Soccer Supremo - A Sports Progression Fantasy

11.

Sunday, April 16

WSL2 Match 21 of 22: Birmingham City versus Chester - The Big One

”Why are we waiting?” said Jay Cope, junior detective.

”It’s called a stake-out,” I said, in the deep, gruff voice of a hard-boiled veteran. ”Got to be patient. Take it slow coz sometimes life comes at you fast.”

Chester Women’s co-manager wasn’t in the mood to do role plays. ”We got our tactics wrong! Come on, let’s change it up.”

We were playing the league leaders and it wasn’t going well. To wrap up the title, Birmingham only needed a draw, and they had concocted a plan to make sure they got that draw. The plan was an ultra-defensive formation combined with man-to-man marking - a fresh, modern, high-energy reimagining of ’park the bus’ - and Jay wanted to react to it. ”Listen up, young ’un,” I said, still in my gruff voice. I was about to impart some wisdom, but annoyance burst out of Jay, which caused me to break character. I laughed and put my arm around him. ”It’s all good. Seriously. We’re not changing anything. Sometimes the only way to win is not to play.”

”I’m frustrated and the players are getting frustrated.”

”That’s good. We’ll use that.”

He let out another grunt. ”What does that mean?”

I rubbed my mouth to disguise a smile. Not from Jay, but from Birmingham’s dugout. We had come to England’s third city with one plan but that plan had been thrown into a police van and taken to juvey. My new plan required the home team to think that their plan was working. That way of thinking was something I was very comfortable with, but Jay wasn’t the type to resist making a tactical tweak that would help how we were playing. I eased him to the furthest side of our technical area, still with one arm around him, now covering my mouth with the other. ”Imagine we’re detectives looking to bust a drugs gang.”

”Max, not now, fuck sake.”

”Changing our tactics now is the equivalent of rounding up some low-level dealers. We get a few arrests on our CV but new dealers emerge the very next day. Nothing’s changed. We’ve achieved nothing, won nothing. What I want to do is wait, be patient, and gather enough evidence to take down the whole operation. Do you get me?”

”No. Yes. No. A little bit. You’re saying...” He scanned the pitch. ”You’re saying you’re watching how they play, learning, and at half time you’ll fix the whole thing, not just make a couple of tweaks.”

I clapped him on the back. ”Kind of. More or less that, yes. Well...”

”What?”

”I’ve already seen enough. I know how to fix it. This one’s a question of when. Ask yourself this question: If you know exactly how your opponent is going to play in the second half and you know exactly what to do about it, do you want to show your hand in the first half?”

He shook his head. ”No. They might adapt in the break. You want to wait until half time because they won’t have anything to react to. They’ll keep doing what they’re doing.”

I patted his back again. ”That’s it.” I let him go.

”What if they’ve already thought of our next move and they’ve already got a response?”

”Then we go to plans C, D, and E and if they can keep up with us, they deserve to win the league. Jay - they won’t have a plan B, let alone a plan D or E. This is their shot. Think how many hours in training they must have worked on this. There’s nothing else.”

He put his hands behind his head and stared up at the morning sky. ”This is a high-wire act, Max. You know that, right?”

”I know that.”

”Why aren’t you more stressed?”

”This ain’t my first rodeo, kiddo.” I smiled. ”Translation: I’ve done this before.”

He smiled back, but the smile died as his worries resurfaced. ”We’ll only have 45 minutes to break through. If we change now, we’ve got over an hour.”

I shrugged. ”If you believe in what you’re doing, do it right. Surveil your target, gather evidence, build your case. It’s always like this in cop shows. The detectives work for a year tracking the masterminds, then their bosses need a few quick wins so they say arrest who you can. The masterminds get away with it. A years’ work down the drain.” I shook my head. ”Nah, dog, nah. We gonna come correct.”

Jay sighed. ”Fine. Fine. But can you at least stop doing the voices?”

I jerked my head. ”Stand over there and look worried.”

”That’ll be easy.”

I stayed where I was for a while, thinking about Birmingham’s surprise tactic. They were lined up in a 5-4-1 but the striker was a midfielder whose job was to stick to Victoria Rose. That was smart, because so much of our build-up play flowed through VR, but it meant the home team had almost no attacking threat, which meant we could put our defenders on the halfway line. Almost the entire game had been played in Brum’s half. (Birmingham is known as Brum, and its residents are Brummies.)

The biggest twist was that Brum were doing man-to-man across almost the whole pitch. When Meghan got the ball in the right centre back slot and looked forward, Sarah Greene was marked, Kisi was marked, and at the top of the pitch Kit Hodges was being double-marked. We tried to play our natural game but our natural game relied on space - Brum weren’t giving us any.

”Jay,” I said. He came closer. ”Do you like how Brum are playing?”

”No, it’s a nightmare.”

”It’s a nightmare for us but if we were in the other dugout, what would you be thinking?”

”I’d be thinking I was about to win the league.” He looked towards the other bench, and sure enough, they looked quietly confident. ”I think it’s a clever design but I don’t really like it. They’re creating loads of transitions but they’re not trying to hit us on the break.”

I nodded. Brum’s Condition scores were declining faster than ours. ”It’s a lot of energy to spend only on defending, isn’t it?”

”I suppose if they tried to score from transitions, we’d counter-attack them and we’re brilliant at that. If you want a draw, why try to score? Okay, from some points of view, what they are doing is not terrible. It’s pretty good, to be fair, against a team that isn’t allowed to react to it. But if we were doing it, I’d want an outlet. Like when the men are playing defensive you’ve usually got Pascal, Wibbers, Cheb, and when the break is on you go full at it. If nothing else, that danger stops the oppo going flat-out. Max, can I just nudge VR into DM?”

”Nah, soz.”

Jay’s anxiety was understandable. We were in St Andrew’s, Birmingham City’s brilliant home stadium. The capacity was almost 30,000 and it was about 10% full, which was a decent crowd for the women’s team. Most were Brummies hoping to see their team wrap up the title, but there were hundreds of Chester fans and the families of our women’s team.

This was the big one.

We had to win today to have a chance of winning the league next Sunday. We were on the edge of ascending to the WSL, but it was all too easy to imagine a scenario where we fell short and had to spend another season in the second tier. I knew that we would absolutely smash the league next time, but no-one else could be so sure, which was why there was so much tension. Would we be stuck here forever? Was this our ceiling? Had we missed our shot? Even Jay, Sarah Greene, and Meredith Ann, normally cool customers, were feeling it.

I was zen.

The truth was that we needed more than a win today to win the league. We needed to win and we needed Brum to trip up in their final match. What was the psychology of being so close to your goal? Their players had started today with one hand on the trophy and every minute that passed, they were sixty seconds closer to grabbing it in both hands. The trophy was here in the stadium - the players had all seen it! Victory was so close they could almost taste it.

That’s why I didn’t even want an early goal. I wanted the oppo to dream. In breaks, I wanted them to look towards the trophy and imagine the party, to think about their medals, to mentally rehearse what they would say in their victory speeches and what they would write on their socials.

That way, our last-minute winner would be all the more sickening for them. That way, they’d trip and fall in the final match of the season, handing us the title.

Yeah, in this situation, if you conceded an early goal you would start to look ahead to the final match and say, okay today’s a bad day at the office but we’ll win it then. You could shrug off an early goal. Late goals were murder.

Not that I could set up my team to score in the 88th minute - attempting to do that would be moronic. But going in at half-time with the score at nil-nil suited me tactically and psychologically.

Livia Stranton got off the bench and sidled up beside me. She was getting good overtime for working on Sunday, and it also got her out of the house while her boyfriend, Jackie Reaper, was sulking. Jackie’s Tranmere had lost because of a crappy referee, and Tony Herbert, their best player, would miss their Easter Monday match. Having your best player miss one-third of what remained of a relegation battle was no, no bueno, but Livia wasn’t thinking about Tranmere at that moment. She eyed me and said, ”When you offered me an escape from the bleakness of lower-league football, this isn’t what I had in mind.”

”We’re playing well, don’t you think?”

”No. We’re hot garbage. And it looks to me like Jay wants to change things and you won’t let him.”

I smiled. Livia was incredibly perceptive, sometimes. ”Jay knows what to fix, and that’s his problem.”

She raised a hand towards the pitch. ”What’s going on? Why is it so stodgy and unwatchable?”

”Brum are defending man-to-man and they’ve lined up specifically to negate our structure. It’s one of the problems of having a settled formation - teams know how to set up. I bet Brum’s coaches have been preparing for this since our first match in December. A draw today and they win the league, so they’re playing for a draw.”

”What we’re doing isn’t working.”

”No, our ladies are nervous and getting frustrated. They’re doom looping.”

”So why don’t you change it? Birmingham are winning.”

I covered my mouth in case a camera was zoomed in on me. ”There’s a bit in The Wire where a guy’s watching sports. This woman says, who’s winning? He says, no-one wins. One side just loses more slowly. Good that, isn’t it? Lovely and bleak. Feel free to use it on Jackie.”

***

As usual, we men waited outside the dressing room to give the players some privacy. ”Jay, I’ll take half-time today. Been a while since I gave a rousing speech.”

One of Jay’s best qualities was that he didn’t take things personally. ”You’ve got more experience of this end-of-season, high-stakes squeaky bum time.”

”True, but the main thing is that my bum isn’t squeaking. I’m not worried in the slightest.” We went inside. The mood in the dressing room was one of frustration. Anger was bubbling up under the surface. Why couldn’t we score against these pricks? Why wasn’t Tommy Tactics and his megabrain minion changing things up? I said, ”Take a minute to cool off, ladies.”

”Cool off?” said Sarah. ”We don’t need that. We need to change the plan!”

”The plan is going swimmingly, Sarah. The plan is mint.”

”How can it be? We didn’t know they were gonna sit so deep, didn’t know they were gonna do man-to-man all over the fucking pitch!”

I smiled. ”We didn’t know, that’s true. You are experiencing what it’s like to play for a normal football team, one that has to wait until half time to undo all the ways it fucked up its tactics. Welcome to the real world!”

”What?”

”Sarah,” I said, still smiling, radiating calm and warmth. ”Take a minute to cool off, to slow down. When I saw their plan, I changed my plan, and the new plan was to let them do their plan. Until half time, which is now. Okay? I got this. We got this. This is an old-school Max Best masterclass and you’ve got front-row seats.”

She eyed me. ”Are you subbing me off?”

I laughed. ”Jesus Christ, can’t a man get poetic?”

I stretched before ambling around, looking at the dressing room. It was an old stadium but the interior had been modernised several times. The club’s new owners were as ambitious as they came and wanted to build a colossal new stadium. It seemed a shame to bin this one off, but they wanted to double the capacity and turn Brum into one of the top teams in Europe. They were pretty good about financing the women’s team, too, so fair play.

Birmingham City’s average CA was 92. They were almost as good as the lowest-placed team in the top tier, which showed that the club had some serious scouting and coaching talent on its books. While there were a few other WSL2 teams who were decent, such as Bristol City (CA 87) and Sunderland (84), Brum’s defensive solidity and tactical flexibility meant that in most seasons, they would have walked the league.

This season they had come up against the mighty Chester, but the fixture computer hadn’t been kind to us. We had played Bristol and Sunderland first up, when we were still getting up to speed, and we had only earned draws in both fixtures. We were four points behind Brum after only two matches! Then when we played, they defended for their lives, got insanely lucky, got a draw, and kept the destiny of the title out of our hands.

I glanced at the tactics board, which showed that we were doing our usual 3-4-2-1 with the world’s most expensive goalkeeper between the sticks. Haley was CA 136 and as England’s most recent international debutant, her Morale was through the roof. Throughout the half she had looked enormous in our penalty area, and had dealt with the home team’s few attacks with ease. Birmingham knew they weren’t going to score today, which is why they were defending like the title depended on it. ”Are you reyt?” I asked, in her Oldham dialect.

”Peachy,” she said.

The defence was Femi (103), Victoria Rose (also 103), and Meghan (106).

Femi had added 16 points of CA through the season, which was one of the lowest in the squad, but she was 29 years old and she had grown as a leader through the season, adding another point of Influence. I hadn’t liked her reaction to the Charlotte versus Angel situation, but that was almost totally behind us these days. She was staring straight ahead, mentally reviewing her performance. No need for me to intervene.

Victoria Rose had added 25 points, which was huge, but Birmingham knew how important she was to our strategy and had assigned a hard-tackling midfielder to track her everywhere she went. A good plan that had worked well.

Meghan had added 17 points, which was surprisingly low considering her talent, but it was easy to think of explanations. Family illnesses, health scares, other off-field distractions. Or perhaps it was simply that she was a young player who was the best in the squad in her position. Like her boyfriend, Youngster, she lacked a true role model. It could be worth bringing in a couple of grizzled old veterans just to demonstrate professionalism and the tricks of that particular trade. I crouched in front of her. ”Megs, you’re doing great, no worries, but you’re dawdling on the ball sometimes. I know you’re waiting for a nice pass but we need to pick up the pace. Brum are so focused on marking us they’re leaving loads of space. Play the ball into the space, sometimes; it’ll be like exploding a grenade in there, you’ll see.”

She nodded. ”I just don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing, really.”

I tapped her on the knee. ”It’s coming. Just trust the midfield more.”

Our midfield was beautiful to watch when we had the ball. Dani was CA 109, Charlotte was capped at 101, Sarah Greene was grinding to keep ahead of the pack - she was CA 110 - while Kisi had redoubled her efforts in recent weeks, and had slapped herself into triple digits. CA 100 and a noticeably-higher determination to do her defensive duties. The little break from the team - and maybe our day in London - had done her the world of good.

The midfield was supported by the two CAMs, Saffron Walden and Meredith Ann.

Saffron was CA 82, which made her the weak link in the team, as her first-half performance demonstrated. Some of our most promising moves had come to an end when the ball reached her, but the curse rated her performance as 6 out of 10 - decent - and when she did get a little bit of time and space, she created a lot of threat. She was only 17 and all the minutes she was getting, all the extra coaching, all the Secret Sandra bonuses, would pay off big time in the coming seasons. ”Hey,” I said, crouching again. ”You’re doing all right. Keep doing that and it’ll be all right.”

She looked down at the floor. ”I’m playing crap. I can’t do anything and...”

”What?”

”Someone said there was an England scout come to watch me.”

I beamed. ”For the under 17s?”

”Under 19s.”

”Holy shit, that’s top! Awesome!” If England Women were finally looking at my players, that would remove one obstacle to convincing players to join the club. It wouldn’t help with the men’s team, not in the short term, but a win’s a win. ”I wonder if you’re the best English 17-year-old,” I said. I hadn’t given the question a lot of thought but her improvement since joining Chester must have whizzed her past quite a lot of rivals. ”But listen, you didn’t get on their radar by doing crazy shit. You did it by fitting into our tactical machine. Do you know what I mean? Play today how you played last week and the week before. You don’t need to do anything else. Good?”

She smiled. ”Good.”

Meredith Ann was CA 99, which meant she had overtaken Angel. If she kept going at her current rates, she would overtake everyone in the club, then everyone in the country, and then everyone in the world. She’d added a stonking 31 points since pre-season.

She eyed me, wondering what I would say to her, but that would come when I gave the main speech.

Our striker was Kit Hodges, CA 110. She hadn’t added a ton of CA this season, only 15 points, but it was possible there was a soft cap in the second tier around the CA 110 mark. For that reason and the fact that she was the league’s top scorer by far, I didn’t worry about Kit being unprofessional or anything like that. Haley had improved from a far higher level, but she had trained with England. Kit had played a few high-level cup matches but didn’t have any other boosts. The eye test told me she would race to her cap of 123 once we hit the top tier.

I gave her a friendly nod. She replied with a thumbs up. I replied with a nod and two thumbs up. She admitted defeat with a smile.

All in all, we had an average CA of 105.4, thirteen points higher than Birmingham. No wonder they were approaching the match so cautiously.

I moved towards the tactics board, while checking my screens for any changes the oppo might have made. As I expected, they were delighted with their first half display and wanted to keep things as they were.

When I got to the board, the room got quieter.

Slowly, I slid the magnets off, leaving it clear. I turned to a clean page on the flipchart, and checked our markers had ink. This was going to be one of the most important speeches of my career. Get it right and we could obliterate Birmingham in the second half, send them into a tailspin, and win yet another league title as we ascended to heaven. Mess up and my players would get stuck at the league’s soft cap, the documentary would get canceled, and as the director of football I would be forced to give myself the sack.

Jay had called this a high-wire act and there was no safety net. I tried to make myself feel the tension but I just couldn’t - I was so insufferably confident I wanted to give myself a slap. The thought made me laugh, which had the effect of increasing the squad’s average Morale.

I flicked a marker upwards and caught it.

I was the fucking king of catching marker pens.

As the bubble of confidence that surrounded me expanded, the tension in the air melted away. Was the group’s anxiety flying off to another room or was it being transformed into something else? I pointed to Queenie, our CA 84 backup goalie. ”When you look at me, do you think vent or air purifier?”

Queenie was only 20 but had been around for years. ”I plead the fifth amendment,” she said, which got a good laugh.

”Not sure that’s a thing these days,” I said. I rubbed my hands together fast. ”Oooooooh-kay.” I looked around, making eye contact with everyone, letting my energy levels increase slightly. I didn’t want to explode, but I wanted to give some of my confidence to the players. ”My favourite TV show is called The Wire. It’s about various teams; teams which are broadly competent if ultimately unsuccessful.”

The puzzled silence that followed was broken by precisely one laugh, from Livia. ”You’re in a room full of 20-year-old women. Pick something they might have seen. The Wire? Come on, Max. It’s good but that show was ancient history before these girls were born.”

I bristled. ”They haven’t seen anything! What am I supposed to do? Oh, hey, my favourite content is AI slop on TikTok and a reality star who does naked handstands!”

Kit Hodges gasped. ”I follow him on Insta!”

I pointed. ”See? It’s impossible.” I made a scoffing noise.

Kisi, Meghan, Charlotte, Sarah, and Angel smiled a smile of recognition. I was butchering this on purpose, like I did in the old days. Like when I was feeling my most cocky. Kisi said, ”Worst speech ever!”

”I guess I am out of practice,” I grinned, toothily, in what I thought was quite a dashing way.

The good vibes spread, even if some people didn’t know where they were coming from. Saffron’s Morale rose one level, Victoria Rose sat up straighter, and Meredith stopped fiddling with her boots.

”If you don’t know The Wire,” I said, getting very slightly more serious, ”it’s about Baltimore. The focus is on drugs gangs and the police. It’s hard to watch sometimes, but ultimately it’s rewarding. That first half we just played? Well, we nailed the hard-to-watch part. Maybe we’ll win some Emmys. Heh. Do we make it rewarding in the end? That’s up to you.”

I shoved my hands in my hoodie’s pockets and strolled around the space. There was no hurry. I idly registered that our Condition scores were still higher than Birmingham’s across the board, which was helped by a perk called April Fuel’s. My players had all received a 1% Condition bonus already, and would get another one if there was a pause during the second half. Brum’s timewasting tactics would work in our favour! I loved that kind of perk.

”I was thinking about that show a lot recently because everyone keeps saying this league will go down to the wire, that league will go to the wire. I must have said it ten times myself yesterday. But why was that show so popular? Why has it endured? I think it’s because it’s a bit like football. Yeah, there’s a lot of drudgery and weird slang, everyone’s obsessed with corners, and the British play a disproportionate role.” Livia’s laughter was pathetically gratifying, but me being me I was hungry for even more approval. ”Sorry, has no-one except Liv seen it? No? Not even one episode? Okay, ladies, just take it for granted that everything I’m saying is pure gold. The corners line was genius. Just saying.”

I walked around some more.

”I was talking about why the show got such a following. One thing is, for all that it demands a lot of the viewer, there are so many moments of amazing characterisation. When you watch those special moments, those high moments, you’re transported. It’s pure escapism. Those moments are like being in a crowd and seeing a goal.

”The moment that got me on the edge of my seat, eyes locked to the screen, the one that sucked me right into an apartment in Baltimore, was a bit where two detectives go to revisit a cold case. I don’t remember everything about it - I think they worked out that the victim was related to what they were working on and if they could find the bullet from the old shooting, they could solve the current case. Something like that. What makes the scene awesome is that when they get into the apartment, they don’t say anything except the word fuck.” I paused. ”Or shit? Liv, is it fuck or shit?”

Charlotte said, ”That’s what you’ve got on your Tinder profile. Is it fuck or shit?”

There was almost wall-to-wall cry-laughter. Angel turned demon red. I let it go on for about eight seconds, then raised my hands.

”That was really funny and we can relive it on the way home, but I am actually going somewhere with this, so can you just...?” I mimed zipping my mouth.

There were a few final stray giggles, but the ladies were listening again.

”Two cops go into this apartment where a woman was shot. They have the photos and the, erm,” I clicked my fingers asking for help. ”Report about someone who’s died.”

”Obituary,” said Kisi.

”Coroner’s report,” said Tanwen.

”Yes!” I said, going to give the Welsh defender a high five. I paced around faster. ”One guy looks at the photos, the other at the report. They work their half of the case, but all they say is fuck. A puzzled fuck. A surprised fuck. When they make a breakthrough, they say motherfucker! It’s amazing. Then their work brings them together, and they piece the whole murder together, and they find the slug together and they find the shell together. It’s a masterclass in competence and overlapping skills... and teamwork.”

I punched the air.

”There it is! There’s the magic fucking word! What’s glorious about it is that neither of them says, oh, look at the photo! There’s milk. Maybe she was getting milk from the fridge! But why was the fridge door closed? They communicate it all with a couple of well-timed swear words.”

I paused and raised a finger.

”That’s what we’re gonna do in the second half. We’re gonna take teamwork to a whole new level and we’re gonna crack the case.”

I strode to the tactics board.

”You’ve been playing great. The effort’s top, the work rate’s top. You have been frustrated but you haven’t played frustrated. You’re not getting involved in their shithousery and because of that, the ref is focusing on their timewasting and the way they’re constantly pretending to be injured. I have zero complaints, but now we have to up our game. Birmingham are going man-to-man and that’s interesting but, with the maximum possible respect to our opponents, they are shit at it. It’s working because of the surprise element, but also because I told Jay not to change things up. I know you found it frustrating because the managers are part of the team, too, and it felt like we weren’t contributing, but sometimes we need to get galaxy brain, and this is one such example.”

I rubbed my nose hard until I had the thought that it made me look like I was stuffed with cocaine.

”Birmingham are good and demand respect, and the respect I’ve shown them is waiting until now to fix this. If I fixed it earlier, they would have had the whole of half-time to make tweaks. What we do now is we go out there, blow them away, and there’s no way for their coaches to do a fucking thing about it. Okay? Sarah, does that make sense to you?”

She licked her lips, but nodded. ”Yeah.”

I held a finger up again, and stared into the distance. ”This marking scheme they’ve cooked up is logical, but they’ve not factored one thing into their equations. Me as a player? I am an absolute genius at dealing with this. I came late into the sport, as you know, and I didn’t have tons of experience. I had to learn where to stand at throws, how to be part of an offside trap, all the basics. Think of some incredibly rudimentary thing that every footballer knows. I didn’t know that. I got the shit kicked out of me while I was trying to learn. But dealing with man-to-man marking?” I grinned. ”I was a fucking natural. You know I don’t like to blow my own trumpet, I like to let other people do that for me - that’s what it really says on my Tinder profile, by the way - but it is possible I’m the best in the world at this.

”And guess what, ladies? The whole time you’ve been at Chester, I’ve been teaching you. Some of it’s hidden in the duels training, some of it’s hidden in plain sight when we do Relationism. But in the end, it all boils down to this.”

I slid two blue magnets and two yellow ones onto the board.

”Cops and robbers. Wherever the robbers go, the cops follow.” I moved a yellow magnet, and a blue to match. ”If you wanna shake off the po-po, the five-oh, you can’t go slow-mo.” I cackled at that line. ”One of you is going down, but your homey can ex-cape.”

Jay said, ”The voice is gonna get you in trouble.”

I smiled, but continued in my normal voice. ”One of you has to draw the two cops together so your mate can run off. Do you get me? You turn it into a two versus one scenario. Blue magnets are Birmingham, yellows are us.

”Let’s say this is Kisi as our right mid, with either Sarah Greene or Meghan behind her, coming up in support. When we get into Brum’s half, Brum go man-for-man, and they can do that on both sides because they have a spare player. We’re gonna fix the spare player thing in a minute, but what do we do about this? It’s shockingly simple. Doctors hate this one weird trick. Sarah sprints towards the deepest defender.”

I slid the lowest yellow magnet high up the pitch, and dragged the lowest blue one to follow it.

”The marker tracks the run. She has to! It’s her job! She’s got one job! She doesn’t know what’s coming next, right? She will one hundred percent track the move. That’s one opponent out of the way. What’s the other one gonna do? She should sprint to mark Kisi.” I bent forward to make sure everyone knew this was a key point. ”That’s not gonna happen! She’s not gonna sprint twenty yards towards our goal when she’s defending, like a cop isn’t gonna let go of one shoplifter to go and grab a different one. That’s never gonna happen! If she vacates her post, we’ve got the chance to pass the ball down the line to Sarah. Yeah, there’s a defender there but for a defender, that scenario is a scary prospect. The defender will one million percent track the player who is most dangerous, which in this case is Sarah.”

I dragged the ’Kisi’ magnet an inch lower.

”While Sarah makes that forward run, Kisi drops five yards. Kisi takes the pass and suddenly she’s in acres of space. What have we got that’s unique in the women’s game? Two things. We’ve got the most hairdryers per dressing room, and we’ve got the most dribblers per eleven. Dani, Kisi, Sarah, Saffron, Meredith. These rotations, these selfless sprints, will open up the pitch and allow our dribblers to build up speed and attack. That’s worth it on its own, but there’s an even better thing. The psychology. When they see all the space that opens up, Brum’s players will be thinking, what the fuck’s going on? We’re playing man-for-man. It should be impossible for someone to have so much freedom. That’s the start of their mental disintegration, ladies, because this is one of the most repeatable tricks that exists in football.

”When a player marks me, I go and stand next to another opponent, and now there are two guys on me, which opens space elsewhere. I haven’t come up against this team-wide marking scheme much, but it doesn’t faze me in the slightest. It makes life a bit more chaotic and you really have to be on your toes and make quick decisions, but again, we train Relationism! We are the last team you should do this against. All it takes is a couple of rotations like this and we will destroy their defensive structure. Who’s more comfortable playing in chaos than us? I don’t think there is anyone! Birmingham’s staff are in their dressing room right now high-fiving each other, but this was an all-time blunder. Again, it’s why I waited until half time to change things. I was trying so hard not to laugh my head off out there! I’m fucking stoked!

”What I’m going to do is give the attacking players a free role. All of you. I want you to run into someone else’s zone. Run, mind, not jog. When you sprint, you create panic and uncertainty and it demands a response. When you jog, you wreck our structure for no reason. Dani, are you getting this?”

I waited for a moment, then she held up a thumb.

”We don’t need to freak out or go bonkers. I know it didn’t feel like it in that last ten minutes but we’re in control of this game. We’ll keep the three centre backs in place for now, and Charlotte, you’ll hold. That’s four in the rest defence. I don’t even think we’ll need to up the pressure but there might be a time when VR moves to DM and I’ll start to include Charlotte in the free role stuff.”

Jay said, ”Why don’t we do Relationism?”

”We could,” I said, nodding, ”but I don’t want them saying oh we only lost to a trick tactic. I want them knowing we beat them fair and square using their own tactics against them, because that’s our best bet for sending them into a tailspin. Does everyone understand that? We’re not just trying to win this match, we’re trying to win it in such a way that we win the whole fucking league.” I smiled. ”This is good stuff, guys.”

I paused while I reviewed what I’d said so far. I had started with the cops in the apartment, so I wanted to finish there.

”The Wire. Two cops do their own thing, then bring it together. No words, just physicality, teamwork, filling the space the other one leaves, joining the dots the other one missed. It’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful.”

Meredith Ann said, ”When you talk about it so much, you should show it to us.”

I smiled as though she had set me up for a tap-in. ”No need to see actors do it in here.” I pointed towards the pitch. ”You’re gonna do it for real out there. Boom!” I cried. ”Talk about sticking the landing. Hands up who’s impressed. Best half-time speech ever? We’ll do a vote on the way home.”

***

With the tactical handbrake off, we dominated the second half to an even greater degree. We effectively had six midfielders, all technically competent, all but one with a ’free role’. They worked hard to cause havoc and to create space for their mates, and they started to bring Kit into the game.

As our shot count rose, so did the clock.

45 turned to 50 in the blink of an eye. 50 to 55 took longer - thanks, Einstein - and 55 to 60 took at least quarter of an hour.

But while my plan was sound, it was incomplete. I thought about unleashing Charlotte and moving Victoria Rose further forward, but neither felt like it would help us land the knockout blow. Brum were playing with five defenders - we needed another striker.

”Angel,” I said, summoning her. She came over right away. ”How you doing? Are we still friends?”

”Is that a quote from a TV show?”

I grinned and got out my little tactics board. ”Saffron’s doing well but we need more goal threat. That’s you.”

”I’ll replace her?”

”Yes. Were you listening to what I said about movement creating space for teammates?”

Angel’s eyes flickered towards me. ”You’re the best in the world, apparently.”

”I probably am. I’m extremely selfless, verging on saintly.”

”Can you just tell me what you want?”

”I’m going to station you as a CAM. Straight swap for Saffron, but Brum know to be wary of you. When moves are developing in a way I like, we’re going to go from 3-4-2-1 to 3-4-1-2.”

”From the formation designed to exclude me to the one that shows I’m one of the best players.”

I smiled. ”Exactly!” I got serious. ”This is a little bit of a shit gig. You help with our build-up play as Saffron did, but when you move to striker, your job is to make runs that opens a gap for Meredith to slide a pass to Kit. Brum have three centre backs, so it’s all quite tight in there, but if you run sideways in front of two defenders, they will naturally follow your move, even if it’s just for half a second. That’s all Meredith needs, right? One little pass, Kit’s through on goal, bosh.”

Angel nodded for a while, then inhaled and gave me a level look. It was the first time she had properly made eye contact in ages. ”I’ll do it, of course, but just so I know, why am I making the decoy runs and not Kit?”

I jabbed my finger at her. ”Because your movement is better. Ideally, you’d be the decoy and the one receiving the pass but God, in his wisdom, only created one of you.” She bit her lips in a rueful way, so I added, ”The hard part now is creating the space. Applying the finish, well, I’d trust half the team to score.”

Angel stared towards Kit for a while. I wondered what was going through her head. Jealousy? Thoughts of sabotage? But then she said, ”How would you do it?”

”Yeah, so, it’s not hard; it’s all about timing and patience. You don’t want to make the same run ten times because the defenders will adapt. You do it three times and do it so clinically, we score. Basically you wait for Sarah to get the ball in the right half-space. You run between the left back and the left centre back, showing for the ball. That should give some space to Meredith, and when the ball’s going towards her, you turn and run the opposite direction, across the defenders.”

”In front of them.”

”Yes,” I said, pleased to hear she had been paying attention. ”You’ll create that little bit of havoc. Leave your mates to do the rest.” Angel nodded and bit her thumbnail. Gently, I took her wrist and pulled it away from her mouth. Softly, I said, ”It takes a lot longer to describe than to do. There’s this character in The Wire called Omar. Wherever he goes in the hood, little kids run around going, ’Omar coming!’”

”Omar coming. That’s Kit, is it?”

”No, that’s you. You’ve got a rep, well earned, as an assassin. As a killer. Defenders have to respond to you, they have to react to your movements.” I stood tall and laughed. ”I’ll give you a hundred pound bonus if you yell ’Angel coming!’ as you’re moving around.”

She smiled. ”No way.”

I gave her a little shake. ”Come on, Angel! Don’t take yourself so seriously! Okay, how about this. When we score - and we will - go up to some defender you don’t like and say, ’You want it one way. But it’s the other way.’”

”What does that mean?”

”In the moment,” I said, wisely, ”you’ll understand, and so will she. Ref! Sub!”

***

We made the change and the tide went even more in our favour. The clock was ticking. 69, 70, 71. Our season was coming down to fine margins.

”Jay,” I said, made chatty by the nerves.

”You want a piece of me?”

I laughed. ”Not sure that’s the right show. I just had a general thought. Angel has made a big difference, right?”

He scanned the pitch while he thought about his reply. ”Yes. Saffron was doing okay but having another striker right up on the defensive line is asking a lot of questions of the defenders. It feels like the pressure has risen and we’re getting close to... to something. Not sure what. Could be a false dawn.”

”It’s not. But I was thinking, Birmingham have prepared the shit out of this game, right? The defensive tactics, the motivation, effectively taking Femi and Meghan out of the game by giving them nothing to do. But it’s all a bit too much, isn’t it? And they’ve clearly told their players to worry about Angel because she’s such a natural goalscorer.”

”She’s the second top scorer in the league with not many minutes under her belt.”

”Yeah, you’d be stupid not to warn your players but I think they have gone overboard. Angel’s moves are really dragging the defence around, aren’t they? Even more than I expected. I’m wondering if this is a case study in overpreparing your players.”

Jay’s eyebrows shot up. ”Overpreparing? That’s interesting, coming from you. I hope I never get told off for overpreparing the girls.”

”You won’t get told off,” I said, ”but think of a big match as an exam. Are we teaching to the test, like in The Wire season about the schools, or are we giving our players information and analytical skills so they can write a whole fucking essay about whatever topic comes up?”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on NovelFire, not stolen versions.

”Players need to know which of the oppos are dangerous.”

”Yeah but this is too much. It’s crystal clear we have set a trap, right?”

Jay nodded in a slightly side-to-side way because he didn’t want to agree with me. ”Yes.”

”So why has no-one realised that?” We looked from the Birmingham goalie to the centre backs all the way to the home dugout. The vague idea I had been stumbling towards resolved into clarity. ”They’ve written a great story and they’re tapping into the power of narrative. That’s to their credit. But you can’t always stick to the script.”

Jay side-eyed me. ”You’re going to tell me that one of the best lines in The Wire was improvised, aren’t you?”

”Ha,” I said. ”That would have been awesome. Soz, Jay, I’m not that smart. I’m just trying to work out why I don’t like what Birmingham are doing even when it’s so much like what I do.”

”It’s working, though. They’re... 17 minutes from winning the league.”

”Hmm,” I said. I had already made most of my tweaks, including moving our defensive line right up to halfway, while spreading our attacks across the entire width of the pitch. We were playing as fast as possible with zero shithousery.

In two minutes, I would ratchet up our efforts one last time. I would hit Seal It Up to give us a little more defensive solidity, which would allow us to attack with even less risk. Then I’d move Victoria Rose forward and give Charlotte a free role. I’d use Cupid’s Arrow to connect Meredith Ann and Kit. I would use Happy New Yie-Ar, which was a ten-minute boost to one-twos (AKA ’wall passes’). I wasn’t using the ’big diag’ instruction, because I didn’t want long cross-field passes - they were low percentage and the home team were using every duel as an excuse to tumble to the floor looking for a free kick to get a break from our non-stop pressure.

One of our moves broke down, and a Birmingham player booted the ball long.

Femi turned to get it. She didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. She almost seemed to count her feet as she sorted them out, then she rolled the ball to Victoria Rose. She came under pressure so bounce-passed it to Meghan. Megs clipped it first time to her best friend Sarah Greene, who also came under quick pressure. Sarah evaded the challenge - Brum were tiring - and shaped to clip the ball over the top to Kisi, who had her head down and was sprinting for all she was worth. Sarah passed to Angel, who was in the CAM slot.

Angel played it simply to Charlotte, who looked left. Dani took a touch, thought about doing a piece of skill, then gave it back to Charlotte and, like Kisi, got her head down and sprinted hard.

Some instinct made me switch Kisi and Dani on the tactics screen.

Kisi jogged left while Dani, when her sprint was over, jogged right, moving into an onside position in front of a slightly surprised centre back.

”Now!” I said, doing a little jump like I was going for a header.

The women knew it better than I did. Meredith was on the ball and she moved forward. When she was blocked, she passed right, to Sarah, who played a one-two. It was a brave pass into a crowded area, but the direction and weight were perfect and it took Meredith’s marker out of the game.

Angel called out, pointed diagonally to the left, spun, and raced into the penalty area. A defender followed, but the captain called out. ’To me!’ or some similar shout. The defender who had followed Angel abandoned her and moved back into line with the others, leaving Angel in an offside position.

Meredith used the tiny moment of reorganisation to slip a pass towards Angel. She was offside, you remember, but she made no attempt to play the ball. Kit was the most alert to the opportunity, and she was first to pick up the ball. My eyes darted to the linesman - no offside!

Kit was bearing down on the goalie.

This was it!

This was the big moment!

Our entire season came down to this one moment. I would love to use a pithy quote from a TV show at this point, but long story short, Kit Hodges did NOT score.

Instead, as the goalie came rushing out, Kit hesitated, seemed to get confused, and then rolled the ball two yards sideways...

To give Angel an open net.

One-nil.

Chester went bananas. ”We’ve done it! Holy shit!”

Brum went bonkers. ”Offside! Offside! She was offside!”

The lineswoman was absolutely right that Angel wasn’t offside in the ’first phase’ because the ball wasn’t played to her, and she wasn’t offside in the ’second phase’ because Kit was ahead of her. The ref, annoyed by Brum’s 74 minutes of tedious cheating, began dishing out yellow cards to the complainers.

Jay, Livia, Saffron and I had been dancing around in a ring of joy. Jay was yelling, ”He planned that! He planned that! He scripted it!”

”Nah,” I said, when he stopped screaming. ”I wrote, like, the episode description. That goal was way better than the one I had in my head. Way better.” I put my hands behind my head and let the relief wash over me. When it was gone, the main thing I felt was pride.

Enormous pride.

***

Post-match press conference highlights, as excerpted from News of the Blues.

Max, well done. A 3-0 win over our title rivals looks comprehensive but that was intense.

Yeah, sometimes it really do be like that.

Sometimes it... er... Birmingham spent a lot of the match with eleven players behind the ball, but once we scored, their entire game plan fell apart. How satisfying is it to break down that kind of low block?

I told Jay that today felt like being a detective in the police. Someone reported a crime against football. We looked into it, we found an illegally parked bus, and we towed that bus away. The streets are safe again, and the citizens of the Midlands can sleep soundly knowing that English football is alive and well.

How satisfying -

At half time I said to our women, there’s one team who came here to play beautiful football and there’s one team who came to play checkers on a chess board. No checkers on a chess board! They replied, Max, what’s checkers? Do you mean draughts? I said no, you’re thinking of backgammon. Okay, so as you can imagine, I lost that argument pretty hard, but not as hard as Birmingham lost the second half.

But for the longest time it looked like the defensive game plan would work! Weren’t you worried at all? You didn’t look worried but that was a facade, surely? You were putting on an act for the benefit of the team.

Coxy, listen, I really wasn’t worried. If there’s a match where you have 80% possession and the oppo doesn’t cross halfway and you don’t win, that’s just dumb luck and there’s nothing you can do about it. Sorry, let me say that again. That’s just dumb luck and ain’t no nothing you can... ain’t no nothing to be done. Ain’t no...

Max!

Coxy, relax!

Think about what it’s like to defend flat-out for 90 minutes. It’s hard. You need to concentrate. You need the ball to bounce kindly again and again. If you set up to defend and only to defend... oh, hang on, I’ve got a great quote for this. Wait one second. No, shush, this is gold. Okay. If you set up to defend and only to defend, you only got to fuck up once. Be a little slow, be a little late, just once. And how you ain’t gonna never be slow? Never be late?

Wow, that’s top. I’m absolutely killing this. I’m nailing it like Snoop nailed vacant houses shut with a nailgun.

This league campaign will go right down to the wire. How disappointed will you be to finish second and end up with a playoff?

If Birmingham win the league I won’t be the first to congratulate them because I will be having a mini-tantrum but I will congratulate them. The pressure is well and truly on them now, though. They had the chance to win it at home in front of their own fans and they blew it and that will be at the back of their minds for 90 minutes next week. They can’t go to their next match with such a cowardly formation because a draw’s not good enough - they have to win. Not everyone can cope with that kind of pressure so let’s see how they get on. Heh. May the Best team win.

***

Monday, April 17

The men’s home match against Ipswich Town, who were currently second in the league, was due to kick off at 3 p.m., which left us plenty of time to rethink our starting eleven and communicate any new plan to the players. For that reason, and just to make sure I was being totally non-complacent and utterly professional, I asked Sandra to join me for breakfast at The Legends in Saltney. Specifically, we were in the custom-built room that housed Maxterplanalytics Limited, the world’s most profitable football analytics company.

Pradeep and Spectrum fussed over their esteemed guest, offering her croissants and offering to top up her tea from the big pot. They kept putting new data charts into her hands, showing what the software was capable of and what it was nearly capable of.

Holding a printout in one hand and a piece of artisanal toast smothered with local farm-fresh honey in the other, Sandra indicated the computers under the desk. ”Is this DOVE?”

Pradeep gave me a worried look, since I had been so fussy about security. ”No,” I said. ”Those PCs contain some data but not the actual thing. DOVE is like a genie and we need to keep it in its bottle. It’s like a demon, and the thing about demons is you need to keep them down in their hole.” I sang, ”Keep the devil! Way dowwwwwwn in the hole!”

Sandra chomped on her toast. ”Why’s that so familiar?”

Spectrum knew. ”It’s the theme from The Wire.”

Sandra nodded. ”Okay, yeah. Great show. Bit depressing. I only watched one season, I think. You’re a fan, Spectrum?”

”It’s just dead good,” he said. ”So many amazing characters and the world-building is amazing. Like, they sell drugs, obviously, and it’s always the same stuff but they keep changing the name to keep it fresh and it’s a snapshot of the era. Like one time, the drugs are called WMDs and you remember that was the phrase of the moment. Next episode they’re called Landfill or Dirty Bomb. There are video essays about the graffiti, which evolves over time. I just love that someone wrote it and put their heart and soul into making every detail as real as poss, so even when it jumps the shark you’re thinking, yeah but maybe.”

”Changing the name,” mused Sandra, for whom my summons meant a welcome break from a morning with a tearaway toddler. ”I was wondering why DOVE isn’t a top brand name already within football circles. You don’t have any clients for this, do you?”

”Not specifically,” I said. ”We’ve got the connection in Sao Paulo. We’ve got our cameras up in the stadiums and on training pitches and my DOF mates are inviting local teams to play friendlies there so we can scan them. Interesting results so far, as you’ve seen. We’re going to expand across Europe so that we’re getting data from every top-tier league within two years, but yeah, we don’t currently have any paying customers.”

”Maybe that’s because the name is shit,” said Sandra. ”And weird. And too long. And obnoxious.”

”It’s none of those things,” I said. ”One of the main issues is that so many clubs have their own in-house data teams and they want to believe that they haven’t wasted all their investment in that data. Another thing is that when it comes to AI in football, the track record is nothing short of abysmal. I think it was Sheffield United who signed half a dozen players using AI and not one of them played a first-team minute. Even if the tool was free, think how much that cost the club in transfer fees and wages. No, there’s a lot of suspicion of new tools, especially in the UK. New ways to rip off fans? Yes, please, no due diligence required! New ways to think about scouting, training, or playing? Ew.”

Sandra put down a chart and sipped her tea. ”Really, though, you should change the name. It’s too long.”

”Hmm,” I said. I noted that Pradeep and Spectrum looked away. So they agreed with her! ”MaxPlan. MXPX. MXP Sports. I’ll think about it.”

”Yesss!” said Spectrum, pumping his fist.

”MXP,” said Pradeep.

”I’ll think about it,” I said, vaguely annoyed about how good MXP sounded. I placed my hand on the table. ”Okay, the topic of this meeting is to plan the final three matches of the season. I have my idea about how things will go but I will admit I’m not actually a supercomputer when it comes to end-of-season permutations and calculations, so I’ve asked Pradeep to crunch the numbers on what’s likely to happen and all the various scenarios.”

”Oh, top,” said Sandra. ”That’s top because it’s so complicated. Some of the playoff chasers play each other and obviously that means they can’t both get three points but when you add it together, it makes my head spin.”

”It’s not just that,” I said. ”It’s the sequence. Like, for example, if Ipswich beat us today, they’ll still be in with a chance of winning the league, so they’ll go flat out against Coventry. So if they win the first one, they’re likely to also win the second one. But if we beat Ipswich, Coventry are more likely to beat Ipswich. It’s bonkers and we need raw data. But let me state my position and then we’ll hear what the data says about it all. Is that all right?”

The others signalled that it was.

”I want to go a little bit meta, first.”

”Metaverse?” said Pradeep, who had crunched on a Monster Munch while I was talking.

”Ew, no,” I said, before getting a genuine full-body shudder. ”Please don’t use that word ever again. Ew.” I took a swig of tea to rebalance my humours. ”I watched a bit of The Wire recently because I wanted to make it a theme.”

”Theme?” said Pradeep.

”Of a half-time team talk.”

”Oh! Of course.”

”And it’s really interesting because loads of the areas of Baltimore look really grim, but it’s just like Moss Side, where I lived for ages. The estate I grew up on looked a lot like those, er, projects. One of the reasons it’s hard for me to rewatch the show even though it’s top quality is that it really reminds me of how it is to grow up poor. It’s just bleak and grim and there’s violence and not many opportunities except ones that take you to a bad place.”

I sipped my tea and closed my eyes, picturing a yellow-grey brick building. It could have been Baltimore or Moss Side.

”The Wire is about a lot of things but there’s one quote that sums it up.” I took my phone and read. It’s from a police guy who’s trying to bring down a gang. ”You follow the drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. You follow the money, you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna take you.” I put my phone down. ”The show takes you on a journey to follow the drug money. It flows around the city, distorting it, making it shitter. Dirty money making everything it touches dirty. And football’s like that. If you talk to Interpol, they hate football because it makes it so easy for criminals to launder money. Have you ever heard of a weird transfer that made no financial sense? That’s money laundering in action. Crypto scams, fly-by-night betting companies, all sorts of horrible people launder their money through clubs and along the way it flows around corrupting everyone. UEFA, FIFA, Premier League clubs. It’s all awful and grim and bleak.

”But Sandra will back me up on this - Moss Side today doesn’t feel much like Baltimore in The Wire. There was a big push to clean it up and tackle the drugs problem and one of the things they did was, the European Union invested money in housing. One day all the houses off Great Western Street had scaffolding up and they re-did the roofs and the exteriors and did some insulation and I don’t know what. It was like, we aren’t giving up on you. You’re not in this on your own. And today, Moss Side isn’t exactly Mayfair but it’s all right. Dirty money made it dirty, clean money cleaned it up.”

I paused so I could finish my tea, then stood to pour another. Pradeep stepped into the void. ”Do you want me to give my bonus back?”

Sandra laughed. ”No. He’s talking about going to the Premier League.”

”He is?” said Spectrum, frowning.

Sandra said, ”You got a bonus? What are you gonna do with it?”

Pradeep grinned, shyly. ”I thought about getting a gold watch or something, but... I’ll send it to my parents. Once I work out how to do it. Spectrum said wiring too much in one go will make the banks get suspicious and I don’t need that kinda heat on me, haha.”

I said, ”Two things, mate. One, don’t buy a gold watch. I’ll tell you what I tell my players, which is that you’re only setting yourself and your loved ones up for violence and threats. I’m not into Bitcoin but you’re not going to be mugged on the way home if you’ve just bought a Bitcoin. Two, don’t send money to your mum. I’ll do it direct with the next bonus - from Gibraltar or the Cayman Islands. Do you know how I long to wire money from the Cayman Islands? It’s the only reason I get out of bed in the morning. We’re gonna drench your mum in notes. She’ll be like, not another wire, oh my God, there’s already cash everywhere.”

Pradeep was grinning, goofily. Spectrum said, ”And Pradeep, you won’t have to pay tax on it. The money will never hit your accounts.”

”Boom!” I said. I topped my new tea with milk and returned to my seat. ”As for what Spectrum said before, Sandra’s right - I am talking about the Premier League. There’s an instant hundred million a year when you get there and if we can survive by spending half the TV money, in ten years the club will have pocketed half a billion quid. 500 million quid of clean money I can pump into the community here. We’ll build more pitches, a hotel, loads of housing. We’re not a charity - we’ll get the rent income from the properties, but they’ll be cheap to heat, efficient, and it’ll be nice to live there. We’ll raise the levels of everything. Dentist, doctors, schools, libraries. Everything. I want that money. I want as much of it as I can get.”

Sandra was watching me carefully. ”So no promotion this season.”

Spectrum stood and threw his hands to his head. ”How did you get that from what he said? What’s going on? Who’s been feeding me crazy pills?”

I laughed. ”Sit down, you drama baby.” I rubbed my forehead. ”I can’t think of a way to survive in the Prem next season.” That comment triggered a flurry of responses, which I quietened with my palms. ”I know I miscalculated a lot this season but I really don’t think we can do it - the cliff edge is too enormous. Okay, but if we go up, do we need to stay up? Last time we spoke about this, Sandra, I was thinking about myself, and my inevitable sacking. But let’s take a broader view.

”If we have another season in the Champ, the TV money over the next three years goes 10 million, 100 million, 100 million. Right? 210 million. If we go up, go down, and go up again, we would get the parachute payments. 100 in the first year, 10 plus 40 in the second, 100 in the third. That’s 250 million. How much would we lose to wages? Loads. But the general point stands - going up this season leads to the highest numbers.”

Sandra looked to the others, then to me. ”Max, you told me you’d get sacked after 7 matches.”

”I know, and I still believe that, but so what? I’m gonna get everything I need from my side hustles and DOVE, and when it comes to Chester in the community, it doesn’t have to be me who spends the money, does it? As long as it doesn’t all go to wages and agents, that’s seriously big money sloshing around the CH postcodes. Look, the good news is, I don’t think we’ll go up anyway. But if we do, I’m gonna play for Saltney like before, and I won’t register for Chester. I’ll manage until I get sacked, but I won’t play. Then when the axe falls, I can play in the Champions League for Saltney. That’s like 8 games and I’ll have loads of time to think about myself and Emma and I won’t feel guilty because I’ll have guaranteed a quarter billion for the city of Chester.”

Sandra eyed me, then leaned back and stared unblinkingly at the ceiling. She looked at me again. ”No. That’s bullshit. Cut that, Max. Cut that.”

”What?”

”Any other clown who comes in is going to want to spend all the income on wages. All the income and more! They’ll wreck what you’ve done and probably blow up the whole club in the process!”

Spectrum had caught up. ”She’s right, Max. There isn’t a penny going to build a hotel or housing if you’re not around. Not a penny. No way.”

I gripped my hair. ”Christ, this season is so frustrating.” I sat straighter. ”You know what? For today, it doesn’t matter. Maybe we should revisit this in a couple of weeks. All I wanted to say, Sandra, is that I am one trillion percent determined to get to the playoff final.”

She scoffed. ”Amazingly long-winded and there are several leaps of logic, but you know what? I’m gonna accept that.”

”No, really. I was trying to put things into the context of that fact that I’m absolutely, totally, reliable-narrator dedicated to finishing fourth in the league so we get to the final. First, it’s more money, and second, I’m reluctantly okay with my management career imploding if it has lasting benefit.”

She shook her head as she scanned the table for something nice to eat. Amazingly, she picked up a bag of Monster Munch. ”It’s funny how you say it’s Emma suffering from pre-wedding mania.”

”What?”

”Nothing. Please continue. Rattled,” she added, quietly.

I had no clue what she was on about, so I ignored it. ”I want to finish fourth, but more than that, I want to win the semi-final. Yes?”

”Yes.”

”Do you honestly believe that I’m being super honest about that?”

She frowned and crunched. After a while, she said, ”Yes.”

I exhaled with relief. It had been a lot of work to get to that point. ”Okay,” I said, feeling weirdly light-headed. ”Okay.” I looked down at the carpet, then up at Sandra. ”That’s why it’s okay if we lose today.”

She eyed me for a loooooong time, then her mouth starting moving again. CRUNCH. Pause. CRUNCH. ”Whut?”

I got up and paced around. Pradeep and Spectrum were messy as fuck but I had insisted on one thing - that the sides of the room would be clear of obstructions so that I could pace to my heart’s content. ”We’ve got three games left. Ipswich are crazy tough. CA 148, in Soccer Supremo terms. They’re not quite a Premier League side but they’re only a few players short. If we pick our best team, CA 135 or so, and turn the intensity up to 110 percent, we’ll pick up three injuries and probably lose anyway. If we rest our key players and play Ipswich with our CA 125 second string, we’ll lose and drop out of the playoffs to 7th or 8th. It’ll be cringe for the fans but not only will we win our last two matches, we’ll be by far the freshest team going into the playoffs!”

I paced faster, almost one lap per Sandra’s crunch.

”Pradeep will confirm it now, I’m sure, but there’s a mad cascade of consequences to us losing. Ipswich will beat Coventry, which means Wolves will need to beat Luton on the final day. Think about it! There are 9 teams in contention. In week one, Norwich or Wrexham will drop out. In week two, Coventry and West Brom will drop out. In week three, Luton will drop down. If we get six points from our three games, we’re guaranteed a playoff spot, and my maths puts us in fourth!”

I stopped pacing to give Sandra an almost pleading look. She looked towards Pradeep and crunched five times. ”He right?” she said, with flecks of crumbs flying everywhere.

This was Pradeep’s big moment, delayed far too long by my tangential monologuing. He fired up his desktop and pressed a button. The enormous screen on the side of the room turned on... and showed enough data to launch a shuttle. Most of the display was a grid showing percentages. It seemed broadly optimistic, but definitely lacked clarity.

”Dube,” said Sandra, mouth full.

Spectrum translated. ”Pradeep, Sandra wants to know if Max is right. If we lose today but win the other two, will we finish fourth?”

Pradeep pointed to the screen as if it was self-explanatory, but then he did an internal sigh and tapped on his keyboard and clicked on his mouse until there was only one square on the screen. Inside was written ’92%’. Pradeep said, ”Unless there are freak incidents, six points takes us to fourth. But, er... As a fan, I would rather get three points today and lose the final match. Can we not do it that way round? It would be much less stressful.”

I was pacing faster than ever. Having my hunches confirmed by a supercomputer was making me feel all kinds of powerful. ”I have no intention of losing today,” I said, fighting to unclench my fists and my jaw. ”I’ll name a weakened team but I’ll be in it. I don’t want people coming to the Deva to see us lose. We’ll fight Ipswich every step of the way but if they’re too strong, so be it. Pradeep, go back to how it was.” As I completed another lap, I tapped the screen. ”These numbers aren’t right. They don’t take into account the fact that we’ve rested our best players. The penalty for losing is a couple of percentage points, but the benefit is immense, trust me. It works for us to lose, but I’ll never set out to lose a game. Hey guys, listen.”

I had worked myself almost up to a sprint, but got a grip. I leaned on the table and looked into three sets of eyes.

”I’m not a huge F1 fan, as you know, but one of the first things I remember when I was a kid was that there was a world championship that went down to the wire. I remember it was Lewis Hamilton going for the title, and the last race was crazily stressful. It was sedate for a while but then came a drizzle so Hamilton’s team decided to change tyres but then it didn’t rain hard enough and that meant Hamilton was fucked, so suddenly he’s the slowest guy on the track and everyone’s shooting past him and he’s absolutely fucked, it’s a disaster! It’s Devon Loch at a hundred miles an hour! The Ferrari team is jumping around, celebrating, they’ve won!

”But then it rained proper hard! Hamilton’s back in it, he’s the fastest, but he’s got a bazillion cars ahead of him and only two laps to do it! The other guy crosses the line, I’ve won, we’ve won! Pop the champagne! Hamilton’s on the final corner and he overtakes a guy and he finishes fifth and he wins the world championship but the other team are still celebrating but they haven’t won it! Hamilton won. His team had worked out that if they all stayed calm, Hamilton would overtake a guy on the last lap of the race. Not the last lap. The last corner.”

I set off again, eyes blazing.

”Imagine the nerve to do that! The balls! Your entire season, tens of millions of pounds, thousands of man-hours, and it all comes down to overtaking a car on the last corner of the last race. It was crazy to watch because I was, like, eight, and the TV was showing the celebrations from Ferrari. The new world champions! But then a graphic came up. The world champion is, er... Lewis Hamilton. What? It messed with everyone’s heads. How did that happen? But Hamilton’s team had worked it out. They’d crunched the numbers. Then he executed the drive. That,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief all these years later, ”is the very definition of things going down to the wire.

”That stuck with me. I’ve seen it done; we can do it. We just have to hold our nerve.” I took a massive swig of tea. ”If we rest our players today and still finish fourth, that’s the biggest piece of galaxy-brain thinking, big-swinging-dick energy this league has ever seen. If we fuck up, fine, because that way, I don’t get sacked next October. But if we make it, holy shit! It won’t be watched by a billion people like that Formula One race was, but you three will know what I did, and that’s good enough for me.”

I bit the end off a croissant, then remembered I was an elite athlete. I ate what I had bitten off, but threw the rest into the bin.

”Sandra, are you with me?”

She did a quick eyebrow raise, but said, ”One hundred percent.”

I pointed at her, and she grabbed her notebook. I waited until she clicked her pen into readiness, then said, ”Owen in goal. Cole left back, Helge right back. Fitzroy Hall and Magnus CBs. Vini. Er... Dan, Andrew, Bark. Colin.”

Spectrum suddenly got animated. ”Sandra, are you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy?”

”What? No. I’m writing the lineup.”

I said, ”It’s a quote, Sandra. Not now, Spectrum.” I turned to my co-manager. ”Based on that, where do I play?”

She scanned from left to right about twenty times in five seconds. ”Left midfield in a 4-1-4-1.”

I spread my arms. ”I love it!” Left midfield against a top team. I would have to help Cole. I would have to be diligent and professional. But at least ten times during the match I would be able to break. There was zero chance Ipswich would come to the Deva with a low block, and that meant I would get to revisit my mystery winger persona. ”They want to win the league? They’re gonna need to deal with me.”

Spectrum shot to his feet and went, ”Sheeeeeeeeet!”

Sandra stood. ”I’m loving all the boy-quotes but before I go, one question. Why is that show called The Wire?”

I said, ”There’s a running theme of police surveillance. Wire tapping, hidden cameras, secret recordings.”

She screwed up one eye. ”Is that relevant to what we’re doing?”

I shook my head. ”No.”

Sandra said, ”Huh, okay. For a second, I thought there was something there.”

Pradeep said, ”Here at MXP, we’re recording football matches on two continents!”

Sandra smiled. ”That must be it. Okay, I’m going home for a couple of hours and I’ll see you all in the Deva.” She pushed me in the chest. ”Mystery winger? It’s been so long, you’ll have forgotten all your moves.”

I clicked my neck left and right. ”Game still the game. Just a little more fierce.”

***

EFL Championship Match 44 of 46: Chester versus Ipswich Town

Before the match, I spent a while wondering if buying the latest monthly perk would help us to get a result. Might we need to cap our Aggression for quarter of an hour? Ipswich were not a tough-tackling team and we tended to match the opponent’s level of hostility. I had enough XP to afford the perk:

XP balance: 3,333

But if I held off, I would be able to buy Deformation 2 by Saturday and I would be able to test it against Birmingham, a lower mid-table side. Bosh. Decision made. No sale!

I let Sandra do most of the pre-match stuff. For once I was going to focus almost completely on being a player. Our formation wouldn’t change much during the game, so apart from triggering various perks, my job was to play left midfield, to support Cole Adams, our left back, and ideally to cause enough mayhem to make Ipswich play more cautiously.

This game was a free hit. A win would be great, a draw would certainly help with the end-of-season maths, and as Pradeep had confirmed, a defeat could actually play in our favour. Try telling that to my teammates - they were bags of nerves. The playoffs were so close, and we had been in 5th place for so long that it would be absolutely gutting to miss out.

”Max, anything to add?”

”Yes!” I said, leaping to my feet. I clomped around the benches, eyeing my mates. My fellow warriors. My gang. ”My favourite TV show is The Wire, which models both poor leadership and great leadership.” I tapped the captain’s armband on my bicep. ”Today I’m going to demonstrate a lot of taking the piss, a lot of silliness. I’m going to demonstrate the Art of Slapping and the Way of the Nutmeg. I’m going to thrill! To spill! To ill!”

”Yeah, yeah,” laughed Sandra. ”We get it. You’re gonna play like a spoiled brat and demand our approval.”

I fingergunned her. ”Couldn’t have expressed it any better myself.” I pulled the armband off. ”I’m not doing the leadership thing. That ain’t no fun.” I spun the band around, which was hard because it was just a piece of cloth. ”Arise, Owen Elmham.”

Everyone turned to Mad Owen, our Norwich City-supporting goalkeeper. Implacable enemy of Ipswich Town. ”Me?”

I nodded. ”I want to beat Ipswich Town and to do that, we’re gonna need an outstanding performance from you. More than that, we’re gonna need you to stay on the pitch. No sneakily punching people in the face at corners. Do you get me? If you want to win today, give me a captain’s performance.” I grinned. ”And give me the ball because I am feeling frisky.”

Owen’s Morale zipped up and down as he weighed the honour of being made captain against the missed opportunity to punch someone in the gob. He stood. ”I’m your man.”

”You’re my Elm-man,” I said. ”Ah, fuck. Cut that.” I slid the armband onto his weirdly long arm and fixed it into place. ”Behold! All right, yell something motivational.”

Owen looked at his arm, then spoke to the group. ”I don’t think I’ve earned this,” he said. ”I’m gonna earn it today.” His eyes closed halfway. ”No punching Tractor Boys in the face.” They opened wide. ”Even the one who stole my wife, boss?”

”They met after you broke up, so yeah. Jesus Christ. Didn’t I buy you a sapling? I thought that would cure you.”

Owen looked around. ”We can stop Ipswich winning the league. Anyone who doesn’t play like that means something will answer to me. Let’s go.”

As the players filed out, I turned to Sandra and shrugged. Not the most epic speech, but it got the job done.

***

We emerged from the tunnel into bright sunshine. The Wet Wet Wet perk had told me what conditions to expect, and they were ideal. Slightly cold but no wind, no rain. My fitness was at an all-time high, though I had to remember to clutch my ankle a few times. Maybe I would start a rumour that I was taking pain-killing injections to play. That would explain how I could perform to a high level today, then not even name myself in the squad for the playoff final.

While we did our last warm-ups, I spotted something unexpected. There was a bit of a commotion on the touchline, so I went over. ”Ref, what’s going on?”

The referee was called Steve Steel. We’d had him before and he was okay. Not great, but not abysmal. ”Fourth official got food poisoning.”

My heart sank. ”Here?” What a nightmare that would be! Chester poisoning referees!

”No, at the restaurant last night. He couldn’t travel here today so we had to source a replacement. She arrived just in time.” He nodded towards a woman in black, who was being wired up with a microphone and transmitter so she could talk to the ref from the sideline.

”Isn’t that Liza Mason?” I said. Liza Mason was in the group of Premier League referees and assistants, so by virtue of being on millions of screens on a regular basis and based on the fact that almost no-one gave a shit about anything that happened in England’s lower leagues, she was probably more famous than me. I smiled at Steve. ”She’s your assistant? That’s a lot of pressure on you, isn’t it?”

”On me?”

”You don’t want to fuck up in front of one of the country’s rising stars, do you?”

Steve got a weird, panicky look about him. I jogged off and summoned my players into an impromptu huddle. Clouds of breath were coming out of the lads like bulls ready to charge, and there was a smell of freshly-mown grass and Vicks vaporub.

Cap’n Owen said, ”What’s up, boss?”

”Yeah, listen. The fourth official today is Liza Mason. You’ve seen her on TV and all that. Do not scream in her face about decisions, okay? That’s a bad look for the club and its sponsors and it’s a bad look for your personal branding but I see those Prem twats doing it all the time. When we go up, I’m gonna put together a compilation of massive dudes looming over her in an intimidating way and I do not want to see you in that montage, all right?”

Vincent Addo, playing as our DM, said, ”Which is worse? Punching an Ipswich in the face or shouting at the female ref?”

”Oh my God,” I said, shaking my head, but his input made the others laugh. ”Remember the plan. Clean sheet mentality! Give them nothing. Let’s do this.”

***

The match kicked off to a huge roar from both sets of supporters. Real top-of-the-table clash, this one. Lots at stake.

Ipswich had come with pretty much their best team playing in a 4-2-3-1 with an average CA of 148. We were a solid, functional 4-1-4-1 with a solid, functional CA 125. Colin Beckton was a lethal goalscorer if we could create chances for him, Helge was a huge threat from set pieces, and I had been known to score a goal or two, but other than that, this wasn’t a team you would back to score more than one or two per match.

Clean sheet mentality. Fight to keep the oppo’s score at nil. I took a leaf out of Birmingham City’s women’s team and, while mostly sticking to my position in front of Cole Adams, I also threw in some surprise man-marking.

When Ipswich tried to build on my side of the pitch, I sprinted hard at the ball carrier and when he passed it, I sprinted at the next guy, too. Ipswich’s manager was good but he didn’t like taking risks, so when put under pressure his players tended to turn towards their extra man, the goalie. It wasn’t the tedious ’sideways and backwards’ football some teams played, but it was quite risk-averse, and I used that to my advantage.

After five minutes, I made my first real tweak, which was to stop Colin from joining in on the press. We weren’t being overrun, and I wanted him to save his energy for when we attacked.

Ten minutes passed and I still felt fresh as a daisy. Then a Tractor Boy briefly lost concentration and hit a loose pass. I was on it in a flash, barging past the intended recipient, the right back. I knocked the ball down the line and with the defence as high as it was, I was clear! Three seconds away from being one-on-one with the keeper! I didn’t really want to score in this match, but -

I crashed to the turf. The right back had lashed out in order to slap my ankles together, which stopped my run. There was a strong case for a red card, but I was so far from goal that referees almost never sent players off in that situation. The right back got a yellow card and a shudder of fear passed around the Ipswich fans. The guy had to play against me for 80 minutes! One more mistake and he would get a second yellow. That could be the end of their title hopes!

The scare made Ipswich even more conservative on my side of the pitch, and I was enjoying my role. Run, retreat, run, retreat. Ian Evans with a touch of Peter Bauer. Cole and I locked down our side of the pitch with help from Dan Badford. Who knew hard work could be so much fun?

Ipswich had more luck on the other side, where our triangle was Helge, Bark, and Andrew Harrison. Our guys had a ton of energy and work rate, but lacked a bit of positional sense. They generally did enough to stop the away team from getting clear-cut chances, and Owen Elmham dealt with the longshots and potshots that got through.

After half an hour, I felt emboldened to try something different. I created hot keys that would make everyone except for Colin man-mark an opponent. It was the Birmingham approach on steroids, because with me in the team we would have a lot of counter-attacking threat.

I tested it out. I deformed Cole to be a third centre back, asked Fitz to mark the striker, told Magnus, Vini, and Dan to take the CAMs, gave Bark the left back, Andrew Harrison one of the DMs. Then I positioned myself in the triangle between the other DM, a centre back, and the right back. My theory was - I could take them all on!

For the next three minutes, we ran and chased like crazy people. Visually, it was almost the inverse of Relationism, with our guys moving around in a seemingly freeform manner. Ipswich had come up against such moves in the Premier League, but that had been a while ago.

We surprised them.

33’

Again Ipswich lose the ball!

They recover it, though, and try to build on their left.

Helge Hagen makes a good tackle.

The ball pops to Badford. He’s on the half-turn, easing away from his marker.

Badford slips the ball behind Best.

Best is faster than the right back!

He’s having his shirt tugged. Crazy play from the defender! He’s on a yellow!

Best keeps going. He’s to the left of the penalty area with not much support.

Will he shoot left-footed from such an unpromising angle?

The nearest centre back has arrived on the scene.

Best will try a rabona cross!

The defender slides to block...

But Best uses the rabona technique to cut the ball onto his right foot.

He’s got Colin Beckton at the far post.

Best crosses into the middle of the area...

Fantastic movement from Beckton! He anticipated where the cross would go.

Now the header...

Down...

Up...

It’s going in!

But it’s saved! An acrobatic save from the goalkeeper.

The Deva Stadium rises to applaud their team. That was an outstanding break!

The referee warns the right back about his behaviour.

Max Best also warns the right back about his behaviour.

***

Half time Match Ratings

Owen Elmham 8

Cole Adams 8

Andrew Harrison 8

Colin Beckton 6

Max Best 9

***

Sandra and Owen gave good speeches at half time, though they completely forgot to mention The Wire, which was borderline unprofessional. When we emerged for the second half, the crowd was buzzing. We hadn’t just shut Ipswich out, we had created the better chances. We could win this!

The match continued in the same vein, but as time went by Ipswich took more risks, got more attacking, and we used that against them. From the 50th to 60th minutes, we actually had more possession of the ball. Having Magnus as a centre back was like having a midfielder start our moves. He wasn’t quite Peter Bauer, but who was? Magnus kept the ball moving, often giving it to Dan.

Dan was CA 117, so he was always going to struggle to impose himself against a top-class midfield but when it came to receiving the ball on the half-turn and moving it on, he was top class. I tried to make sure I anticipated the pressure Dan would be under so that I could make a run that would help him. Once I sprinted down the line so that he could thrash a ball over the top - it very nearly worked, too - but most of the time I rushed close to give him a simple first-time pass option.

Then came the first weird moment.

61’

Elmham takes the goal kick short to Hall.

Hall waits for an opponent to close him down, then returns the ball to Elmham.

He waits. He has Adams wide left or Evergreen closer but chooses to play the ball straight ahead.

Badford touches it to Harrison.

Lovely play from Chester, and the game has opened up!

Harrison gives it to Bark, who smacks the ball all the way across the pitch.

Was that a mis-hit?

No! Best is racing after it.

Best will get there before the right back...

He nudges the ball down the line...

And is fouled!

The home fans are up in arms. That was a wonderful break brutally cut short.

The referee gives the free kick. He marches towards the scene of the crime...

Reaches for his pocket...

And sprays the grass to indicate where the free kick should be taken from.

No yellow card!

That is an astonishing decision.

Max Best can’t believe what he is seeing. He thinks Ipswich should be down to ten men.

***

From my position on the grass, I watched, dumbfounded, as my players berated the referee. How was that not a second yellow card?

Over on the touchline, Sandra was yelling at Liza Mason. That was probably all right in terms of our image, wasn’t it? Maybe our sponsors would love it. Equality in action. Two women playing key roles in a high-stakes match. Little girls would be watching going, that could be me! And also going, why’s this ref so shit, suddenly? He had a good first half.

I got up and dusted myself off, then used Masterpiece Theatre to arrange my guys. It was pretty obvious that I would aim for Helge, and from this distance the defence and goalie would be able to deal with it easily. I was too far wide, too far out.

”Dan,” I said. ”Take this. Roll it down the line so I can get a better angle.” He was blowing hard, but his Condition was high enough that I wouldn’t need to sub him off. ”And get a drink, quickly.”

He rushed to the physio’s bag and took a swig of water. His Condition increased by one point. ”Aight. Now?”

”Now.”

Dan pushed the ball two yards forward. Ipswich hadn’t expected us to go short and it took them a second to reorganise. In that second, I had got five yards closer to the byline. I leaned back and whipped in an old-fashioned left-footed outswinger.

Aff couldn’t have hit it sweeter. It arced and curled and dipped right onto Helge’s beautiful Viking forehead. He scrunched his face up to help him impart even more power, and it crashed onto the line and past the helpless goalie.

Get the fuck in!

Dan threw himself into my arms and I held him aloft while he punched the air. ”Come on!” he screamed.

In our box, in front of the Ipswich fans, Owen Elmham sprinted and did a somersault.

A noise pierced the celebration bubble. A high-pitched whistle. The referee... was not allowing the goal to stand.

I threw my hands to my head. ”What the fuck?” I rushed over to him. ”What are you doing, Steve?”

”You took the free kick before I gave you permission to take it. I wasn’t ready. Take it again.”

”Take it again?” I said, stupefied. I had enough presence of mind to check the match commentary. ”You blew the whistle to award the foul. It’s our free kick. We took the free kick. If you want to make us wait to take it, you have to inform us that we have to wait. You didn’t inform us. The goal is valid. The goal stands.”

”There is no goal. The free kick hasn’t been taken yet.”

Dan and Colin, usually unflappable, were getting riled up. ”What the fuck are you talking about? First there’s no red card, now you’re chalking off good goals?”

I sensed they were very close to calling the ref a cheat, which would land them in hot water with the FA. I ordered them away and trudged over to retake the kick.

We tried the same exact move but Ipswich were ready for it. My cross hit a defender before it could get properly airborne, and the ball was headed away.

***

The injustice got under our skin. We played shit for ten minutes, but defended with even more energy and determination. The home crowd, incensed by the ref, turned the volume up to 11.

I rushed into midfield, got the ball, and dribbled straight at the right back. I did a stepover, nutmegged him, ran around the other side, and felt his hand on my shirt. He let go just as I was about to take a tumble, leaving me free to zoom towards goal. Ipswich weren’t exactly double-marking me but they were arranged so that someone was always close. A DM slid in and tackled the ball out of play for a throw-in, then stayed down pretending to be hurt.

Why are they timewasting? I wondered. They need a win.

I turned and saw that they were making a sub. The right back was going off. A new guy was coming on. He would get two chances to foul me before he got a yellow, and another two before he got a red. I have to admit, I found the unfairness demotivating.

***

My sulk didn’t last long, and with the crowd backing us every step of the way, we started to play some really good football while still mostly keeping Ipswich at bay.

In the 74th minute, I left my position on left midfield and sprinted with all my might towards the area. On the right, Andrew and Bark combined beautifully with a one-two, and Bark was goal-side of the defender. He looked up to see where Colin was, but saw me arriving. Bark shaped to hit the low cross to Colin that the defenders were expecting, then rolled the ball to me.

It was in my stride and I smashed it left-footed back the way the goalie had come from. He reacted with supernatural agility and somehow diverted the ball for a corner.

”Fuck me,” I said, wondering if this is what it would be like in the Prem, where every team had brilliant goalies.

I walked slowly towards the corner flag. What did Prem goalies fear most? Inswinging corners. Being surrounded by beefy boys so that they couldn’t run and punch the ball.

We could do that.

From that side, I would have to hit the perfect corner kick left-footed. Did I care about hiding the true extent of my two-footedness? Not as much as I used to, but it was still a consideration.

Another consideration was this: fuck Ipswich.

The away team sent three attackers to the halfway line. They wanted us to send men to cover them, which would mean fewer bodies in the penalty area, which would make their goalie’s life easier. Cole Adams retreated. ”Get in the fucking box!” I yelled, as I yanked him into position with Masterpiece Theatre. If Ipswich broke and scored, so what?

As I expected, when they saw that we weren’t buying their fast break gambit, their players ran back. The penalty area was crowded, with players on both sides pushing, shoving, jostling, and most of all, surrounding the goalie.

I had to trust that when I hit the ball, my guys would leave the goalie alone. It was something we had practiced. Something I’d asked Vikki to pay special attention to.

I turned my awareness to my left foot, to the ball, to the contact I was about to make. The Free Hit button was there, and I reached out to touch it. Like, with my hands. Stupid, but I could play it off as being part of a signal to my players.

I swung my leg.

As soon as I made contact, I knew it was sublime. I watched it arc and spin and curl and once again, Helge jumped and nodded the ball over the line. There was no-one near the goalie. We had jostled him, made his life awkward, but didn’t actually foul him. Perfect.

It was too good to be true. We had done it so cleanly and flawlessly that I somehow knew the ref would disallow the goal; that’s exactly what he did.

While my players lost their fucking minds and the ref showed yellow cards to one, two, three, four of them, I walked slowly towards our half. Something weird was happening here. This wasn’t the usual inept refereeing display. This was way more sinister.

My first thought was that the FA or the EFL were trying to make me explode with anger so that I would do something stupid so they could ban me for the rest of the season and the playoffs. Plausible. The second was that someone was trying to stop us from reaching the Premier League. All too plausible.

The back of my neck tingled. If you were going to try to derail our season, this would be the game to do it. I knew, and Pradeep’s computer knew, that losing this one had no real impact and in some ways actually helped us, but from the outside, us losing to Ipswich would seem almost terminal to our chances - we would slip out of the playoff places with two tough games to come.

I looked to the sub’s bench, thinking that I might sub myself off so that I could at least get 12 XP per minute for the remainder of the game. But I decided to stay on. I would defend with maximum concentration and play my heart out. Ipswich wouldn’t beat us. The ref would have to do it himself.

***

83’

Towering header from Best! He headed that one clear farther than some people can kick it!

84’

Great move from Ipswich. It’s chipped over the top...

But Elmham gathers.

85’

Danger on the left. Hagen is out of position.

Ipswich move into the box. Another slick combination of passes. Superbly done!

They’ve got space on the left of the box. It’s chipped up. Evergreen heads the ball away.

The ball is gathered on the far side. Adams does well to delay the cross.

Great trickery to get past Adams!

Best is there to cover. He shepherds the ball out of play.

Goal kick to Chester!

88’

Yet another attack from Ipswich. They have dominated possession in the last ten minutes but Chester have looked comfortable.

Badford blocks the cross. It goes out for a throw-in.

Ipswich are sending everyone forward bar the goalkeeper. They have to win to keep their title hopes alive!

Here comes the throw.

Headed clear by Addo.

It falls kindly to the away team. Chipped up...

Elmham punches clear.

Nice skill from the left back to move past Bark.

He looks up and sees a mass of bodies. He shanks his cross - that was awful. It hit Beckton on the hip, and the striker booted the ball clear.

But what’s this?

The referee has given a penalty!

He spotted a handball.

There is no video assistant in the Championship. The penalty will stand!

***

So, there it was. Even more pathetic than I had expected. I got the guys to walk away from the ref, which was hard because they were beyond livid. When there was some slight semblance of order, I quite calmly stepped to the ref.

”What are you gonna do if he saves it, Steve?”

He turned slightly red. ”You’re not the captain - you can’t talk to me.”

I wagged my finger towards him. ”This isn’t gonna end well for you.”

I walked away and told my players to go a yard further back than they would normally stand. If Ipswich missed, the ref would order a retake, but if our players were nowhere near the penalty area that was going to be much harder to explain. Probably he would say that Owen had moved too quickly or something like that. There were far too many ways a ref could get the result he wanted. The entire house of cards was built on referees being honest. Being shit was part of the game’s rich tapestry, but being dishonest was not.

My anger was rising, but all the talk of cop shows proved useful.

I had to be careful how I played this. Like a good detective, I didn’t want to arrest some low-level dealer. I had to build a case that would bring down the whole organisation. My squad was mint: Briggy, the Brig, Dylan. They could hack the ref’s phone, see what money dropped into his account and from where, follow him to clandestine meetings. The prick ref would lead us to the real criminals. I would find out who ordered this and then I’d smash up the whole fucking ring.

Ipswich scored and their players ran to their fans. They were still in the title race.

I brought up the Live Table. We had slipped to 8th - out of the playoff spots.

The ref and his mates would celebrate tonight, wouldn’t they?

I hesitated. Was it possible he was just shit? And cowardly? There should have been a red card, he cancelled two perfectly good goals, and he handed Ipswich the winning goal. You could explain one, but not all of them. Right?

I would get to the bottom of what just happened by fair means or foul, and while Briggy was doing her job, I would do mine. My freshly-rested first team would absolutely batter Birmingham and annihilate Preston. We would finish fourth and we would get to the playoff final.

The ref had taken his best shot, but my empire was still standing. And it’s like they say in Baltimore:

You come at the king, you best not miss.