reason finds himself working with loads of planners. Brooke, MD, Secretary Joe, Sandra, they like to book things ahead of time. I like to be a little more flexible, right? Leave it till nearer the deadline and then decide, but you can’t do that with a fucking massive hall in a busy hotel. This needs to be booked way in advance. So the second theme is that the best time to have the Fans Forum is just after the transfer window has closed because that’s kind of the most interesting day of the year. J, you know what I’m talking about, right?”

He did. ”Yeah, it’s like, the speculation is over. The waiting, the hopes, the dreams, have sort of coalesced into some concrete names. We have sold A, B, and C and have signed X, Y, and Z. Which club won the transfer window? Who lost? It’s great content. Um, normally.”

I picked out some faces in the vast audience. The vibe was gloomy but not hostile. They were resigned to their fate. ”Okay, so we booked this hall for Monday, February first, thinking the deadline would have passed and we could talk about it. But not only did they make it so the January window closed in February, they brought the time forward, too. It used to be midnight but today the deadline’s 8 p.m.! Just when this meeting should be hitting its stride. So when I heard that, I thought, heh, you know what would be funny? It’d be hilarious if we had all this stuff on the stage as though we might make, like, a sudden and dramatic late signing, but of course we wouldn’t because I like to get all my business done early on. So, er, yeah. This doesn’t feel as funny after the transfer window that we’ve had. Um... yeah.”

J groaned. ”Max, can we just get into it? I know there are always questions about self-cleaning toilets and things like that, but I think I speak for every fan when I say, we love you mate but what the hell are you playing at?” His words got a round of applause.

”Well,” I said, carefully. ”We’re not in League Two any more. Deals are getting more complicated and take more time. I’ve also learned that the higher you go in this sport, the more you’re buffeted by, like, the winds of change or whatever. I mean, the success or failure of our entire season could rest on one lunatic billionaire’s decision to sack one of the best managers in the world.”

Boggy said, ”We have questions about your earlier decisions, Max. Can you go to the start of the transfer window and talk us through your thinking?”

”Er, sure. One obvious thing - the women’s squad is basically perfect, so I wasn’t looking to strengthen there. We were too strong, actually, and as you know we’ve let a couple of players go elsewhere to get more minutes. I’ll be adding to that squad in the summer, I hope.”

”Interesting,” said Boggy.

”So,” I said. ”The men. Lee Contreras. Great player but we needed money. Pascal Bochum, great player but we needed money. Josh Owens, ditto.”

J stirred. ”Sorry, Max, before you move on. I know you don’t see eye-to-eye with the fanbase on this one, but why Wrexham?” Big applause. ”The Wrexham fans are all over social media crowing about how they signed an eight hundred thousand pound player for half that, and it just shows how tinpot Chester are as a club that they have to sell players just to fill holes in the ground.”

I shrugged. ”My response to that is: get off social media. Delete your account. Your brain will thank you.”

Boggy said, ”This is an opportunity, Max, to address some of the more valid points.”

”What’s valid about any of that? Wrexham is the closest EFL club to us, isn’t it? If I sell a player to Wrexham, Tranmere, or Crewe, that player can keep his kids in the same school, his wife can keep her job and her social circle, their dogs don’t need to be packed into a crate and driven across country for the most stressful day of their lives. Which three clubs don’t loudmouths on social media want me doing business with? Wrexham, Tranmere, and Crewe. Oh, brilliant.”

I tutted and shook my head. I could tell some of the guys in the audience were rethinking their instinctive distaste of trading with the enemy. Fans never thought about the practicalities of being a footballer.

”If you can’t handle the fact that I’m quite friendly with some of the dudes at Wrexham, I find it pretty fucking weird, to be honest, but whatever. Where that hate and bile spills over into self-destruction is things like the morons who will boo Josh when we play Wrexham next season. That mob forget that he helped us to get where we are today, and that his sale finished our training ground, which is absolutely vital to the club’s trajectory. And ignores the fact that if Josh’s move there doesn’t work out, we’ll bring him back here.”

I’d won over a few more with that bit.

”I’m not going to ask people not to boo our former players but I’d point out that when you do that, you’re poisoning the well. We’re getting to a point in our club’s development where players might leave and come back. I, for one, would like Josh at the Deva on the final day of the season to get his league winner’s medal along with everyone else. I’m not sure that’ll happen but if it does, remember that he put his body on the line for us, the same as everyone else who wears the shirt.” Applause. ”Wrexham fans think they got a good deal, I think I got a good deal, Josh Owens is as happy as I’ve ever seen him. That’s called win-win-win.”

J said, ”What are the chances of Josh coming back?”

”Don’t know,” I said. ”Depends who their next manager is, right? Parky has his style and Josh fits that, but Wrex are not finding it easy in the Championship. Would anyone really be surprised if there was a new guy in charge next season? The new guy might not like the look of Josh. You never know what’s coming and it’s a very short career so as a player you need to make moves that get you paid. Josh had a very, very bad start to life in senior football and we should all be pleased that he’s thriving and that we played a part in that. What it does for Chester is it gives us confidence that we can take more players who are released by big clubs. Like, financially that’s obviously a good return for us, and if you’re one of those players you can look at Chester and see that we’ve turned Josh into a Championship player, Cole Adams is our first-choice left back, Tom Westwood is absolutely tearing up the Welsh Premier, and there’s more to come. We fix careers.”

Boggy said, ”Max, it’s after ten past and the clock is moving inexorably towards the deadline...”

”Yes. Was that a question?”

He grinned. ”The question was... implied.”

”Huh. That’s too subtle for me, Boggy lad. Where was I? So we sold players to the value we needed.”

J said, ”Sorry, Max, but quick one on that. We heard the sales raised 1.7 million, which we put towards the training ground.”

”Yes.”

”But some people are saying there’s a 600,000 gap in the numbers. Where’s that gone?”

I stared at him, blankly, for about ten seconds. My phone vibrated. ”Ah. Message from Brooke helping me with this question.” I looked around. ”Where is she? Watching from home? Finishing the training ground was 2.3 million. We had six hundred grand in our account. I think the issue is that I kept talking about needing 1.7. Yeah, we needed 1.7, but only because I subtracted the six hundred.”

”Oh, okay,” said J. ”I get it. So that’s spent?”

”That’s spent.” To help me get back on track, I put a finger on my lips and closed my eyes. ”What came next? The big thing was the Sunderland match. If we could win that and get an away game at Man United again, there’s a million quid. That would have sent us on a different timeline, if you get me. When we got knocked out of the cup, it was like, okay we know what our financial position is for the rest of the season. Oh, you asked about mini-bonds before. If we’d got a free million pounds, so to speak, that could have been a deposit on the new away end and we could have thought about more bonds. We don’t really want to load the club with tons more debt, though, even what the guys on The Coin Toss call ’good debt’. But a million plus selling Duggers takes you to half the cost of the new stand, right? It would have been an interesting discussion about how hard to push the new stand versus getting players.”

”RIP Duggers,” said J.

”Hey, I know there’s all this woe and dismay in the room right now but no-one here, and I mean no-one, loved Duggers as much as me. Okay but that was later. The first thing is, Pedro Porto gets sacked. I mean, holy shit, right? We only had Matt Rush because Pedro thought it was a good place for him to learn, and he was right. Rushy was turning into a real asset. What’s crazy is how long it took United to recall him.”

Boggy’s expression turned dark. ”I’ve heard terrible things about what goes on there.”

”Beware the curse of the billionaire,” I said. ”We were all knackered after the Sunderland match so I rotated hard. I thought Rushy would be recalled any minute so I kept him in - basically as a right-winger to let him have some attacking fun - because there was a good chance he would rot in United’s reserves for the rest of the season.”

J said, ”I don’t like to complain, Max, not to your face anyway, but that Wigan match was dreadful.”

”I know.” Wigan had an average CA of 95, so they should have been one of our easier opponents, but my makeshift lineup only had CA 87.2. ”That’s just how it goes, sometimes. Hangover from a big effort, not enough recovery time.”

”What was that formation, though? 4-5-1? We don’t see that often these days.”

”No,” I agreed. ”But sometimes you have to be realistic. I’m not in the business of flogging my players till they drop, do you know what I mean? We got Nasa on the pitch, Adam Summerhays is learning a lot from these experiences, Magnus is getting sharper, Omari needs minutes. It was good for the squad in lots of ways, but yeah, Gabby was pretty isolated and we couldn’t create much. We defended well, but I did feel bad for the away fans. I mean, soz, but we just had to do it like that, you know?”

It had been nil-nil, an absolute borefest. In their weekend roundup episodes, the excellent Pyramid Schemers podcast had a policy of skipping over nil-nils but they mentioned that one because in matches where I was the manager, goalless draws were vanishingly rare.

”By then, we’d had the first bid for Duggers. I rebuffed it right away but suggested a price at which I would do business.”

”What was that?” said J.

”One point four,” I said.

He pulled a face. ”That seems low, Max.”

”Is it, though? What I realised was that I needed some kind of valuation tool to, like, back up my instincts. So I hacked into eight of the world’s leading AIs and had them team up to create a superbot that would give me precise transfer valuations for every player in the world. I wanted to call this entity ’The Oracle’ but the AIs said that name was taken. I said well it’s not like I’m going to give this thing its own website address, am I? It’s basically a pet. But they wouldn’t listen and called it ’The Transfertron’.”

J was shaking his head. ”I’d suggest you go and take a nap but,” he looked around at all the equipment, ”I’m still hoping someone might walk through that door.”

”Okay, I’m lying about the AIs and all that, but I did try to create an algorithm for more accurate player valuations.”

By which I meant I had grinded like an absolute madman until I had saved up enough XP to buy the Transfer Values perk. 20,000 XP gone, just like that, but for once I didn’t have buyer’s remorse because the new data was absolutely thrilling. Every player in the database, no matter when I had scouted them, suddenly had a value assigned.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

The curse thought Youngster was worth 3.8 million pounds. Wibbers was 6.6 million. Adam Adebayo at Bayern Munich would fetch 92 million pounds. Max Best... was the only player without a value. Typical.

More pertinently, the curse rated Charlie Dugdale as being worth 975,000 pounds. My last doubts about selling him basically melted away, especially when two of the potential replacements I had identified were so reasonably priced.

”Yeah, look,” I said. ”Duggers was a beautiful player and he was stacking up great numbers. Did we need to sell him? No. Did we want to sell him? No. Was there a risk to selling him? Big time. We could get a good fee but without his creativity we might drop out of the automatic promotion slots and miss out on ten or eleven million in TV money. That’s a bad deal, isn’t it? So when Norwich came back with 1.3 million, I said, you know what? It’s not enough for us to risk our season over. They said fine, we’re pulling out of the deal. Playing hardball. But now there was a price out there, right? Duggers’ agent let it be known that I would take 1.4, and we were taking calls from clubs who were going, is this true? I said, yeah, it’s true. Norwich found out that they weren’t the only interested parties and they went, fine, 1.4.”

J leaned forward. ”Couldn’t you have set up an auction? Played the interested clubs against each other? Driven up the price?”

”Sure,” I said. ”But if we pissed off all the bidders we would have been left with a pissed off player. I can look Duggers in the eye and say hey, such-and-such a bid isn’t enough, we’ll revisit the situation in the summer, get your head down and train. But I can’t say to him, hey yo I got greedy and those clubs that wanted to triple your wages, they don’t pick up when I call.”

”Triple his wages?” said J.

”Yeah.” I knew exactly because ’his agent’ was none other than Ruth. In drumming up more interest in Duggers, it wasn’t that she had gone rogue, exactly, but she had very much put her client’s needs far above the needs of Chester FC. I wasn’t really in a position to complain. From that one deal, my personal share of the agency’s profits had risen from £2,750 a week to £3,040. The flywheel was really starting to pick up speed. Number go up. Money go brr.

”Triple. Shit. Can’t really blame him for wanting to go.”

”He didn’t want to go,” I said. ”He loved playing for us. But he has a family, doesn’t he? He has responsibilities. And, er,” I said, with something of a cheeky smile. ”If it doesn’t work out for him at Norwich...”

J brightened. ”Are you telling us not to boo him when we play them next season?”

”That would be incredibly stupid,” I said. ”To be clear, the official position is that I genuinely hope he does well for them.” In terms of CA, Duggers was nowhere near as good as his data suggested, though, was he? He had great form and Morale but his CA was on the low end for the competition. Surely he would struggle in his first matches. He could struggle for months and then get frozen out completely. A year from now, we could be buying him back at half price. I smiled. That was one way to blast through the training cap. Sell players, let other clubs train them up, then buy them back at a discount. The problem with bringing Duggers back would be his wages, but it was conceivable he would take a pay cut to get regular football again.

”Okay, Max,” said J. ”What we got from our listeners was that they didn’t want Duggers to go - he’s such a great player - but they could stomach it because you’d get someone in who’s just as good or better. But...”

”But I got cocky and fell flat on my face,” I said, with a heavy sigh.

”Is that what happened, though? We’ve got loads of listeners, guys on our Discord chat, split into two camps. One side is like he’s distracted, he’s doing his social justice warrior crap, he’s doing his Chester Zoo ads. The other camp are like no way is Max Best shhhh... crapping the bed like this. No way is he completely unable to find a left mid or a right back or fucking something. But every day that went by with rumours and stories and headlines but no new signings, it was just... It has just been...” He looked genuinely sick.

I leaned back and spoke in a thoughtful voice. ”It’s all part of the same tapestry, though, isn’t it? One strand leads to another. January 16th, we play without Matt Rush, without Duggers, and Youngster is in Germany. And guess what? We crush the match. Only one-nil in the end but how many shots did we have? 25? I’m not stupid enough to realise there aren’t gaps in the squad but also, we’re still brilliant. We’re still fucking amazing.” Applause. ”So I thought I would take my time, really make sure I was spending this new money wisely. You have to understand that I’ve been scouting super hard. England, Wales, Scotland. Even, I shudder to say it, the South.”

Boggy said, ”That’s very brave of you.”

”There are those signs on the motorway, you know. In big letters. The South. Like it might say this way to Mordor. Anyway, my imaginary database - that isn’t on a laptop so please don’t mug me - is bursting with the names of players who could come and make a difference. January 23rd we play Carlisle and win three-one. Dazza scores his second goal in two games and you think hold up, have we got the best target man in the third tier? Wibbers scores and you think, hey, this guy’s gonna be the actual best player in this league very soon; he could play left wing. Some handsome chap called Best slaps home the third. He could play right back. I thought to myself, you know what? We don’t need more players.” The audience groaned. J’s face briefly crumpled. Even Boggy looked aghast.

Boggy said, ”So, in the absence of new signings, might we expect an announcement about a new stand? More work at Bumpers Bank? Where will the Duggers windfall go?”

”Mmm,” I said, steepling my fingers. ”Hang on, though. We played Shrewsbury Town next, didn’t we? That was two-nil for over an hour - Colin and Gabby - but we let in a goal near the end and had a horrible ten minutes before we banked the three points and I thought, maybe we do need some players. I’ve kept Wibbers out of defensive training, haven’t I, in order to create a more focused attacking threat, so I can’t use him on the wing unless there’s a full back behind him. So that rules him out of 3-5-2 or 3-4-3, doesn’t it? So he can’t replace Duggers. And I need to get us ready for the Championship, which means I keep scouting, including that trip to Scandinavia and God knows where else. I’m going to miss some matches, aren’t I? So I’m not the solution at right back. Yeah, I decided, as you lot were demanding on social media, to spend some fucking money.”

I eyed J. He grinned and held his hands up. ”I didn’t say fucking.” I got my phone out and showed him a screenshot. He frowned. ”Guess I got more drunk than I thought that night. But it’s a relief to hear that you at least wanted to sign someone.”

”Big time,” I said with high energy, before settling back into the armchair and looking at the ceiling. In a contemplative tone, I said, ”But then we played Bristol Rovers in the Vans Trophy quarter-final, our third game in five days. And we won four-nil. Two goals for that little scamp Max Best, one for Wibbers, and Christian chipping in, too. I thought to myself, huh.” J groaned, and he wasn’t the only one. I continued. ”If we can play three matches in five days and still get to a Vans Trophy semi in quite some style - we’re in the semi-final, lads! One game from Wembley! I thought, if we can do that, how can we say the squad needs reinforcements? It doesn’t add up.”

J started chuckling to himself. ”I see how this is gonna go. On Saturday, two days before the deadline, we struggle to get a draw at home to mid-table Blackpool and now, right at the very end of the window, you’ve decided to sign a player and he’s here now and he’s gonna appear any second now. Any second now,” he repeated, craning his head. I briefly wondered if he would get up and look behind the room divider to see if a player had been hiding there this whole time.

”J,” I said, patiently. ”That was our fourth match in seven days. That’s a brutal schedule. A point was completely acceptable - especially when our goal was scored by Ryan ’Rollin Back the Years’ Jack! Having one extra player in the squad wouldn’t have made much of a difference.” I smiled and shook my head gently as I spoke to the masses. ”I know that you love transfers and it’s tough to take when your favourite players leave the club, but there might be one good thing that comes out of this window. Maybe being starved of all the dopamine you get from new signings, new players, new names, maybe it will, like, sort of wean you off your addiction. I know it feels miserable right now but this could turn out to be a good thing.”

J pinched his nose as he asked, ”Max, did you try to buy any players?”

”I did. I had loads of bids rejected. Sometimes it’s like the universe is laughing at you, do you know what I mean? But I’d like to get back to my theme of, you know, this absolute mania you’ve got. We have loads of great players at this club and we should be focusing our efforts on training them up. Making them better. Not just doing a mad trolley dash, chucking randos into our basket and bringing them to the checkout two minutes before the shop closes.”

I shook my head.

”We’re seven points clear at the top of League One. Has anyone, like, looked at the league table? Every fanbase in this division would swap places with you right now. Transfers. Pah! Look at the clubs that went big. Bradford City. Remember them? Won League Two and spent millions on new players. What are they now? 17th? Oops.”

Bradford were owned by Gerry Star - yes, Brooke’s father - and were run by her dimwit brother, Chip. They had tried to trick the Chester fanbase into letting them take over this club, and I had nearly burned my bridges with the entire community while trying to save it. Even now, some Chester fans pined to be owned by a rich idiot, ignoring the fact that for every Ryan Reynolds there were twenty Chip Stars.

”Carlisle spent big, blew it all. God knows what Wycombe are thinking. Every window they break their transfer record on some guy from Denmark who never plays. Stockport and Charlton have gone big and are in the bottom half of the table. Nah, my way’s best. I’m slow-cooking this club like it’s a delicious, ah... Boggy?”

”Roast lamb?”

”Perfect. Roast lamb smothered in mint sauce, just the way Henri hates it.”

J said, ”I would have gone with pulled pork. You get us all delicious and tear us apart strip by strip.”

It was hard not to laugh, so I tried to pretend he hadn’t spoken. ”Don’t get caught up in this transfer nonsense. You worry we’ll trip up with the finish line so close - ” Boggy winced - ”but we won’t. The Transfertron has looked at the rest of the fixtures and it thinks we’ll be fine. Boggy, what’s your best question that isn’t about the T-word?”

”Oh,” he said, disappointed, because it seemed to extinguish any hope there was that I might have had a trick up my sleeve. He looked at his notes. ”I liked this one about our trip to South Wales. It all seemed very expensive. Too expensive, in the eyes of many.”

”Ah, great,” I said sitting up. ”Some juicy stuff at last. Okay, our training ground is going to be beautiful very soon, but right now it’s a fucking eyesore and that’s being polite. What I wanted was to get the lads to a proper high-level, first-class facility for a few days. Something like a treat, right? And a kind of preview. Like, yeah, Bumpers will be like this soon - maybe with fewer Welsh hills surrounding us - just give us a few months! Not that anyone complains, but still.” Mostly I wanted to try to hack the soft cap on our training and was willing to pay good money for that. ”Now, I thought our trip would cost twenty thousand pounds, but I didn’t factor in the other costs. Yeah, the facility cost that, but it didn’t include every meal, we didn’t have enough rooms for everyone so had to book some more hotels, which meant hiring taxis, and we quickly realised the lads were going to be bored out of their minds so we had to think of things for them to do in the evenings, you know. Like we got a comedian - who bombed - and hired a local band - who slayed. All told, the cost crept up towards thirty grand. So the question - this is really exciting to me - was it worth it?”

We had gone in the week between the Rotherham match and the Carlisle one, from Tuesday night to Friday. That meant the lads could spend Friday night in their own beds and see their family. Back to normality before kick off.

”To answer that, I have to describe some of the issues. It was really like being in a World Cup camp, you know, miles away from home. Train in the morning, hit the gym, but other than that it’s basically non-stop boredom. Peter Bauer knew it would be like that so he brought loads of board games. Germans love board games! Incredible that I learned that in Wales, not in Germany, but I didn’t get invited to a lot of parties while I was out there. Anyway, it starts all right but then suddenly Christian Fierce and Zach Green are at each other’s throats. I’m not in the games area but I hear the commotion and rush over.

”They were playing this game where you’re a dwarf and you build a tunnel to get to the gold, but as you’re going, you try to sabotage the tunnels of everyone else. Zach and Christian are livid that they’re trying to block each other’s tunnels! It was really hard for me not to laugh because this is serious, you know. Forget Pedro Porto’s sacking, which leads to a chain of events that takes our best player and puts him straight into a rival team - ” The audience groaned again. ”And forget me selling Duggers and not replacing him, which as you’ve learned is actually a net positive to your mental health - ” Someone in the crowd went ’Jesus’ louder than he intended. I ignored it. ”If the best partnership in League One is going to fall out over a board game... I mean, you can’t make this shit up.

”So I try to play diplomat, which I’m not really good at when I’m trying not to laugh at how stupid they’re being. I suggest that maybe they should play a different game, one where there’s less possibility for bickering, like making daisy chains together or something like that. They don’t laugh and - this bit is the most mental, I think - they each LEAP to the defence of the game. They love the dwarf mining board game! They won’t hear a bad word against it. What the fuck, guys!

”So then I say, you know what, I’m going to fucking kill Peter Bauer. And that snaps them out of it because as much as they like playing alongside each other, playing with Peter’s something else because he’s just got that X-factor. The first minute he ever rocked up at the Deva, the other players looked up to him, especially the defenders, even though he hadn’t played for ages. He’s different gravy and he’s got that aura and yeah, anyway, they didn’t want me to do anything against him but it was really a close call, you know? Because if they fell out over a German board game I’d have to bin them both off.” I shook my head. ”So in summary, yeah, from a technical point of view, hiring The Vale was absolutely worth it and we’re going back in a few weeks.”

Unexpected bickering aside, the trip to South Wales had delivered, big-time. Swanny, Zach, Christian, Colin, and Dazza all popped. My two strikers were now CA 110, and I had eleven players with a triple-digit CA.

One of those eleven hadn’t come with us to The Vale for the simple reason that he was somewhere even better - Säbener Strasse in Munich. Youngster had absolutely exploded. While most of the Bayern Munich players treated him like a cute little mascot - leading to some admittedly very funny and charming videos - he had been doing his best to keep up in training. At the time of the Carlisle match, his CA had rocketed to 113.

”It just goes to show,” I said, ”the importance of having a top training ground. I have no regrets about all the money we’ve invested in Bumpers Bank so far, and I’m sure you’ve seen that construction has started on Saltney Town’s training compound. Our lads will get to use the facilities there, too. I hope in a couple of years at the 2029 Fans Forum you’ll be here wailing and gnashing your teeth going Max, you haven’t invested enough in Bumpers! We want one of those fucking UFO covers that goes over a pitch and keeps it warm in the winter! You promised us an X-ray machine by now! Stop buying players and get us an MRI scanner!”

J was amused, despite himself. ”No-one’s going to say that, Max.”

”Well, they should.”

He nodded. ”You might be right, but... There’s just something about new signings.”

I tipped my head back and laughed, hard. ”I thought I had made a breakthrough, but no. You’re still utterly addicted.” I sighed and stood up. ”While we’re talking transfers, let’s just see what the latest news is. Or put another way, who have Bradford blown more of Brooke’s inheritance on this week?” I pretended to scroll on my phone while checking the curse’s more reliable feed. ”So many bids for Helge Hagen,” I mumbled.

Boggy said, ”He’s one of the names we have been linked with.”

”Really?” I said, surprised. ”That’s weird, since I’ve never even seen him play.”

”But you’re keeping tabs on him?”

”Yeah, I got a hot tip about him. He’s a striker who doesn’t score a lot of goals, but he has something about him that’s exciting a lot of scouts. Mostly it’s because he’s powerful and fast so people are hoping he’ll be the next Haaland. Four million pounds buys you that lottery ticket. As a director of football you’ve got, I don’t know, a one-in-ten chance you could sell him in two years for forty million. Is it worth a punt? Our rich friends at Malmö are very keen and that’s a bid that makes a lot of sense because they’ve got too much money anyway. Why not have some fun with it? What would confuse me is if he agreed to it. He should probably go to Germany and learn the game. Sort out whatever technical deficiency is stopping him from really dominating.”

J said, ”Is he the reason you want to go to Scandinavia?”

”He’s half of it, or he was.”

”Could we even get someone like that? You’ve been saying the deals are so complicated and we’d use half of our TV money on a new stand. It feels like there wouldn’t be much left.”

”We could just about make it work, I reckon,” I said. ”Four million would be a huge jump in our transfer record but we can’t think like a non-league club if we’re in the second tier.”

Boggy smiled. ”Is that a message to Mike Dean?”

”Ha, no. As long as we’ve got the budget, MD will let me use it.” I brought up the latest deals page again. Helge Hagen wasn’t in my database so I didn’t know what the curse valued him at. When buying him, though, you weren’t buying the player he was but the player you hoped he could be. His current valuation was fairly meaningless, wasn’t it? I wasn’t completely sure so I was planning to keep track of about fifty players who were getting sold this window. It would be fascinating to plot their values over time and hopefully learn how to get the most out of my new tool. ”Some very interesting deals going on. Some clubs overpaying, some getting bargains.” I filtered the list to check on Portsmouth, also known as Pompey. ”I think Pompey will be our main rivals for the rest of the season.” In recent weeks, they had nudged into second place. ”They’ve done some good business today and, of course, they’ve got Matt Rush.”

”Taking him from us,” said J, ”and loaning to a team lower in our league seems calculated to be a slap in the face.”

”Yeah,” I agreed. ”But I hope everyone knows that it’s the guys at the top of Man United doing it, not Rushy. I had a couple of set-tos with him but he’s a good guy and a fantastic player. At least in his case we know he’ll be at the Deva Stadium on the last day of the season to collect his league winner’s medal.”

”How do we know that?” said J.

”Because the last game of the season’s against Portsmouth,” I said. ”It’s not a bad position for Rushy to be in, is it? He’ll either win it because he played enough games for us, or we’ll choke and Pompey will pip us to the post.”

”Max,” said Boggy, leaning forward like he was feeling sick. ”Don’t put those thoughts into my head. Please.”

”I just think it’s really funny. Either way he’ll be in the celebration photos. Don’t boo him, guys!” There was a deep, resonant gong and when I turned, the screen had come on. It was simply displaying a countdown clock. ”Only forty minutes to go! That’s... not enough time to sign a player. Hang on.” I pretended to dial. ”Hello? Is that Messi? Messi, hello?” I covered the phone and spoke to the crowd. ”Bad reception. Typical.”

”Max,” complained J.

”Give me Messi, yes or no?” I waited with one finger held up as though I was listening closely.

J sighed. ”Can you sit back down? We might as well ask about the self-cleaning toilets and all that.”

Boggy said, ”Max, in what way has it been harder to do transfers this time around? Is it terms and conditions? Structured payments? Disagreements over amortisation? Has it really become so much more complex than we offer a fee and the other club accepts it?”

”Oh, there are things that are trickier,” I said, slipping my phone into a pocket, but not sitting. I had done far too much of that in the last couple of weeks. ”Clubs want us to pay bonuses if we get promoted, for example, or win a cup. I’m like, hell no. We’ll do that whether we buy your player or not. Why do you get a bonus, you cheeky sods? When the player himself asks for that it’s a little more understandable but we have a very simple wage structure here. We don’t pay appearance or goal bonuses. We don’t have anyone who gets a guaranteed step-up in wages when we get promoted, which is incredibly unusual. When I talk to players, they don’t get it because it’s not what they’re used to. I’m like, this is what we can afford now so this is what we pay now. Don’t ask me to predict what my budget for next season is going to be because it could be anything. This is good wages, take it or leave it.”

”And everyone says leave it,” said J, who seemed to have hit some kind of mental rock bottom. 7 points clear, in a cup semi-final, but he had drenched himself in gloom.

”Not everyone,” I said, and in the split second after J’s head jerked up, appalling hope in his eyes, a siren rang out. The screen behind us and some of the ceiling lights flashed with a strobe effect, accompanied by giant on-screen text: IT’S HAPPENING! When the alarm and the flashing stopped, there was dead quiet. ”I can’t believe it,” I whispered. ”But who...?” There was a knock on the door. J let out some kind of whelping noise. I cried out, ”Enter, friend!”

The door creaked open and in walked six teenage boys in full Chester FC kit. Almost no-one in the hall knew who the boys were but there was a crackle of applause anyway.

The lads walked to the front of the stage, walked along, looped back, and when they got to the centre for the second time, they turned and double-thumbed their names. I called them out for the people who couldn’t make out the writing.

”Future! Big Sam! Adam B. Roberts! Ben Wood! Max Murray! Marco Burton! Yes! Yes, mate, yes!” I said, clapping until everyone joined in. The lads turned to face the room. They were beaming, flushed from the excitement of appearing in front of eight hundred hardcore Chester fans. ”Behold next season’s FA Youth Cup team!” More applause. ”For those of you who aren’t familiar with our youth setup, these boys are from the under sixteens. We’re moving them to the higher age group where they will join past Youth Cup winners Chas Fungrieve, Nine, and Roddy Jones. Let me tell you, this lot are even more talented than the bunch who won it last time. Future’s a ball-playing centre back who can boss from DM. Big Sam’s a goalie. Adam’s an attacking midfielder. Ben is a central midfielder. Max - need to do something about that name - is a left back. Marco’s a striker.”

Boggy, delighted by the youthful promise on display, said, ”We know Adam is the younger brother of Wibbers, but am I right in saying the others are Chester lads?”

”Yes,” I said. I started to pace around. ”When I came here I promised I would scour your schools, your playing fields, your Sunday Leagues, and here we go. Talent for days.”

Future was PA 99. Big Sam was ’only’ 61 but he would be the team’s backup keeper, not the starter. If he started the cup final there was every chance he would be better than Banksy had been the day we won the cup. Adam was PA 92. Ben was a whopping 131. MaxTwo was, appropriately enough, PA 122. Marco was 88, five points higher than Chas Fungrieve, though the latter was miles ahead in terms of CA and would only be second to Roddy Jones.

I smiled and nodded. ”Chester FC’s boys team with a core of Chester lads, as is right and good. If you will indulge me for a couple of minutes, I’d like to give them the new signing experience.” MD and Secretary Joe appeared along with a make-up artist and a photographer.

J was laughing. ”Max, this is amazing. This is great. I don’t know how you can sit there and tease us and act so heartless and then give us this.”

”Excuse me a second,” I said, moving to the desk where one by one the boys pretended to sign a contract in front of the wall of sponsors. From there, they got up and grabbed a scarf or a hat or something from the props box. The make up artist fussed over their cheeks with one of those large blusher things, then the lads posed for photos, some of which got beamed to the big screen.

The arrival of the boys had given the room a burst of energy and just as that was dying down, the klaxon sounded again. IT’S HAPPENING! cried the large screen.

”Yesyesyesyesyerrrrrsssssss,” said J, literally vibrating with happiness.

There was such a chatter around the hall that no-one heard the knock on the door. It opened and another teenager emerged. He looked around, shrunk for a second, steeled himself, and came forward. He was wearing normal civilian clothes. I handed him a microphone. ”Who are you?” I wondered.

”Archer Phillips,” he said.

”How old are you?”

”17.”

”Are you young enough to play in next year’s Youth Cup?”

Despite being nervous, he smiled a little. ”Yes, sir.”

”Thing is, mate, I’ve got this bunch over here but they’re a bit young. I need someone who’s gonna look after them on the pitch, you know? I don’t suppose you know any badarse centre backs?”

His smile widened. ”That would be me, sir.”

”Wait,” I said, frowning. ”Did I spot you while you were playing in a tournament in Yorkshire somewhere? Did I think, whoa, that guy’s my next captain? Did I negotiate a fee with your club?”

”Yes, sir.”

”And you’re 17 so I can offer you a pro contract. Hey, hang on. Is that it?” MD was holding it up. ”So... I suppose technically you’ll be the first signing of this transfer window. If you, ah, still want to.”

”Where do I sign?” he said, which nearly brought the house down.

Archer was only PA 76 but he was Influence 20, which experience told me was super helpful for the youth teams. He would never play in the Premier League but he could lift the FA Youth Cup and have a great career in, for example, Gibraltar. I had offered the little club for whom he played a very generous £25,000 and they had bitten my hand off.

MD and I posed behind Archer as he signed his first ever professional contract, for the usual starter wage of £500 a week. Secretary Joe rushed to the fax machine to pretend to send the details to the Football Association, but we had done all the paperwork beforehand.

Contract signed, Archer went behind the curtain thing and emerged a few seconds later wearing a Chester kit - and a captain’s armband. He posed for photos while the Chester fans cheered and chanted.

A quick blast from the transfer klaxon made everyone laugh. Two boys emerged and I went through the process again.

These were Monty Holmes, a 16-year-old AM RC with PA 80 (£33,000 - a rip-off) and Aston Davidson, a 17-year-old goalie whose PA of 113 had made me giddy when I’d spotted him on the subs bench for a National League team. He was only on the bench because of the bug that had been messing up football teams. Sheer dumb luck and I loved it! His club had refused to sell though and I’d had to blow through my self-imposed limit of 50,000 per youth player. Aston cost me £55,000 but who cared? He was amazing. (In retrospect, breaking the ’seal’ led to me going a little bit bonkers.)

When that scene was fading, the alarms rang out again and THREE more kids emerged. They had been on the books of bigger clubs and came with bigger fees.

Tommy Thompson, 17 years old, another AM RC, Scottish, PA 123... £70,000.

Lennox Francis, 17 years old, DRC, PA 130... £80,000.

Finally, Hamish Andrews, another Scot, 16 years old, a central midfielder who I just had to have. Why? PA 139, bro. His club had fleeced me for £112,000 but I just couldn’t feel bad about it. What value could you place on FA Youth Cup glory?

There was one simple answer to that. Zero. The prize money for winning that tournament was precisely zero.

At least we didn’t have to pay Hamish any wages yet. We weren’t allowed until he turned 17. Was it a risk, investing six figures in a player we couldn’t even tie down to a contract? You bet it was. Anyone could swoop in and take him from us. MD had kittens when he heard how much I wanted to pay.

”What a fucking team this is going to be,” I told the hall. ”Sorry for swearing. Won’t do it again. But fuck me, these lads are going to fuck things all the way up. For real.”

”Chester! Chester!” cried the fans, as everyone who had been on stage - plus Nine, Roddy, and Chas Fungrieve - squashed into each other for the first of their team photos.

I pointed. ”That’s not the end,” I said. ”There’s a couple more to come, but, ah, we need a bit more money. I’ll try again in the summer.”

MD’s smile vanished. He mouthed, ”You’re joking, right?”

I shook my head and mouthed back, ”Soz not soz.” Then I started to walk up and down, gathering speed. ”This mob will get to know each other from now until the summer, then they’ll compete in a few tournaments. They’ll get to train with the first team and you know the drill by now, we’ll give them minutes in games. Real games with real consequences.” I stopped pacing and glared at our supporters. ”And you’ll back them. You’ll back the CRAP out of them.”

”Chester! Chester!”

I gestured that Hamish should come over, and I put my arm around him. ”Hamish, these guys are gonna support you. They’re gonna cut you some slack at first while you’re learning the game but in a couple of years they’ll be on your case big time if you’re playing shit. You think you can handle that?”

”Ah kin ’andle it,” he said, in an accent so Scottish it came with its own sporran.

”Then when I sell you to Wrexham for a million quid, they’re gonna be upset. Think you can handle that?”

”Aye,” he said. The guy had Determination 20, Decision 20. Did I mention I had to have him? ”Only thing is, I dinnae come here to play fer Wrexham. I came here to play fer Max Best.”

The crowd went fucking nuts. Half chanted Chester! while the rest went hard on Max! Max! Max!

I nodded at Hamish - little fucker had absolutely knocked that out of the park - and gave him a little push towards his mates. It was gonna be fascinating watching that group evolve. Archer was the natural captain but Hamish was going to be just as much of a leader. How would Hamish cope with Roddy Jones stealing all the limelight? Just as the lads started to come together I would throw more spanners in the works. Years of grinding had helped me build a database of players talented enough to get noticed by clubs while still being undervalued, and I was about to get drenched in TV money. The future was so bright.

Look what I’d done, I thought to myself, with £375,000.

I didn’t ruin the moment by wondering if there might have been a better use for that cash and the £2,000 I had just added to our weekly wage bill.

MD couldn’t help himself. He came across and mumbled, ”Max, are you really sure about this?”

I smiled and whispered back. ”You do realise that next season, those kids will be one of the five best youth teams in the country?”

MD’s face softened. ”I like when you say things like that. Say more things like that.”

I patted him on the back and took a breath. The audience was buzzing now - literally. I held my hands up to get some quiet. I glanced at the countdown clock. ”So, J, time’s almost up. Transfer window’s about to slam shut. I know it’s not exactly what you wanted today, but you know I have a mania for developing young players and, well - ”

The klaxon went off again, to huge cheers.

J got up and strode up and down the stage, pretending to punch himself in the face. ”Argh! Max, how long ago did you have these deals lined up? Please tell me you didn’t do these deals, like, a week ago and you’ve been keeping them secret so you could properly torture us.”

”I prefer,” I said, grandly, ”to call it a lesson in resilience. Is there someone at the door? Come in!”

The lights dimmed and spotlights danced around the hall, coming to rest on the large double doors at the back where I had once made a dramatic entrance to prevent the Gerry Star takeover from happening.

The doors opened and a man wearing a boxer’s outfit, flanked by some dancers I’d hired to make this moment more epic, came along the aisle in the middle of the hall while Tubthumping by Chumbawamba blasted from the sound system.

When he finally arrived on stage, the mystery man kept his hood covering his face and threw some shadow punches while the dancers frolicked and cavorted.

”If this is Henri Lyons helping you do a prank,” yelled J, above the din, ”I’m going to lose my actual mind!”

”It’s a new signing,” I said. ”You’re gonna love him.”

The dude had only cost half a million quid, and he had taken a pay cut to join us. He was getting £5,000 a week, the same as me, which was mental, but in terms of CA he would be our best player. 119, well clear of Youngster. That was what sold me on him before I’d fully absorbed the rest of his profile - he had been kicked out of his team but had kept his levels higher than I would have thought possible.

I had signed an amazingly professional Duggers replacement, plus six talented kids with great characters who would fit together as a team, and still had half a million in the bank. Ten percent of what we needed to build a new stand. I was fucking amazing at this.

The delicately beautiful sounds of Tubthumping faded away. ”Ladies and gentlemen...” I said, speaking slowly to draw out the agony. ”Please welcome to Chester Football Club... a player... who can play...”

”Argh!” screamed J. ”The window’s gonna slam shut in under two minutes!”

I grinned and stood beside our new player. ”Introducing a player with a far better sense of timing than our friend J... We sent a guy to the Championship and replaced him with a guy from the Championship. He came to South Wales to watch us train and liked what he saw. And he didn’t have to travel far because until today he was a Cardiff City player. Please give a colossal welcome to a brilliant, brilliant midfielder... Joel Reeeeeeid!”

Joel shrugged off the boxer’s gown, revealing that he was wearing a Chester top. A quick double-thumb showed the audience that he had taken Duggers’ squad number, 21. We eased him across to the table where he pretended to sign his contract, which Secretary Joe pretended to fax to the FA.

We all stayed still for ten seconds as the countdown ticked down... and with seven seconds on the display, there was a ’bing!’ noise and a large green tick appeared on the screen.

”Phew, that was close,” I said, as I wiped my brow.

”I actually hate you,” said J, to much merriment.

”Sure you do,” I said, pausing to check the final update of the transfer feed. No new deals could go through for the rest of the season… and Helge Hagen hadn’t moved. Fascinating. Did that mean we had a chance? That was something for Future Max to think about. ”Joel has agreed to give you the honour of conducting his first ever interview as a Chester player, right here, right now, if you’re up for it.”

”Yes,” said J, sitting up.

”Top top top,” I said. ”Er, there’s something we have to do first, though... What was it?”

Fast-paced music played, activating the dancers. They pranced around until one of them went off the stage and came back holding a large trophy. The music faded out, replaced by triumphant trumpet parps as the dancer handed me the trophy.

I raised it aloft to some cheers and whoops.

”What’s that?” said J.

”This is my trophy,” I explained. J looked blank. ”Mate,” I said, patiently. ”Don’t you realise what just happened? Three point one seven million in incoming transfer fees. Eight hundred and seventy-five thousand spent, and we’ve got more talent in the club at the end than at the beginning. There’s only one conclusion.” I kissed the trophy. ”I won the transfer window.”