Chương 112: 7.8 - The Pensioners

8. Monday, November 6 Deaaaaaaaarrrrrr Dani! It is I, Kisi Yalley, with episode 50 of the Secret Santa Missives! You might remember that I wrote the first one of these when Max and my dad went to London to fight an FA charge about Max owning West Didsbury and Chorlton AFC, and Max got away with it because it was actually my dad who owned the club! Which was a big surprise to me!

Well, it has been another day like that one, and your name came up a few times so I'm going to write it up and honestly Dani you don't need to tell me about the typos. We've seen Max at Bumpers and in the dugout. He has successfully helped Jay manage our recent matches. He has less successfully helped Well In and Sandra manage Saltney Town and Chester Men. But what we all want to know is: what stunts is he gonna do against Chelsea this weekend?! How is he gonna put LinkedIn Lee on blast?!!

What kerrrraziness is gonna unfold at the Deva Stadium for the visit of the biggest spenders in the history of sport?!!! There's gotta be something, right? Right? Am I right?! I spent the whole morning trying to DIG OUT THE TRUTH lol. I am Kisi Yalley and this is my courageous story.

So today's our day off, obvs, and I was hanging out at my mum and dad's house in Wythenshawe, South Manchester. Wythenshawe has some rough parts, some places I avoid, but for the most part people are friendly even if they're poor. We're lucky because our street is mostly retired people and their cats, or people like my dad who work at the airport, so it's quiet and everyone gets on. Dad was off work, too, and at first he was totally himself but then he went upstairs and came down in his best suit. I went, huh?

He said, I'm meeting Max. We're gonna talk to some rich Americans who want to invest in European football.

"Wait, you're not going to sell West, are you?"

"I cannot sell that which does not belong to me," he said, with deep and annoying solemnity. When he puts the suit on, he gets very serious.

"We expect these investors will want to know more about low-cost stadiums, pitch rentals, Exit Trials, UEFA coefficients, compliance with cross-border financial regimes, and all the things Two Taps Limited does so very well." All that sounds super tedious but Max meeting rich people is always good for a laugh. And I was thinking about all the chats you and I had about how epic and crazy the Chelsea match was sure to be.

"Can I come?"

"You are most welcome to join us, my beloved daughter."

"Call me my beloved daughter in front of the businessmen. They will love that." Just for a second, his natural smile peeked out through the suit.

"I very much doubt that Max will let me get a word in."

Okay, so close your eyes and when you open them, imagine that I'm at The Wall - the stadium, not Gemma's law firm. Above the pitch there are dark clouds on top of fluffy white ones, a light drizzle hangs in the air, and everything's grey even when the sun's peeking through. Great morning to play some footy, but the groundsmen are working on the pitch. One guy whose name I can't remember sees me and wanders over.

"Hi, Kisi."

"Hi, random boy I have no romantic interest in so don't even go there, Dani."

"I watched you play yesterday."

"Really? All five minutes of it?" He smiled, and I didn't stare at his dimples because he doesn't have any.

"Best five minutes of the match." I rolled my eyes.

"You're so insincere."

"Am I right that you haven't lost this season? Are you top of the league now?"

"Yes we haven't lost, but Chelsea won, too, so we've both got 20 points. We're playing them next week."

"Top of the table clash! Title decider!"

"It's too early to talk like that but yeah, it's pretty epic. We're all buzzing. It's awkward because Chester Men are playing Chelsea this weekend, too. I hate when that happens. Max steals all the limelight. He doesn't want to but he can't help it and this time it's not even his fault because Chelsea have spent two bill on transfers and Chester have spent 50 mill."

"I heard someone say it's the poorest club in the history of the Prem going up against the team that's spent the most money in the whole entire world. It's a great story."

"Yeah," I said.

"Especially when you factor in the contrast between the managers. Max is a wizard while Chelsea's manager draws Venn diagrams on LinkedIn." As so often happens when I mention anything more complicated than Love Island, the cute guy with the dimples looked lost. His eyes got wider and his smile thinner. He's not bright enough to keep up with me, which is a shame. Maybe I'll introduce him to Queenie. (Dani! That was just a joke! Don't tell anyone I said that!) But then he redeemed himself - what he said next proved that he is a young man of searing intellect and insight.

"Forget Max and his band of losers. Chester Women are absolutely crushing this season. If you ask me, it's all because of that Dani Smith-Smithe. She's amazing and gorgeous. Is she single?"

"No, she's one half of Dansky."

"Pardon me?"

"Dani plus Banksy equals Dansky." Just then, Max slid open the door of the boardroom box, leaned out, and yelled down to the side of the pitch, "Kisi, what are you doing?"

"Being an unreliable narrator to annoy Dani."

"I thought so. But hurry up in here. I need someone to laugh at my jokes." (That part really happened.) The box was just like the ones at the Deva, but this one had fancier furniture. Heavy wood table, premium chairs, and there were old things on the walls: a list of the chairmen from the early days of the club; photos of captains; some ribbons and pennants from the old days. Max was in one of his moods where he's restless and his brain is whirring around but he's grumpy because his team lost.

"Everton," I said.

"That was tough."

"Everton?" he said.

"Did we play Everton? Can't remember. The past is a foreign country. But not a great foreign country like North Wales or Malta or South Wales. I mean the kind of foreign I would never go to, like, er..."

"Cuba?" His eyebrows rose.

"Cuba! That's interesting. Hmm." He closed one eye.

"I'd love to go to Cuba but I think I never will. Buena Vista Social Club. That's Cuba, isn't it? Let me check. Ah, no. I need to stop checking things on my phone; I'm starting to annoy myself."

"You should stick to annoying everyone else."

"Haaaaaaaaa," he said, very sarcastically.

"Oh, that's professional."" Oh, that's professional," he mimicked.

"You gonna be a manchild in the meeting? When one of the b-boys says something you don't like, are you gonna repeat his words like a little boy? Or are you gonna go, know you are said you are so what am I?" He spread his arms.

"I don't know what I'm going to do. If I knew what I was going to do, we wouldn't need to have the meeting." The logic whizzed a mile over my head.

"What?" He's so strange! I realised I wasn't going to get any sense out of him, and tried to get back on track.

"Everton. What happened?"

"We got Scottished."

"What?" Max waved his hand, possibly in the direction of Hadrian's Wall.

"Their Scottsish manager, Willie Berwick, did to me what he has done to hundreds before me. He made the game stodgy, loads of set pieces, get a goal ahead, fall back, and he bets you can't break them down. Once they dug in, we couldn't get through."

"Was Cheb injured?"

"Yeah, he had a knock. This is the problem, right? Our best eleven is decent but how often are we going to be able to play together? There's a step down to the squad players."

"Going from Cheb to Bark is like going from Sarah Greene to me."

"Oh, don't start that. Christ. Look, Bark can do a job for us but he's not a match-winner at Premier League level. Which is fine. He's in the squad and everyone needs to chip in. He's neat and tidy on the ball, he does his defensive work, all that good stuff. Collectively, the entire squad, including me, couldn't do what we needed to do. Leeds was a first eleven match, Everton was a squad game. Squad game, Squid Game. Is that a future theme?"

"Focus, Max."

"You're not the boss of this conversation, Kisi. I knew how Berwick would set up - he's a trend follower, which means he's a 4-2-3-1 merchant - so I went 4-5-1 with Wibbers pushing up to make 4-4-2 at times."

"You dropped my brother. You dropped Peter and Pascal."

"I wanted height. Power. Murray Burnett can't play against his parent club, which is obviously a great pity, so I thought I'd go for Magnus and Edgar at centre back. Your brother's fit and raring to go but I don't like playing people every week. I was close to resting Wibbers, and to be honest, I wish I had. Eh, it's frustrating. Everton aren't that good. DOVE rates them as 150. We were 147. 8 but we played worse than that."

"Why didn't you start?"

"I hoped the lads would be able to grind out a nil-nil so I could rest my foot and come back against Chelsea. I really don't like Chelsea, Kisi. The fans sing for a Russian and the owners are private equity nutjobs, hollowing the club out, smacking themselves in the face with rakes non-stop but never, ever doubting their ability to run a football club for even one second. I want to fuck them up."

"I asked about the past. The future is a foreign country to me. But not an awesome country like Germany. A terrible one I would never want to visit, like... I can't think of a place I wouldn't want to visit."

"When did you go to Germany?"

"When my brother was in Munich."

"Right, of course. Okay so I was trying to rest my foot but with 20 minutes to go I couldn't see how we were gonna get a goal and Bark was blowing so I went on and tried the Robben thing. It didn't click - Everton have got the England goalie and he's pretty good at long shots - and I wasn't expecting Berwick to get adventurous. He's a sly old fox, isn't he? He stationed his wingers higher than they had been the whole match.

It was interesting, that, because in the lower leagues if I went on for the last 20 minutes 99% of managers would get defensive. Berwick opened up, and it worked."

"He doesn't strike me as a tactical mastermind."

"He's not but he's very, very solid. No mistakes, the squad are optimised for the playing style, they have pace and technique in the right places, and they're hard to score against. He thought his best chance of winning was to push for a second goal and he was right." Max sighed.

"This is just the grind. Progress isn't linear, there are plateaus. You have a breakthrough and you're excited but then there's a setback. Same as with Saltney, if you can call a tiny club losing to Real Sociedad and Arsenal a setback." I wanted to poke fun for losing 5-0 at The Emirates but I sensed an opportunity to get him to talk about his next stunt.

"You did the Protect Women stuff at Arsenal again. The home fans did not like that! I can't wait to see what you've got planned for Chelsea!" But he wasn't listening. He was pulling on his bottom lip, staring out onto his million-pound pitch. Since the Leeds match he'd had more wins than losses, if you include West Didsbury and Tempsford and Newport County and so on, but Chester Men are always going to count for more, aren't they? He murmured, "It's called a setback because you have to go back and reset.

Nah, that's terrible." He sighed and leaned against the glass. You could tell he was tired but he looked fairly relaxed.

"Never too high, Kisi. Never too low." A HUGE smile appeared, as if by magic.

"Anyway, this is exactly why I went so hard at the women's team! I knew there would be times like these so I thought, hey, if we're gonna lose on Saturday let's win on Sunday. And you did. You are boshtastic."

"Which player is key to our success this season?" I asked.

"Definitely Dani Smith-Smithe," he said. I swear to God, Dani, this part actually happened. He went, "Dani the Dynamic. Dani the Destroyer. Dani the Dutiful." It seemed like he had a hundred nicknames for you, but just then my dad came in with a couple of American guys in suits. One was very tall and the other was very short. I think they were called Chad and Trey. We did some handshakes and the guys got started while Max, me, and my dad listened. The Americans started by throwing out loads of names and numbers.

Such and such a bank, so and so many millions of dollars, stakes, shares, cash outs. I couldn't follow it, but it all sounded very impressive. My dad was listening, smiling serenely, sometimes nodding at some of the numbers. The Americans loved the response they got, but I've seen that exact face from him when watching quiz shows. What's the capital of France? Paris. Wow, so impressive that he knows that! See that, Kisi? That's a good student. I estimate that it took four minutes for Max to get fidgety.

He held up a hand.

"Let me stop you there, fam. We can come back to the social proof and the references after we've learned what it is that you want." He over-pronounced his Ts starting with the word what, which to anyone at Chester would have made them shut their mouths and wonder what they had done wrong. Well, not you because you wouldn't have heard it, but Max would never be mad at Dani the Dame of Destiny.

"Sure!" said Chad or Trey.

"As per our email, we see tremendous growth potential in European football." I saw Max's eyes narrow as the guy said football instead of soccer. Max didn't like it, which I think is because the guy wasn't being himself. The guy went on, "We're seeking delta, aiming to leverage our capital pools to unlock unfair advantages, and with AI-powered tools we can integrate vertically to create synergistic wins on a range of vectors." I might not have remembered it exactly, Dani, but it was something like that!

Dad was SUPER impressed, but Max said, "Great, that sounds amazing. I'm happy you've got it all figured out. You clearly don't need us." Boom! I didn't know what was happening but that was an amazing mic drop. Trey or Chad looked worried and realised they had been too cocky. They started to backtrack but Max was getting warmed up. He went, "You mentioned a few pension funds in your intro. I don't quite understand why pension funds in Delaware and Minnesota are investing in European soccer.

How is owning Ipswich Town a good idea for a pension fund from Arizona? It's all good fun when they're getting promoted from the Champ to the Prem but when they spaff 60 million quid up the wall on two guys from the French league who won't play more than a thousand minutes between them, does that mean some poor guy in Phoenix doesn't get his pension next month? If you took my mum's pension money and invested it into Ipswich Town I would turn feral."

The Americans said that the Phoenix pension fund 'got a good exit' but Max didn't care. He went, "What about all the other ones? How are you doing your fiduciary duty by investing in an industry that loses money?" Then he said, "Fuck it, whatever, this isn't the topic. It winds me up, but we can move past it. In the gold rush, they said the best way to make money was to sell shovels. You guys want to sell shovels, right?

Are you thinking of DOVE or buying stadiums to rent back or do you want to invest in entire leagues or what's your specific angle?" Chadtrey talked fast for a while. I can't be sure, but I think they said the word 'acquisition' and they might have said 'emergent opportunities'. Dad looked more impressed than ever. But it was during one of those meaningless sentences that Max exploded. Like, he got properly angry. Not football angry like when he's mad we took a shot instead of passing.

He got fire-and-brimstone preacher angry.

"Are you fucking kidding me? You want to buy West Didsbury? Why have you lied about the purpose of this meeting?" Treychad got defensive.

"We didn't lie!" He explained himself, which just made Max even more furious and even I was getting rattled because why the shit can't they talk normal? The guy had the nerve to say that it was obvious what he wanted because that's what 'explore an opportunity' means. Max was on his feet, and he kept looking at my dad and my dad being there was the only thing stopping him from smashing something. His rage condensed so much that he got quiet.

"If you communicated like a human being you could have got a one-word answer and saved yourself a flight. And I could have taken my godson to feed the penguins! What the fuck!" The short American got smarmy, like he was talking to an idiot. He turned to my dad and said, "I flew over to speak to the owner of West Didsbury. I am willing to sign a memorandum of understanding that values the club at five million pounds."

"Five million!" laughed Max, without humour. He swept his hand around.

"That buys you the stadium. Another five gets you the licence to compete in the National League and the club logo. Another five gets you the fucking bats." The guy looked at my dad.

"Mr. Yalley, what is your valuation?"

"Two hundred and fifty thousand," said my dad, which made Max's jaw drop. Dani, sorry to be mean to Max but it was so funny! He went from being so angry and powerful to deflating like a cartoon. He was thinking, OMG is Mr. Yalley going to betray me? But why would he say such a strange number? Dad has been spending a lot of time with businessmen. Maybe the more time he spends with them, the less he becomes the man who raised me. I looked at him and whispered, "Dad?" The short guy said, "Two hundred fifty?"

"That is the valuation of my house, Mr. Trey. It is the only asset that it is in my power to sell. Would you like to hear the details of my mortgage?" The Trey guy was fuming.

"Everything's for sale." I opened my mouth to say something mean like, 'So buy some stilts, then, short-arse,' but I shut my gob because I would have gotten a lecture from Max and I'm glad I didn't say anything because I got to see my dad do the coolest thing he has ever done. He fixed the Americans with a steely gaze and said, "Give my regards to the pensioners of Delaware and Minnesota. May they live long and draw their full pensions."

"Amen," said Max.

Max drove us back to our house in Wythenshawe. We told him he didn't need to, but he said the only thing that could cheer him up was some premium toast. I sat in the front. Dad was in the back, texting people with his font so big one word takes up the whole screen. During the drive, Max was chuntering about rich people being a bunch of dicks. I said, "But you're rich." He said, "Exactly." But sometimes he would just grin from ear to ear and go, "Kisi, your dad is a ledge."

And once he went, "How come his English is so good? Draw a pension isn't everyday language, is it?"

"He helps at the church, Max. Helps the olds to navigate the system." Max smiled for a while but then got angry and said something like, "Private equity pricks. Fucking deceptive! Were they trying to sneak a meeting with your dad without me being there? Thinking they could pull the wool over his eyes? I despise them so much." The idea of some business fucks ripping off my dad got me feeling biblical, Dani!

Max had already sorted this case, but I wanted to know what I was dealing with so I could help dad when Max wasn't around. I said, "What is private equity?"

"Remember when Henri got a bunch of people to lend me money so that Saltney Town could buy some players? A bunch of people chipped in and there was a pot of a hundred grand or whatevs. I used it to buy three players, I made them better, we sold them for a profit, the syndicate got a big payoff. That's basically private equity."

"That sounds... fine?"

"Yeah I'm sure the whole private equity idea started out with good intentions and whatnot but these days it's way more sinister. It's basically pure evil. They bought Cadbury's chocolate and they have been taking out the chocolate and making the sizes smaller and jacking up the prices. Everyone hates Cadbury's now, have you noticed? They literally killed an iconic British brand.

"And they aren't just out to ruin life for us. I read an insane story about fire engines in America. They used to be built by solid, family-owned companies, but one by one, all those companies got bought by private equity and now they've got a monopoly and they jacked up the prices and don't make the parts for repairs and you have to wait five years to buy a new fire engine."

"Five years?" I said.

"That's crazy."

"I know. You think, just buy one from China. But the private equity bastards paid politicians to ban imports of fire engines from China. So they have no competition and they can charge what they want. Literally ten times the cost of other countries! Go and read any story about wildfires in the U. S. and you'll see comments about how the fire departments don't have enough trucks. As a society, we get billions in property damage so that guys like Chad and Trey can make millions.

And it's their own houses burning down, too, and they don't care. It's surreal. It makes no sense. They are fundamentally broken people.

"And now they're bringing that mentality to football, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Disengaged fan bases, soulless corporate communications, the careers of players and managers alike being laid to waste. The only sane response to meeting a private equity guy is to renounce Christianity, get medieval on his ass, then go back to church and beg for forgiveness. God will appear and say, Kisi, you don't need forgiveness for this, you did the right thing."

At this point, my dad scolded Max saying he shouldn't joke about things like that, but Max was shrieking, "Who's joking? Who's joking?" I'm pretty sure he was joking.

Max was back to complaining that his day had been wasted, a day he could have spent crabbing on Shell Island with supermodels or doing a crossword with Diggy Doggy or asking Emma to throw frisbees around a park for him to catch in his mouth. But three things combined to cheer him up. A hug from my mum, her putting the kettle on, and him seeing that the toaster he bought us was in the kitchen and had crumbs in.

"You're using it! Yisss!" I said, "Max wants some toast, mum." Before he could stop me, I grabbed a slice of bread from the packet and dropped it into the machine. Did Max buy you a toaster, Dani? He loves gifting these super expensive toasters. There are five buttons. The first just says toast and when you press it, the cage slowly sinks, dragging your bread into the depths of hell to be burned with heavenly precision. The mechanism is like an expensive watch - smooth and controlled and satisfying.

There's a button that says 'a quick peek'. Hit that and the toast rises so you can take a look at it. If the session finishes and you wish the bread was toasted a bit more, you press the button labelled 'a bit more'! And there's an LED bar on the front that tells you how long is left.

"That's quality, that," said Max, transfixed, as the blessed device beeped and brought forth the holy toast.

"No way is this company owned by private equity, but it's gonna happen, isn't it? We can't have nice things." He lifted the toast and brushed a finger across it.

"Look at the tasteful thickness of it!" He nibbled a corner.

"Maybe I should buy, like, a hundred of these toasters just in case the company gets bought and they remove all the buttons or turn it into a subscription service. On the free plan it only toasts half a slice. It burns adverts into the crust." Mum said, "Stay positive, Max. I learned a British phrase.

'Cheer up, it might never happen'."

"You're right." He put the toast on the counter and placed his palms on either side of the toaster, the way he sometimes holds Emma's head before he kisses her. He spoke to my mum.

"Do you love it? You love it, don't you? How much do you love it?"

"I do really love it. It's like a third child." Max laughed.

"More fun than James, more reliable than Kisi."

"Hey," I said, but he wasn't completely wrong.

"Finish your toast, Max. Don't waste food." That was one point to me, and Max didn't mind that at all. He picked up the dry toast and took another nibble. Mum said, "The meeting did not go well?"

"No. They wanted to buy West." Max nodded at mum's astonishment.

"I know!"

"But why did you agree to meet them?"

"Because we thought they wanted something else! How they communicate barely counts as English. I thought they might want to direct a few million quid into my grubby hands." Mum was puzzled.

"How do they communicate so badly?"

"It's because they're in their little world and they love talking to each other and hate talking to outsiders so the language becomes more exclusionary and pretentious." He perked up.

"They have reinvented French! Ha! But tell you what, there's an easy way to demonstrate this kind of language. The Chelsea manager talks like this." I almost froze. This was my chance to get Max blabbing about the villain of the week. While he was complaining about the oppo, Max would also reveal which stunts he had planned!

"The Chelsea manager?" I said, sweetly.

"LinkedIn Lee?"

"Yeah," said Max, tapping on his phone.

"I have heard of LinkedIn," said my mum, "but do not know what it is. What actually is it?"

"It's social media for weirdo businessmen," said Max.

"They're all just showing off all day."

"Like Instagram," said mum. While I was trying to decide if what she said was cringe or not, Max nodded.

"Yeah but with a business tilt. Like there's this one guy who said, this morning my landlord told me he was putting my rent up by ten percent. I said make it twenty percent because it'll just give me more motivation to grind."

"No," said mum.

"Yes," said Max.

"They're all nutjobs. There's a subreddit called LinkedIn Lunatics where people share screenshots of people posting gibberish they think will get them clout. One of those nutjobs is a football manager called Lee Croft." He moved next to my mum to show her a video. Before he pressed play, he said, "Imagine you're a player or a fan and you have to work out what he's saying." I moved onto the other side of Max so I could watch, too.

Lee Croft, who's pretty good-looking actually, was talking in that very strange, hesitant way of his, like he's serving up sentences one word at a time so you can better enjoy the ingredients.

"I'm a manager, but what does that mean actually? Take things back to their first principles. Manage is comprised of two words, man and age. I like to think that I am ageing men. That's my football philosophy." Max paused it. Mum frowned.

"This is a slop?" I said, "No, that's real. He's trying to talk about teaching young men and helping them to get more mature."

"Then why doesn't he say that?" Max said, "Because he got sucked into the corporate jet engine and his language skills got shredded. There's more, listen." On the phone, Lee Croft was pleased to reveal more of his philosophy.

"But what is football? It's two words, foot and ball. The ball is the B all and if it's the B all then it's the end all. Why does foot come first? Because you've got to put your best foot forward."

"Oh dear," said mum. Max put his phone down and took another tiny nibble of the toast.

"I actually feel sorry for him in some ways. He's bright enough to realise that if he hangs around with corporate types he can learn their ways and get accepted, and he's seen that football is hurtling headlong towards being just another arm of the entertainment industry. Ryan Reynolds has Disneyfied Wrexham. Private equity is taking over a new club every month and filling it with people who think and talk like this. Lee Croft is actually a trailblazer. He's ahead of the curve.

The problem is, football has always been a working class sport so your end customers are people who instinctively distrust corporate speak. Croft is fundamentally repellant to the average fan. Check this out." Max showed us a photo of an Insta post. It said,'Lee Croft is not wearing gloves in training so the players can hear his applause when they do something he likes.' I cringed.

"Oh, God, no." Max said, "I think this is real but it feels like someone is trying to channel Croft's try-hard mentality to wind up the Chelsea fans. There's another one from the next day where a few players got flu so Croft reminded the squad to wash their hands, then the next day he's got the Chelsea first team, two billion pounds of talent, on the floor building things from Lego. With every new detail you're thinking, it could be a joke but that sounds like something he would do." I blinked."

You yell at us about washing our hands! And I could imagine you locking us in a room full of Lego and saying we can't come out until we have built a replica of the Deva or a statue of Max Best." Max smiled.

"No, I would blindfold one of you and that person would be the only one allowed to touch the bricks, so the others would have to communicate clearly." He gestured towards his screen.

"If I did this kind of thing, Wrexham fans would laugh but they wouldn't use it as evidence that I'm not a proper football man. They'd laugh because I'm weird, not because I'm out of touch. The more I blast billionaires and hedge funds, the more the average fan respects me even if they don't like me. Lee Croft is seen as a kiss-arse, a suck-up." I said, "Is he good?" Max thought about it.

"In some ways. Tactics, coaching, yes. Motivating, man management, no. If I was building a football manager in an RPG I could imagine that's an optimal way to do it, right? You give him the things that he needs to win games, and spend a few years working on his other skills. Everyone likes him, by the way, but as a football manager sometimes it's better to be feared than liked. But you can learn that if you're in a safe space, like a sixth-tier football club."

I said, "You made your mistakes in a low-pressure environment." Max scoffed.

"It felt high-pressure to me, to Jackie, to Ian Evans, but yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Chelsea is a billion times more intense than what I had to deal with, so taking the Chelsea job was a disaster for Lee Croft. He was doing fine in France, building his CV, learning the job. He should have stayed there for two years, then taken over a Championship club.

His record would have bought him some leeway and when these weird quotes came out, he could have laughed them off and said, yeah, I was really keen to impress and sometimes I went a bit too far. He could have been really charming about it, had the fans eating out of his hands.

"But he's so in that b-boy mindset I don't think he can quite work out why people are laughing at him." He sighed.

"I heard a rumour from another manager that Croft is leaking these stories because he thinks it will make him look good. That's... bonkers."

"You wouldn't want to do anything bonkers," I said.

"Would you, Max? Finish the toast." He laughed and took another nibble. Mum said, "Would you like some butter? Mustard?"

"I'll eat it dry as a punishment for failing at Everton." Dad was in his armchair in the living room, texting but listening, too. He said, "Repent!" I said, "You can have butter if you tell us how you're going to destroy Lee Croft. Are you gonna wear soundproof gloves?" Max and mum gave me a strange look. Mum turned to Max and said, "What does it matter if Croft speaks a little strangely? He is good at the important parts of his job, isn't he?"

Max said, "Yeah but part of the job is managing his image because he's the face of the organisation. He doesn't need to be Proper Chels, but - ""Sorry, but what is that?"

"Um... If you go to watch Chelsea these days, half the Matthew Harding Stand is tourists, right? And people from, like, Kent who started to support the club because they were winning trophies. Nothing wrong with that - citation needed - but those fans aren't the heart and soul of the club. They aren't Proper Chels. Proper Chels are the guys who look like extras in a Guy Ritchie movie. They drive taxis and eat jellied eels.

TBH I know more about Texas than that part of the world, but the hard core fans, the ones who would still be turning up if Chelsea went down to League One, they are the real fans."

"Your sport is so baffling. To me, a fan is a fan is a fan. When you have so many distinctions and shades of fandom, how do you keep everything straight?" Max shrugged.

"It's the water we swim in. Okay so Croft is the avatar for the fans so when he looks stupid, so does the whole club. He got off to a pretty good start on the pitch. I think Chelsea won 6 of their first 8, although some of those were easy European games. But the longer he spends with the players, the worse they play. That's no good, obvs. And why's that happening? Because they don't respect him, which is because he got such a big job too soon, and because he talks like a guy who sells AI tools.

Another manager told me that the senior players call him 'The Supply Teacher'." Dad looked up from his phone.

"What is that?"

"When your teacher is sick or pregnant," I said, pausing because Max mumbled something like 'pergunant', "you get a supply teacher. It's someone who comes in for a short time and you never see them again." Dad nodded.

"They do not have the authority of the real teacher. The difficult children misbehave." Max punched me in the arm.

"Yeah, Kisi." I scoffed.

"Like you never acted out in class." He shook his head, quite serious.

"I told some jokes but basically I was just waiting for the breaks so we could rush to the playground and get a game going. Some days, no-one had brought a ball and that's when school got super bleak. Lee Croft says that he was coaching his school team when he was 9. He was thinking about tactics all the time. His dad was a manager and when he had his mates around, Lee would pretend to be asleep on the sofa so he could listen to them talk." I got way too enthusiastic again.

"Haha, you can rinse him for that!" Max stared at me, confused. Mum said, "That sounds like someone you would want to employ." Max said, quietly, "Yeah." I pounced again.

"But he turned to the dark side." Max stepped towards me and placed the back of his hand against my forehead, checking to see if I had a fever. I slapped his hand away. He said, "It's not the dark side. Like I said, it's logical. You go into a job interview and speak the language of the people who are giving out the jobs. And maybe he genuinely likes the whole corporate world." He got quiet again.

"I'm lucky I don't have to be like that. If I was starting out and I really, really wanted to get to the top, it's possible that's how I would do it." I punched him on the arm." You couldn't be a kiss-arse." He shrugged.

"I could. I would put up with it until I got a few mill in the bank, right? I would go full normo for as long as I could. But you need to be able to switch. Be a suck-up in the board room, a monster in the dressing room, a charmer in the press room." Something occurred to me.

"Why are other managers sending you mean comments about him?"

"Jealousy," said Max.

"Disbelief that he was offered this job, astonishment that he took it. Quite a lot of schadenfreude now that it's already starting to fall apart. Croft is liked as a person and no-one doubts his coaching ability or his tactical acumen but everyone is stocking up on popcorn." I gasped.

"Because you're gonna end his career! Another body for the boy Best!" I did a little dance. Max stared through the window.

"He's my opponent, but he's not my enemy." Mum said, "Does this mean you will beat Chelsea? Will James play?"

"He'll play, yes. Probably. Don't get mad if I have a late brainwave."

"After you brought us such a wonderful toaster, how could we ever be mad?" Max laughed and squeezed her, then said, "I don't know about winning but I expect Lee Croft to overthink his tactics, to make one huge mistake that he fixes fairly early. He'll be innovative and quick to change things, but I'll keep tweaking things and we'll have a lot of success. Chelsea are a young squad full of big egos. They're the kinds of players who play great against Paris or Barcelona and then lose to Brentford."

"Why is that?" said mum.

"Motivation," said Max.

"We're just not a juicy opponent and those players will expect to win on sheer talent alone. We will outwork them, outrun them, outthink them. They have spent two billion and they will be five times easier to play against than Everton. I quite fancy a goal, to be honest. I was thinking of whipping my top off to reveal a Ukraine t-shirt underneath." Okay, so this was obviously my best chance to ask about stunts but this was literally maddening!

"You spent the last two weeks complaining about players getting yellow cards for dumb bullshit!"

"Language," said mum. Max said, "When Gabby does it, it's utter head loss. When Wibbers does it, it's self-defeating banter-boy nonsense that makes it harder for us to win. When I do it," said Max, and you can probably guess that he was already puffing himself up and speaking like Winston Churchill.

"When I do it, it's a geopolitical statement. I'm giving succour for the good people of Ukraine, letting them know that decent Brits, true Brits stand behind them, not behind vile oligarchs who are alleged to have supplied tanks to the war machine. For my players, a needless yellow is a mark of shame. For I, Max Best, the referee's sanction is a badge of honour. If supporting our allies is a crime then I'm proud to be guilty."

He was so inflated that his feet were half a metre off the floor and his head was touching the ceiling. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. It fell to me to call him out.

"You said you would fine Gabby and Wibbers a week's wages if they took their tops off."

"I will fine myself a week's wages and give it to a relevant charity." He went into some daydream and he was having a great time in there, but he snapped out.

"I can't do it though."

"Why not? Used all your Be A Hypocrite tokens for the season?" He glared at me.

"How can I run out of tokens? I create the tokens." While he was off balance, it was time to strike.

"If you aren't going to do that - " He wasn't listening, which I know for a fact because he ran into our living room and peered through the net curtains.

"The fuck?" he said, and crashed through the front door, leaving a hole in the shape of a man. I rushed after him, just in time to see Max launch himself over the fence between our front yard and the house to our left. That one is at the end of the street and it has a diagonal-shaped extra bit of garden, but in every other way it's the same as ours. What was it that made Max react like a crazy person? He had seen an estate agent carrying one of those wooden signs to plant in the garden. You know the ones.

They say: FOR SALE.

I didn't think I could leap over the fence the way Max did, so I had to go the long way round. By the time I caught up, Max was already knee-deep into his latest madness.

"Kisi! Isn't this great? I'm buying this house!" It had taken me ten seconds to get there.

"What?" He was hyper.

"I'm gonna knock down the internal walls and turn your parent's house into a megadwelling! One enormo kitchen, two dining rooms, and we'll convert some of the surplus bedrooms into modern essentials. Darts room, one full of old arcade machines, and a padded room for scream therapy and sound baths."

"Slow down, Max, Jesus! My mum and dad don't want a megadwelling. The fancy toaster is already out of their comfort zone. Don't buy this if you think... How would that work, anyway? What if you build one big kitchen but then you decide to put the wall back? It's crazy." His eyes darted around.

"You're right. We shouldn't have any internal kitchens at all. One giant outdoor kitchen, that's the future."

"Max, I hate to be the one to calm you down but I think you need a nap."

"Yeah," he said, thumbing behind him.

"I'll nap in my new house, mate."

"But - " He grinned, suddenly.

"Guess how much it is?"

"I don't know. How would I know?"

"Your dad said it! He got it spot on. 250 thousand." I shrugged.

"Okay? I don't care?" He tutted.

"Your dad is a ledge and it winds me up that you don't appreciate him. Whoa, what are you doing?" The guy from the estate agent was hauling the wooden sign into place.

"Putting this up."

"But I told you I want to buy it."

"This is how we advertise our business."

"Nah, no thanks. I don't want you poking holes in my garden. That's a deal-breaker, okay? I'm giving you the easiest money of all time. What a story! Think of the two versions you can tell at your next dinner party. One. I sold a house while I was putting up the sign! Some hottie is gonna look you up and down and say you must be an amazing salesman! You can ask ChatGPT what you should do from there. Version two. I nearly sold a house before I had even put up the sign!

The hottie is gonna say, why did the deal fall through? Oh, because I wanted to put up a 'for sale' sign in a house I had already sold and the buyer walked away. Eek. Conversation's over."

"I have to put up the sign! It's my job!"

"Kisi, go and get a flamethrower." The front door opened and Mr. Peel poked his head out. He was the old guy who lived there. He had been there for donkey's years. We didn't talk to him much because he liked to be left alone but we took care of him in the pandemic and things like that.

"Kisi? What's going on?" I went to him and said, "My friend wants to buy your house."

"Oh!"

"He's high on toast but he's nice really. He's the one who scouted me and James and took us to Chester."

"Oh, that's him, is it?" Max appeared and offered a handshake.

"Hello!" I did the introductions, then said, "Mr. Peel, why are you selling?" He looked very old, all of a sudden.

"I've got to. This house is my pension, Kisi. It's all I've got. But I can't do the stairs very well, not any more." He tried to smile.

"I used to see you training in the back garden. Doing your kick-ups! You're much better at those than your brother. You have lovely balance." Max nodded fast.

"Yep yep yep. But you mean sort of left and right balance, don't you? You don't mean she's balanced in terms of attacking and defending. She hasn't quite got to grips with that side of the sport." Dani, my boss was making fun of me while he was buying a house! I glared at him.

"Is that why I'm not in the team?"

"You're not in the team because I bought three of the best players in Europe." He showed his teeth.

"Which proves how good you are. In fact, I might turn this house into the Kisi Yalley museum. We'll recreate your bedroom in here, exactly as it is now, and the rest of the place we'll fill with trophies and replica kits. Your mum and dad will come to visit every day. Five pounds each, free entry on Sundays, that's, like, over three thousand pounds a year in passive income." How does he get under my skin so much?

"You think the only people who would visit the Kisi Yalley museum would be my mum and dad?"

"And the cleaner," said Max.

"Sir," he said, turning back to Mr. Peel.

"I hope you are able to enjoy your retirement. I'm gonna go and shift some money around so there are no delays." Max walked towards the front gate. I waved at a perplexed and confused Mr. Peel, caught up with Max, stopped him, and said, "Why exactly are you doing this?" He looked along the road and pointed to the houses, one by one.

"I'm going to buy every house here and when I've collected them all, I'm going to rename the street Yalley Valley." I groaned with frustration.

"You're so annoying! You're way more cringe than Lee Croft!" He just stood there, enjoying the look on my face. I gritted my jaw and said, "Have you got anything planned for the Chelsea match, yes or no?"

"Yes."

"What?" He spread his arms.

"Loads. It'll be non-stop, wall-to-wall stuff. 20 minutes of music, costumes, pageantry, special guests."

"Gloves? Something with gloves?" He nodded.

"There will be gloves, yes." My heart soared. A 20-minute rinsing of Chelsea FC! I grinned.

"Amazing. I can't wait!"

Saturday, November 11 English Premier League Match 12 of 38: Chester versus Chelsea Sandra and I had plotted and schemed and decided that, for all that Lee Croft was a bit of a weirdo, if we went too attacking against Chelsea they would rip us a new one. If we made the game stodgy enough for long enough, the away team would crack. That crack could take many forms, from players refusing to obey their manager's instructions to them getting stupid red cards.

We would need some extra help, because even the private equity negabrains who owned the club couldn't completely waste 2 billion quid. In terms of potential, at least, Chelsea would be right up there with the top teams in the Prem. So the plan was my trusty old 4-1-4-1. Slightly conservative, very solid, Youngster in the position and formation that suited him best, and a fairly beefy eleven that would do well at set pieces. Marek was in goal, because we would play a passing game.

Chelsea were the laziest team in the division - in the country, maybe - which is what happens when you sign twenty entitled dipshits based on YouTube highlight reels. Our back four was Helge, Peter, Edgar, and Cheb. Pretty good mix of skills there. Youngster would patrol between the lines and make life hard for Chelsea's supremely talented creatives. Lewis was left mid, Magnus and Jimmy were the CMs, Wibbers was on the right. Gabby was the lone striker.

He would plough a lonely furrow for a while, but I had told him that Chelsea would fuck up either tactically or on the pitch at least once in the match so he needed to stay positive and he needed to be ready to take his chance when it came. Overall, our average CA was 149. 6. We were crawling, one decimal at a time, towards the 150 mark. Training had slowed quite considerably for most of the squad, with notable exceptions being lads who had made their international debuts in the recent past.

Which was good news for Magnus Evergreen, who had picked a country to play for and used his connections (me) to get himself called up to... Scotland?

"My father is from the Orkney Islands. I thought you knew that? That's why I'm called Magnus." While I was off managing Wales in the final two Nations League games, Chester's central midfield combo could be lining up for the Tartan Army. There were far worse international combinations than Jimmy McNeill and Magnus Evergreen. I walked around the edge of the pitch, taking in the sights and sounds. It was early but this was a decent time to do a couple of selfies or chat to some stewards.

Someone called from the Main Stand, and I saw Kisi and her parents. The latter waved at me, while Kisi ran down a few steps, eyes shining.

"I need to talk to you!"

"You've got five seconds," I said.

"Time's up. You've got another five seconds. Time's up." She looked to the sky and said, "Urgh! Listen, I know you were teasing me this week."

"Soz what?"

"Don't act innocent. You were getting people to drop hints about the big show you've got planned. The physios were saying, hey, did you hear Max is gonna paint the grass yellow and blue like the flag of Ukraine? Harper and Sophie were saying they've worked on a special pre-match video that will make every Chelsea fan's head explode. Stuff like that. You've been teasing me and I want you to know that I'm onto you."

"Er, okay. Not sure what I should say to that."

"And this house thing. That was a disappointment."

"It was a what?"

"I thought you had big plans! The Kisi Museum, turning it into an arcade, shit like that."

"Er, what? You okay, Kisi? Are you feverish? Have you been washing your hands? I can get you some disinfectant gel or some emergency therapy."

"I thought I would have an amazing story to tell, like a proper He's Done What?! But dad says you've given the house to the church and they're gonna rent it to people who need it."

"The paperwork hasn't gone through but the church is going to rent the house from me for cheap and they can use it to help someone in their community or use it as - You know what? I don't need to think about it. They know who needs a helping hand better than me, right? I'm guessing your parents will get to fuss over their new neighbour and do Bible readings together and all that. It's a great plan. And an elderly guy who society deems expendable has cashed out and can live out his days in peace.

What's the problem?"

"The problem is you said you were going to do something insane with it! I was hyped." I pointed ahead.

"I need to check the perimeter."

"Wait wait wait. I know what you're going to do to make fun of Chelsea! When they're doing their weird little huddle around the ball on the centre circle, you're going to do a circle around their circle! Haha, it'll be so funny." A lot of teams did a final huddle just before kick-off, but Lee Croft had told his players to do their one while surrounding the ball. My read was that it was supposed to be intimidating and slash or annoying, like if your older brother holds a toy above your head and you can't reach it.

The gesture was supposed to say, we are powerful, we are in control. Croft had explained it to the media by saying, 'We want to respect the ball', and a new tsunami of memes had been born. The guy needed to stay away from farms; he had foot-in-mouth disease.

"I did think about circling their circle," I confessed.

"Am I that obvious?" The Match Overview screen appeared and I idly checked Chelsea's line-ups and tactics, even though I knew what to expect. Time stopped. Kisi said more things but I couldn't hear. In my head, drums were sounding the call to battle, pipes were calling me to my duty. Lee Croft had fucked up! He had royally fucked up! Amazed at what I was seeing, I hurried back to the tunnel and dived into the manager's room.

Chelsea's previous manager had set his players up in a 4-2-3-1 formation, and Croft had done very well at first by sticking to the previous guy's plans. But recently, Croft had started to go his own way.

"3-4-3," I said, legit amazed. Chelsea's second-best player was a DM, who in this system would play as a CM - I couldn't mock that one too much because I often did the same with Youngster, but not always out of choice. Keen, by some metrics Chelsea's best player, their captain, was a right back who was being asked to play as a right-sided centre back.

Only one of the three forwards worked hard, Croft had dropped his best goalie and brought in a much less reliable backup, and worst of all, only one of the back three was a proper centre back.

"This is filth," I said.

"Vile!" I took a few minutes to satisfy myself that this was the real starting eleven, then went to get Sandra. She was holding the teamsheet.

"Have you seen this?!"

"Get in here," I said, hurrying back to our office. We couldn't change our starting eleven, but we could change how we used them.

A quarter of an hour before kick-off, the moment Kisi had been waiting for finally arrived. I had promised her a big event, and that's exactly what I delivered. 99% of the fans were in place, because Kisi was the only one who hadn't realised what date it was and what it meant. November 11th was the anniversary of Armistice Day; tomorrow was Remembrance Sunday. Why Kisi thought I would be an obnoxious clown on either of those dates was beyond me.

The Chelsea dugouts were packed with analysts and medics and subs and of course, Lee Croft himself, who was looking very dapper in his soft jacket and his trendy glasses. He came to shake my hand, and Sandra's too. Tactics 15, Motivating 6, Man Management 7. I couldn't help but feel his war would soon be over, and I had mixed feelings about that. The stadium's background music ceased.

After a moment, trumpets sounded, and Joe Anka introduced John Smith, AKA The Brig, previously Chester's assistant manager, and William Barnes, AKA Barnesy, the former board member. Both were in full army uniform, medals, all the frills. They strode ten yards onto the pitch and welcomed those who followed. A large group came from 3 R Welsh, including Dylan, for what I hoped would be the last time. I have to say, he looked very smart. The riflemen formed up in an orderly rectangle and stood stock still.

The applause levels rose as Joe welcomed to the pitch eleven servicemen and women from Ukraine, who I had invited not as a fuck you to the Chelsea fans, but out of sheer admiration. Finally, a dozen elderly men and women shuffled into the middle. They were resplendent in red coats with gold buttons, medals galore, black tricorn hats with a gold trim, and just for Kisi - white gloves.

These were Chelsea Pensioners, ex-servicemen who gave up their pension in exchange for the right to live in the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a unique retirement home. Cute little kids rushed out with chairs for them to sit on. A couple of the prouder, more stubborn ones tried to stay standing, but I walked over and said if they didn't sit, they weren't invited to Nando's after. That did the trick.

I slunk back into position, and watched the big screen as it showed a video made by Sophie and Harper using our splat technology.

'Chester welcomes Proper Chels.' The old boys and girls were made to look like they were in Guardians of the Galaxy before they came together, standing arm in arm, with the camera pulling back to reveal that they were standing on Stonehenge-style blocks that spelled the words, 'LEST WE FORGET.' That was met with a quick roar of approval, sustained applause, and plenty of smiles from the servicepeople.

From that point, things went much as they always did, as was happening at football stadiums all around the country: pipers, wreaths, and solemnity culminating in a one-minute silence. When the referee blew his whistle to end the silence, there was a throaty, lusty roar. I was relieved. That had gone pretty much perfectly. The Brig came to shake my hand.

"Outstanding, sir. Outstanding."

"Honour, duty, courage, sacrifice. Those are the virtues this country was built on. These are the people who exhibit those virtues; we will remember them." The Brig was moved by my words until I got cheeky.

"Can I go back to being a dick now?" He grinned.

"I wouldn't have it any other way."

I did my last bit of warming up and was astonished to see that Chelsea were standing around the centre spot, doing their inane huddle. I thought they might take the day off but no, the ball had to be respected! Based on the players who had travelled to Chester, Lee Croft could have named a CA 167 side. He had somehow managed to drag it down to CA 158, but based on their characters and warped Attribute distributions, they would surely play worse than that number. There was the worst goalie in the Premier League.

Handling 12? In the top tier of English football? Are you serious? There was the most cobbled-together defence in the Premier League. A right back, a centre back, and a left back, each of whom had major flaws in their game. The centre back was in the correct position, at least, and he had clawed his way to CA 160 while having Determination 7 and Positioning 8. Awful numbers. Was he the best shit player in history?

The midfield was impressive, with the dominant DM being supported by an injury-prone CM who was yet again returning from a long lay-off. He wouldn't last the 90 minutes, not even close, so it would be interesting to see how Croft handled that situation. The wide forwards were, to be polite, mercurial. If I wasn't cosplaying as someone mature for Armistice Day I would have called them dogshit. Chelsea did have an amazing Brazilian winger but he was injured.

Their star striker was also Brazilian, and he was dangerous, if inconsistent. His backup was a cocky bastard who was Championship quality. Overall, the team was full of weak players. Unprofessional, whiny brats with low Determination, low Decisions, high wages. Guys who would politic to get their manager sacked instead of digging in to make his tactics work. Guys who were loathed by the Proper Chels. Chelsea had signed Wallace Wells from us and immediately loaned him out.

Wallace wasn't good enough to play for Chelsea, not really, and compared to most players at Bumpers Bank his attitude had been merely average, but he could have shown his new teammates a thing or two about how to prepare, how to manage a game, how to react to adversity. The match kicked off. I wasn't sure how many Chelsea Pensioners were Chelsea fans - probably not many - but just in case, as a mark of respect, I waited five minutes to spoil their all-expenses paid day out.

Extracts taken from Seals Live. Boggy: Listen to that! Both sets of fans in full voice. Cracking atmosphere here at the Deva. With me is one of our trainees, Veronica, who you will have heard as co-comms for the women's matches against Sheffield United and West Ham. All our trainees receive tactical education from the coaches at Chester and Saltney, something I certainly never had! The joke is the training they get is more detailed than on a UEFA C licence! I'm not actually sure that is a joke. Welcome, Ronnie!

What do you make of this one so far? Ronnie: Thanks, Boggy. Yes well it's an interesting matchup and there have been some surprises already. Chelsea have lined up in a 3-4-3 formation, which is one we're all familiar with at the Deva, especially those of us who watched the women's team. Boggy: What are the strengths and weaknesses of that setup? Ronnie: It's very balanced and very flexible.

My guess is that Lee Croft knows his players don't like running so he has tried to put them in a situation where they don't have to run as much. Boggy: If only they could form a circle around the ball and take it into the goal mouth, like a maul in rugby. Here's Alloula. Wilde. Youngster. Chester moving the ball easily. Now it's turned over. Chelsea push forward, but they dally on the ball and the Seals form two banks of four behind the ball. Now that's what hard work looks like!

Ronnie: Do you want to hear some of my hard work? Until the 1950s, Chelsea's nickname was The Pensioners and they had a pensioner on their badge. Boggy: I didn't know that! We're back on the ball. Playing well, but there isn't a lot of forward thrust yet. Ronnie: Whoa! Boggy: Er, some, er, lots of changes... What's...? Players are moving everywhere. There's chaos. The camera feed cuts to Lee Croft, who looks puzzled. Ronnie: He always does. Boggy: I have no idea what I'm looking at.

It seemed that Chester inverted the entire starting eleven! I can't make head nor tail of what just happened. Help me out, Veronica. Ronnie: One moment... [Scribbling pencil noises.] Boggy: Bauer puts his foot on the ball. Clips a pass to McNeill. That pair are in the right positions... Ronnie: Got it! Okay so it's absolutely bananas, but we've got, uh, 4-2-0-1-3. Boggy: Four-two-oh-one-three? What's that? Ronnie: No clue! I think Max just invented it. The defenders are Lewis, Peter, Magnus, and Cheb. See?

Boggy: Magnus has moved back, yes. Ronnie: So has Lewis. He was left mid at first, remember? The two DMs are Youngster and Jimmy McNeill. So that's six defensive players, right? Very solid. Then there's a gap, and Wibbers is playing behind three strikers. Boggy: But we don't have three strikers... You don't mean Gabby, Helge, and Edgar Wilde? But that's wild! Ronnie: My guess is we will play more direct and - [Crowd noise.] Boggy: Bauer with a booming pass!

Helge comfortably wins the header, knocks it down for Wibbers. The young tearaway surges forward, thrashes a low shot. It bounces awkwardly - [Crowd: Yeahhhh!] - and is tipped round the post by the keeper! [Crowd: Ooooh!] It will be a corner kick. Lots of height and power in the Chester team! Who will they aim for? Helge the obvious target, but there's also Gabby, Edgar Wilde, or Magnus Evergreen, the Scotsman. Wibbers is loitering around the penalty spot in case of rebounds.

Cheb Alloula will hit it right-footed into the danger zone. Here it comes... Headed over the bar! Ronnie: Jimmy. Jimmy McNeill. The defender did just enough to stop him making a clean contact, but that was all quite easy for us. Boggy: The camera cuts to Max Best and Sandra Lane. They look awfully pleased with themselves!

We dominated the match to an extent I hadn't believed possible. I allowed one of Cheb or Lewis to go forward but kept the other back, meaning we always had five players in a defensive posture. Chelsea had brilliant players, but too many of them liked to have a good old feel of the ball. Right there in the middle of a top tier match, just taking six or seven extra touches, giving it a lovely old fondle.

We got bodies between them and Marek, stopped the Blues from getting anywhere, and when we turned the ball over we struck fast and decisively. Two of our three forwards bullied their markers, while Edgar made life uncomfortable for the one true centre back. Wibbers was often the closest player to the action and he raced onto the second balls. He tried to put the strikers through or took long shots himself. Our shot count rose. We looked especially menacing from corners and free kicks.

Minutes passed and the match went exactly the same. Lee Croft looked lost. His analysts were talking to him, trying to show him what we were doing, but he wasn't taking it in. There was too much going on. Chelsea fans were chanting for him to get sacked, his players weren't responding to the few small tweaks he asked for, and I had completely flipped the switch on him. In retrospect, the timing of the change had been perfect.

We had let him believe that we would do what he thought we would do, and when we had scrambled our players it had scrambled his brain. The thought struck me that it wouldn't be the worst thing if we didn't score, because us getting a goal would force him to snap out of his funk. The part of my brain that thought in narratives knew that if we kept it nil-nil until the last ten minutes and then scored, he was unlikely to find the right response. Late winner, three points, clean as a whistle. Yeah but this is Chester.

We do things the hard way.

29' Masarik dwells on the ball. This could be trouble! The Slovak goes wide left to Lamarre. He is pressed against the touchline, but rolls the ball to McNeill, who sprinted to offer support. McNeill lays the ball off for Lamarre. Lamarre is under no pressure. His marker didn't track him! Now Chester have space to move into. William Roberts takes over. He directs Alloula to keep moving. Roberts with a gorgeous sliced chip into Alloula's path. The cross comes in. It's a good one! Hagen rises.

He can't make clean contact. Wilde spins and shoots, but his effort is blocked. The rebound falls into the path of Roberts... He has done it! He slammed it into the left side of the net. The keeper had no chance. The home team take a deserved lead! Chelsea have been awful!

Lee Croft made a big show of turning around, throwing his arms up, being disappointed with his defenders. But he didn't change his tactics! We had to make the next 15 minutes count. If we could get two goals ahead, there would be a bloodbath in the away dressing room.

32' Boggy: Brilliant pass through the lines from Bauer. Wibbers' first touch takes the ball past his marker. He flicks the ball into the penalty area. Gabrieeeeeeellllll! Saved! Ronnie: Got to score that. Got to make the keeper work harder. Boggy: It was incredible football. One pass, two passes, and it could have, perhaps should have been a goal! 33' Shot count: Chester 6, Chelsea 1. 36' Corner ball. Whipped in by Alloula. Wilde rises! He flicks it on. It's going in! Headed off the line!

Great defending, but a few inches higher and Chester would have doubled their lead. 38' Shot count: Chester 8, Chelsea 1. 39' Boggy: A slip by McNeill, who has barely put a foot wrong all day. Chelsea are streaming forward. There's a lull in the non-stop singing from the home fans - you can hear the tension! Ball's slipped through. Great move! But the right winger cuts back, stands facing Lamarre. He's motionless! What's he doing? Ronnie: It's just so he can show off, but all the energy has gone from the move!

Pointless. Boggy: The ball starts to move around our penalty area. Chelsea probing. A pass is dinked over the top... Marek thinks about rushing to get it... He stays on his line and lets Evergreen deal with it. Good choice! Magnus coolly chests the ball and bangs it clear. Still Chelsea have the ball. A few neat passes get them back in front of our area but there goes Youngster! He waited, waited, then pounced! And now he's running clear. He's past the half way line.

Wibbers has his head down, running as fast as his legs will carry him. Youngster slides the ball in his direction. Oh, but it's too hard. The chance is lost. No! Wibbers throws himself at the ball and hooks it twenty yards to his left. Magnus Evergreen will get there! Why is he in the left wing slot? Evergreen. Has he ever been this high up the pitch before? He cuts onto his right foot, clips a pass over a defender. Wibbers will shoot from outside the area... [Crowd: Yeeaaah!] It goes just wide! [Crowd: Oooh.] Inches wide! What a move from Chester! Wibbers falls onto his back and holds his face. He knows that was a key moment! Standing ovation from the Chester fans. They are watching their team take everything Chelsea can throw at them and punch back, too! Stunning. Sensational. On a day to remember, the Seals are giving us a day to remember.

Half time shot count: Chester 12, Chelsea 2.

In the dressing room, I took stock. The Live Tables had us on 5 points. Five! It seemed astronomical. If we held onto this win, our last three matches would have earned us six points from a possible nine. That was a 76-point season pace. That would get us into the Champions League!

"What are you grinning at?" said Livia.

"Just the joys of spring," I said, which got a laugh.

"There's a long way to go in this one. There's no way Chelsea can be as awful in the second half. Right?" She shrugged.

"Jackie says he doesn't know how Croft got this job. He says Vimsy is more qualified. At least Vimsy has won something. Like, ever." I tipped my head back and laughed. Livia blinked.

"What?"

"I was just thinking about Vimsy on LinkedIn. God, can you imagine it? Are you struggling with lead gen? Here are my ten top tips on how to use AI prompts to, er..." Livia said, " To become a thought leader who drives engagement, effortlessly."

"Top," I said.

"But it's not quite right, is it? It should be authentic Vimsy but with a twist. When writing a pitch, keep it tight first twenty... words." She smiled, but someone caught her eye and she went to offer help. I opened Chelsea's tactics screen and watched, awestruck, as their formation shifted once every two seconds. Lee Croft was floundering, he was being crushed by the pressure, but Christ was he creative! His job status was listed as very insecure, which seemed about right.

If he lost today, he would probably be sacked before the Chelsea team bus passed Crewe. Sacked 106 days into a 6-year contract. Even if I didn't like the guy, that would be pretty brutal. He would have to rebuild his career very carefully, but at least he would get a hefty payout. His pension would take care of itself. Sandra gave me some time, then came over.

"What do you think?" I sighed; the formation carousel had settled.

"I think he's going to switch to 4-2-3-1. Bring on another centre back, do what he should have done from the start. No more free lunch." I clenched my fist.

"We needed that second goal."

"Come on, we're in the box seat. What do we do? Bring on our superstar player?" I eyed my right foot. If I could somehow avoid going onto the pitch, when we came back from the international break I would have had four weeks without playing and my injury would be 100% healed. If we were 2-0 down, I probably wouldn't have bothered, but since we were leading, I had no choice but to contribute.

"The main problem..." I said, slowly, as I reviewed the match ratings and our Condition scores, "is that I love how everyone's playing. I kinda want to see how we get on against a properly set-up Chelsea team. Don't you?" She stuck her lip out as she considered the question.

"I'd prefer to win, but I do know what you mean. Okay, so we slip back to 4-1-4-1, see how our original plan pans out."

"Yeah. I like that. I like that a lot."

"Have you got a favourite movie today?"

"Er... Sure, yeah." I stepped to the left, readied myself, and mimed firing an M60 machine gun into the air, Rambo style. Oh, and I made the sound effects, too. That was wildly effective in getting everyone's attention. I put on a Sylvester Stallone accent, gruff, deep, hard to follow.

"My favourite movie is called The Pensioners. It's about a group of senior citizens who were in cool movies in the 80s but had lost all cultural impact and the only way they could tickle the box office was to band together into one great big nostalgia-filled ensemble." Youngster said, "I know this. This is not called Pensioners. It is something else." Edgar Wilde said, " The Expendables."

"Yes!" said Youngster. I tutted.

"It's called The Pensioners in French. You know I always watch movies in the original language. Have you heard Jason Statham quoting Voltaire as he throws knives with live grenades stuck to the hilt? The knife stabs into a baddie who then explodes and Statham goes, j'accuse! It's the highest moment in cinema." I tapped the tactics board, which was still laid out in the 4-1-4-1 that we had been planning.

"We're going back to this. Chelsea are bringing on Hobbes and Shaw, which means they'll have a functioning defence and way more threat in attack." Youngster had his hand all the way up.

"Not Hobbes and Shaw, Mr. Best."

"Huh? I didn't say that. I said Dodds and Law. What is wrong with you and your sister this week? Proper defence, proper attack... I want to say they will be Proper Chels this half but that's not true. They are still a mess, they are still lazy, but they are still lethal. You know in an action movie when a guard sees a door is open and loads of boxes have been rearranged such that an intruder could climb up into a vent? And the guard shrugs and goes, huh, must have been the wind? Don't be that guy, men. Alert.

Ready. Switched on. We still have options, we can still make things happen, but let's get really fucking solid for ten minutes and see what's what. Don't do it for me. Do it for the brave, brave veterans... of 80s action movies." Peter Bauer stood up.

"That was a solid 7 out of 10 until the end. Awful." I pointed at him.

"I don't care what the critics think. My movie was made on a 50 million quid budget and it's going to gross 200 million in its first two years." Peter smiled.

"Solid movie, terrible ending, fantastic post-credits sequence. A surprise cameo from the old Max Best." He pounded his palms into each other.

"Let's go, boys. Showtime."

The second half kicked off and the new levels of intensity were immediately apparent. Chelsea went on a tear of winning duels, but we stabilised, got close to parity. Their new formation suited them, as did their higher CA. They were over 160 now. Law was their best forward, though he had the same habit as the others of dwelling on the ball. In the 50th minute, I sat in the dugout and made sure my shinpads and boots were on properly. In the 55th, I started to warm up.

From then until the 60th, I wondered how little I could play. It wasn't just my annoyingly persistent injury, but I was enjoying how rapidly my XP counter was ticking up. I was really excited about expanding God Save the King. If I got three more bites at that cherry, I had three Expendables in my squad, three guys who would soon get left behind. Pascal and Bark had hit their caps, and while the latter wasn't an optimal investment, he had been at the bottom with me in Darlington.

He had trusted me when I was nothing. If I could help him, I would. Taking him from CA 130 to 135 or so would be worth a lot to him in his career - and he was a client of REM. So was Pascal, but no part of me thought investing him was a waste. He had my dream footballing brain and I had already pushed him past his natural limits. He was CA 138. One or two nudges per season and he would hit the magic 150. What a useful player he would be then! In a few weeks, Lewis Lamarre would hit his cap of PA 156.

He was a solid player, flexible, and had a great attitude. Giving him some extra PA made a ton of sense. He would contribute more on the pitch, and if we sold him, that investment would go right onto the club's balance sheet. My head snapped to the left. I had been daydreaming and missed the start of the move. I saw the end, though.

60' Dodds wins the header. Chelsea turn defence into attack. Law takes the ball on the half turn and wriggles away from Youngster. The Ghanaian snaps at his heels. Law with a sensational diagonal pass! Bravo with a heavy first touch. Has he lost his chance? He slips his foot under the ball, lifts it over Masarik... And scores! That was absolutely lethal from the away team. Their fans go berserk!

While Lee Croft celebrated in a way designed to make sure everyone knew his substitutions had paid off, I shouted out to Leo to make sure he was ready. He was. I told Sandra the plan.

"The Scotsmen off, me and Leo on. We'll go 4-2-3-1. I'll DM with Youngster, try to close Law down."

"Goalslaw. Great player but it's the worst nickname ever. Okay, you're DM and Leo's behind Gabby. Lewis and Wibbers either side."

"Yep."

"That doesn't sound crazy. Good balance, I would say."

"Yep!"

"Now?"

"Yep."

64' Boggy: Here we go again, with Chelsea on the march. They're looking for a way through. Chester disciplined, structured, the ball comes to Law. Every time he gets it, the home fans grow quieter. Every time he gets it, either Max or Youngster rush out to stop him dribbling. He's forced wide. Tremendous play by Cheb Alloula! He wins that battle but is closed down. He has Best running in support. Cheb with a hopeful pass into space. Max will get there. Booming crossfield pass, first-time, no-look!

Will Lewis Lamarre keep it in play? Ronnie: [Anguished grunt.] Boggy: Not quite!

Hmm. Lewis Lamarre for another point in Pace?

66' Shot count: Chester 14, Chelsea 9.

67' Roberts is set free by Los! Roberts cuts onto his left foot and shoots! It is batted into the air by the keeper, who gathers on the second attempt. Good hit! 68' Chelsea break through! A cross comes in from the right... Header from Bravo! He can't miss! It's saved! A stunning close-range save by Masarik! 70' Best skips past a 100-million-pound midfielder. He surges past another 100-million-pound midfielder! The home fans rise to their feet in anticipation. Best plays a one-two with Leo Los.

Another one-two with William Roberts. Best clips the ball over the defence. Gabriel latches onto it... But gets his shot all wrong! 71' Dodds brings the ball out of defence. He has some time and space. He accelerates. He is 40 yards from goal and looking for options. He decides to shoot. On the moon, a robot scurries under cover, just in case. Law screams at Dodds. That pass should have been played to him! Max Best covers his mouth and says something to Youngster. It seems to be both funny and annoying!

75' Boggy: Tensions rising in the Deva! This chess match is turning into bare-knuckle boxing! Chances at either end, midfields with holes in, misfiring strikers, inspired goalkeepers. Hearts are beating faster, nerves are fraying, nails are being bitten to the bone, and what is Max Best doing to relieve us of this tension? Absolutely nothing! In fact, he's making it worse! He's taking bigger and bigger risks, going in search of a winning goal. Who told him to risk defeat in search of victory?

Who gave him permission? Not me! And not my weak, feeble heart. We know he loves a movie, but I have finally realised that for him, films are a way to learn more about being a baddie. He is a heartless, uncaring, unfeeling monster. It is the only way to explain - Ronnie: Go on, Max! Boggy: Max Best, history's greatest villain, once more abandons his post. Once more goes away without leave. He's marauding across the halfway line, leaving a trail of sliding tackles in his wake. Look at him go!

He nudges the ball to Leo Los, who rolls it backwards under his studs, into Best's path. Best left to Lamarre. Lamarre slips the ball to Gabriel, who is under enormous pressure. He stays composed - and that's a great pass! Lamarre gets to the byline. He slams the ball low across the six-yard box. There's no-one there? Max Best with the burst of pace. It's into his path! Best will lash the ball from close range. The keeper hurls himself bravely at Best's feet.

Max Best cocks his right foot, points to the bottom right corner, but he has already touched the ball! He noodled it with his left toe! The ball is rising, above the bamboozled goalie, descends, where will it go? Ronnie: Max knows. Boggy: Max Best is wheeling away, not looking back. The ball nestles into the back of the net! The Harry McNally Terrace is in raptures! Limbs everywhere! He is a pest! He is trouble. He is insouciant. He jogs away from the scene of the crime. The crime: daylight robbery.

The crime: grievous bodily skill with intent to deceive. The crime: contempt of my blood pressure. That was stupendous. That was glorious. That was staggering. Max Best has chipped the goalkeeper from five inches away! He has put Chester, the minnows, the smallest club ever to play in the Premier League, ahead against the Chelsea strollers, the urban elite, the private equity vehicle owned and operated by the smartest men in the room, the masters of the universe. The noise is deafening. Deafening!

Max Best, the calmest man in the stadium, jogs to a steward, takes something from him. It's... it's a Chester top! Best pulls it on, then rips it off and swings it around his head as he runs away. The Main Stand rises! He flings the shirt into the stand. Will he be booked for taking his shirt off? Ronnie: He can't be! He was still wearing his shirt! Boggy: In the Main Stand, John Smith is explaining the joke to a Ukrainian solider. The Chester Chatters are hugging Chelsea Pensioners.

Max Best is hugging someone, but I don't see the usual flash of blonde hair. Ronnie: It's Kisi Yalley! She got the shirt. He ran there specifically to throw it to her. Don't know what that was all about but I'll ask and I'll explain it during Sunday's broadcast. Boggy: Veronica, that was an amazing trail for Sunday! If you can make links like that in the heat of battle, you'll go a long way in this game. Ronnie: [Quietly.] Thanks, Boggy. I had a good teacher.

While I was celebrating - and while the referee was talking to the fourth official, checking if I had broken any rules with my 'taking my shirt off' stunt - I noted that Lee Croft was making a couple more changes. He had to or he was toast. He had to go back to basics, which unfortunately for me was exactly what this Chelsea team needed. Their average CA was going to climb to 164.

I asked Sandra to replace Peter with Dumi - let's get another senior citizen on the pitch, and Peter's effectiveness had dimmed in the second half - and to swap Wibbers for Matt Rush. I let Edgar Wilde take the captain's armband from Peter, which made the Englishman's Morale spike. We still had one substitution we could make, but I had used all the once-per-match perks, and from here until the end of the match it would be pretty much attack versus defence. Time to hunker down and fight for our lives.

78' Shot to Chelsea. 79' Shot to Chelsea. 80' Two shots to Chelsea.

"Fuck me," I gasped, as Dodds spanked a long-range shot almost into Liverpool. That was the second time he'd done that. The second time he had given us a break from the ceaseless attacks. It was deeply stupid of him but it showed how well we were closing space. I reckoned Peter would be pleased with how I was dynamically disrupting the oppo's moves.

I wasn't a fan of defending my own penalty area but I was making late surges into key positions, the kinds of moves that you would normally see from a striker, and because I was winning my duels I was really making it hard for Chelsea to generate threat. I glanced around. Cheb and Helge were tiring, but Lewis's Condition was lower than either. (Add a point to his Stamina?) Youngster had put in a massive shift but he was flagging big time.

He had been ragdolled a few times by a player who had once been the most expensive transfer between two British clubs. Youngster had shrugged the hits off, but that kind of thing takes it out of you. Anyway, I didn't have a great replacement for him. My main bench options were Roddy, Pascal, or Bark. Bark was actually tempting - he could take some of the strain off Cheb, but if we could get a third goal, the points would surely be ours. Having a counter-attacking force of Pascal and Matt Rush was delicious.

I signalled to Sandra. Pascal went from sitting in the dugout to standing next to the fourth official in under one second.

83' Boggy: The horror continues! The torment continues! The ordeal continues! Chester FC are 7 minutes plus stoppage time away from recording one of the all-time great upsets. Outspent by 40 to 1, leading two goals to one. Ronnie: We need to get on the ball and pass it around like we were doing at the start but the team is set up to counter-attack so we're having to hit hopeful balls for the wingers to chase and if they don't get there, the ball's just coming right back at us.

Boggy: What would you change if you were in charge? Ronnie: It's not like that, really, because we're in this position because these are the players we have and we've made logical changes through the match. We have optimised our position, to use Max's favourite word, but so have Chelsea. Boggy: Keen on the ball for the away team. He's one of the players who is unrecognisable from the wastrel we saw in the first half. He moves forward. Plays it square.

Patience from Chelsea, but there's menace to everything they're doing. In the heart of our defence stands Edgar Wilde and Dumi Demetrescu, who have faced challenges like these many times. Law, pressed by Best. The ball is moved quickly to the right. Ronnie: Max is out of pocket! Boggy: Keen takes a touch, looks up, fires into the middle - what a cross that is! And what a header! Chelsea have scored! They have equalised. Oh my God. [The away end roar in Cockney accents.] Relief for the away fans!

They have been calling for Lee Croft to be sacked. They have been calling for the owners to get out of their club. They look to have avoided abject humiliation. Ronnie: That was a really nice goal. First they moved the ball around so that the defenders would be pulled over to their right. Then they went into the middle and sucked Max towards the ball to deal with their danger man. But they've got another danger man on the right, haven't they?

He's one of the best crossers of a ball in the world, and he picked out Bravo, who drifted to the left, and Cheb lost concentration for a second and by the time he realised the danger, it was too late. That's the quality of these Premier League teams. Boggy: Seven minutes of normal time left. Do you think our boys will be happy with a point from here? Ronnie: I think you have to be. Take the point, learn lessons, go into the international break with a great performance behind you.

Frustrating. Deeply frustrating. Anger rose in me. I wanted to go to the Chelsea players and give them a blast, tell them what I thought about their lack of unity and effort and their failings as people. I wanted to blast the away fans for singing about the Russian twat who used to own them even after they had seen the Ukrainian soldiers. I wanted to inform Lee Croft that he was a bald fraud. But I didn't. The Brig was proud of me. Dylan had forgiven me for the last year of teasing.

The Chelsea Pensioners deserved better than to see me turn feral. I judged that we weren't going to be able to string many passes together, so I dropped us into a low block and tweaked everything. Gabby went into the back line to help with headers, Pascal and Rushy got the job of running around like headless chickens, chasing the ball while the rest of us booted it clear or headed it as far as we could. The clock sped up, tracked towards 90, into injury time, then there was time for one last piece of nonsense.

93' Chelsea are still camped around the Chester penalty area. Can they find a way through? A late winner would mean so much for their embattled manager. Keen tries a cross, but it's superbly headed away by Wilde. Youngster tries to move the ball on, but his tired swipe doesn't go far. Dodds will collect the ball. Bravo moves to his left, raising his hand, begging for a pass. Dodds shoots... And it's his worst effort yet! It smacks into Max Best's shins... And falls kindly for Pascal Bochum! The German hares away.

Pandemonium in the Deva Stadium! Bochum is fast, but so is Dodds. He might catch up! Bochum has to play a pass to Matt Rush but there's no time to move the ball onto his right foot. Bochum tries to centre the ball with his left foot. He overhits it... but it doesn't matter! Matt Rush takes a beautiful touch. The keeper is rushing towards him. Matt Rush with a delicate chip to win the game for Chester! He... Hits the post! What a let-off for Chelsea. Their goalie wastes no time. He grabs the ball and boots it long.

Bravo gets a flick-on. Keen - of all people - runs onto it! He's one-on-one with Masarik! Keen with a dainty lob over the keeper to win it for Chelsea! But he hits the post! Masarik hurls himself onto the ball and the final whistle is blown. Half of the players throw themselves to the turf. A remarkable finish to a unforgettable match!

Full time shot count: Chester 19, Chelsea 19.

Both teams hitting the post in the last seconds was too much for me. For the first time ever, I understood how Boggy felt when he watched us. I took twenty seconds to myself to let my heart rate drop back to survivable levels, then pushed myself to my feet. The Pensioners were watching, so I went around and shook hands with most of the Chelsea players plus OF COURSE the referees, and ended up in front of Lee Croft. He had done all right, I supposed.

He could have made life a lot easier for himself by keeping things simple, not trying to impress everyone with galaxy-brain moves. But he had fixed his mistakes, and not every manager could say that. He would probably get sacked for not beating lowly Chester, but time and hindsight would make this result seem much less disastrous. I offered him a handshake, which he accepted with a thin smile.

His eyes were glassy, his hair was visibly greyer than at the start of the match, and he was trying very hard to remain dignified.

"Eleven fousand people were here today," he said, pronouncing each word with a curious mixture of calmness and urgency, "on the day we remember our past. Eleven fousand people will always remember this match. Well played, good game." I mean, it was pretty bizarre to hear someone talk like he was dictating a social media post, but I was still thinking about the other kind of post, still reeling from what could have been. I said, "Yeah, thanks, you too." I hesitated before walking away.

I wanted to check if he had people he could talk to when he got sacked, but that didn't seem like a suitable topic to bring up just there and then. So I headed down the tunnel. After 12 matches, Chester had 3 points in the Premier League and were dead certs for relegation, but our supporters were optimistic, my position was safe, and I was about to go off and finish this year's Wales side quest. Meanwhile, it was possible that Lee Croft would never manage another match at this level for the rest of his life.

Football managers? Call us The Expendables.