Chương 101: 13.8 - E = md²

8. Sunday, March 1 FAW Women's Cup Semi-Final - Wrexham AFC Women vs Chester Women Everything is relative. Six hundred people were in a stadium to watch Wrexham against their fiercest rivals. Not a staggering number, but decent relative to what Wrexham normally got. Their average was creeping up from 300 to 400. The stadium was relatively shit, but light years better than where the women had been playing a few years ago - the local field slash mudbath I had seen on Welcome to Wrexham season 2.

Wrexham's women now played at The Rock, which obviously got me thinking about Gibraltar, Sean Connery, and a giant bird of prey. Oh, and marrying Emma or whatevs. I was about a million pounds short of my target of having a million pounds in the bank when I asked for her hand. There was a reason the male main characters in the romance books Emma had started to read were filthy rich - it saved a few million words in grinding towards the wedding chapter. My companion for the match asked a very pertinent question.

"Why aren't we playing this at The Racecourse?"

"Good question," I said.

"You weren't at the game two years ago, were you? No," I said, clicking my fingers.

"That's when I found your sister again."

"You put the moves on her," said Angel. I smiled.

"My move was to get her in the dressing room and let the vibe do the work."

"She was buzzing when she got home. She was so wired."

"I mean, there was a lot going on. That was when the referee booked Dani for being deaf."

"And you went full superhero."

"I did no such thing," I sighed.

"The match was good, the team spirit was amazing, the crowd were behind us; it was great timing for Bonnie to be there that night. I was very lucky." Luck had nothing to do with it. Old Nick had been playing 5D chess with us all, moving the pieces into position. In hindsight, he probably even arranged for that referee to be assigned that match.

"Why are we playing this match here? It's a fair question. This is a Welsh cup semi-final plus it could be the last time these teams play against each other for ten or twenty years. If this is in Chester we're moving it to the Deva and marketing the shit out of it. The way the city is buzzing for football we'd have a fair shot at selling out, I reckon."

"And you're always banging on about how Ryan Reynolds wants you in his documentary."

"He does. He's so thirsty for me it's actually creepy." Angel rolled her eyes.

"Easy way to get you in: move this to The Racecourse and stick a camera right here." She pointed to a spot a couple of yards away. We were in the main stand - the only stand - which seated just over five hundred. To our right was an ugly building that housed the dressing rooms. Across from us was a simple television gantry (imagine a guard tower in a prison) and to either side of that were the dugouts. Yes, on the opposite side of the pitch to the dressing rooms.

A huge rock wall loomed behind the dugouts, which had literally been dug out - the site had once been a quarry. The rocks and the trees made the place extremely visually interesting - with a million quid you could make this an extremely cute little ground. Who'd be stupid enough to put a million quid into a tiny Welsh football team? On the pitch, the players were in two lines, shaking hands. Not long now until kick off. A bunch of rowdy Chester lads had formed a pocket of noise over to our left.

I hoped they wouldn't start any trouble.

"I can only assume the police asked them not to move the game or make it a big deal. Chester v Wrexham can get tasty." Angel was restless. She was fidgety and kept nearly biting her nails.

"What did you mean we won't play them for ten years?"

"This is our last go in the Welsh Cup. Gwen and I thought Chester joining would be a bit of fun, add some interest to the whole thing. Spice it up a bit, right? Everyone wants to see the big bad English get a bloody nose and I was happy to get a few more fixtures lined up because our squad is relatively big if you include the Welsh girls. So if this is the last season for us in the Welsh Cup when would we play Wrexham next? In Europe.

They're working towards that, slowly but surely, and we're racing in that direction but from a much lower base." She wasn't really listening. I tilted my head.

"What are you worried about?" She opened her eyes wide and used both hands to gesture towards the pitch. The players were doing their last stretches. Kick-off was imminent.

"Cup semi-final, Max!"

"Don't make that face when you're doing your screen tests," I said.

"Unless the perfume is going to be called, ' femme des cavernes.'""What's that mean?"

"Cavewoman." She punched me in the arm.

"Do you think I should learn French?"

"Ew, no."

"I'm worried about Bonnie," she said, bringing her nails towards her teeth again. I batted her hand away and she nodded her thanks. Fun game!

"Wrexham have that striker from the documentary. She's amazing. She could tear us a new one. What do you think?" She stared as if seeing me for the first time." You're relaxed. That's good, right? You know what's going to happen." I smiled.

"Politically I'm fine with losing. Not very loyal of me, is it? Us winning this cup could cause problems for Gwen and I don't want that. But we will win. When we played Wrexham in the Dani match, we were new and just finding our feet. Eve rested some of her best players and I persuaded her to weaken the team still further so it would be more of a contest. Today she's got her very best side out, it looks like. Jackie has rotated us... and we're still ahead. Ten against ten, it's close-ish in raw ability.

Wrex are more experienced but we have loads more technical quality. It's a 3G pitch, perfectly flat, true bounce. If I'm Eve right now I'm dreading the last ten minutes after Chester have fizzed the ball all around this quarry making us chase shadows."

"Ten against ten?"

"I mean, if you only looked at ten players you'd think it was even. But Kit is playing."

"Kit," said Angel, uncertainly, but the match kicked off and she tensed up. While Angel stressed about her sister and her mates, I took on the floating megabrain role I did so well. (Other opinions are available.) The previous match against Wrexham seemed like a good point of comparison for the current team. That match had been our fifth ever fixture and looking back, it was amazing we didn't lose ten-nil.

Like Robyn that day, today's goalie, Queenie, was 18 years old, but where Robyn had been CA 6, Queenie was CA 40. And she was our backup! Scottie Love - hating life on the bench - was CA 60. In the Dani match I had picked a back four with CA 5, 6, 7, and 9. Jackie was able to name a back three with CA 41, 58, and 67 - while giving a rest to two of our usual starters. Two years ago, my midfield had ranged from CA 6 to CA 10.

Jackie had also picked five midfielders, but his lowest (Diane) was CA 41 and his highest (Sarah Greene) was 72. I'd only had one striker in the entire squad: Bea Pea. She had toiled with her CA 9. Julie McKay's CA 48 would have looked space-age to me in those early days, but these days we had Angel on 59 and, stupendously, Kit Hodges on CA 90. We had come a looong way.

Angel must have been trying to distract herself from the agony of watching us dominate possession against an enthusiastic, well-drilled, but inferior team because she seemed to be thinking on the same lines as me.

"How did you do this?"

"Do what?" I said, just to check she was asking the question I thought she was asking.

"How did we get so good so fast?"

"I rode the coattails of the Lionesses. When they won the Euros every girl wanted to play football, the market was growing, it was easy to get funding and to push Chester Women as a valuable entity, and it was easy to convince people to come and play for us. Bonnie was by far the hardest."

"She was protecting me."

"Yeah." I watched as Bonnie competed with Wrexham's dangerous striker. The striker nearly got away but Bonnie tracked her and tackled the ball to Ridley T, who was playing as the left-sided centre back.

"See Femi covering there?"

"Yes."

"Leeds let Femi go because they thought they had better centre backs. I've been able to build half a team of players like Dani, Maddy, and Diane who we've basically taught from scratch and the other half are match-ready players like Femi, Charlotte, and Sarah Greene. The women's transfer market is just very, very underdeveloped and wages are low and that's a massive advantage for me.

I'm doing the same thing with the men's team but the market is relatively efficient and I can't simply buy a player like Kit who is hugely above the level. Like, buying a Kit for the men's team would be..." I did some quick thinking. It would be like buying a top Championship striker who had played in the Premier League.

"I mean, ten to thirty million pounds." Angel turned away from the pitch to gawp at me.

"Are you serious? She's that good?" I scoffed." I'm that good. I got a thirty million pound player for seventy grand." I waited for her to reply because if Angel was ever going to ask if I'd signed Kit as a punishment for her faking an injury, now would be the time. The question didn't come.

"I can't take much credit, to be honest. We've got talented players who want to work hard, Jackie's a good manager, the coaches are good. The facilities are getting better but they have been sub-par and the women always get shoved to the outside pitches when there's a conflict with the men's team. I'll be happier when Bumpers is fully built and there's no question of making you guys train on the kids' pitch or wait for the showers or whatever."

"It's annoying sometimes."

"I know, but we're getting there. Next season you'll play at the Deva and we'll have some fun getting the attendances up. I told Brooke I want to set a new high every week and she said she'd do it like Sergey Bubka's pole vault world record - it would go up by a tiny fraction each time."

"What did you say?"

"I said pole vault? Is that like a bunker for eastern Europeans? She went to get a coffee and didn't come back." Angel smiled slightly as she said, "None of that happened." Diane, playing deeper than the other midfielders, passed through two pressers to the feet of Pippa. She took the ball on the half-turn and found Maddy on the right. She hit it left-footed, first time, towards Sarah Greene, who chipped it over the defence with loads of side spin.

A centre back thought she had it covered but the spin took the ball into Kit's path. She could have hit it left-footed but tried to get it back on her right. By the time she did, the other CB had got into position to block the shot. I pointed.

"That's where you'll overtake her." Angel narrowed her eyes as she replayed the sequence.

"I think I would have followed the flight of the ball and gone to the right. Kit knew it would spin like that." I dismissed the idea with a wave.

"You can do that; that's basic." The team in red tried to work the ball up the pitch like an elite team.

"It's good this, isn't it? Wrexham are trying to push up and dominate us like they do with most of their oppo. The teams in our league have learned to drop deep, haven't they? They're afraid of what we can do. We aren't used to having this much space to run in behind the defence."

"But Kit is," said Angel, nodding.

"Because Bristol got battered in the WSL every week. When we get there, will that be us? Defending for our lives until we get relegated?"

"No," I said.

"We will be competitive from the off. I'm more worried about the Championship or WSL 2 or whatever it's called by then. We have eighteen months to get you, Charlotte, Femi and the rest to the level Kit is at now. That could be hard because the group's improvement has slowed recently. I thought adding Kit would kickstart the growth and it did a bit but not for long."

"We're not improving?"

"You are, but less than before. I don't think it's Bumpers because the men are still kicking on, mostly. I think it's the standard of the league. We're so far ahead we're not learning as much from every match. Next season we need to smash the league but go far in every cup as well so we're getting stressed."

"Pressure makes pearls."

"Um..." I said.

"It's a Ted Lasso joke."" Ted Lasso has jokes?" Wrexham built an attack on their left, moving forward with a series of one-twos. Maddy kept her discipline and when a loose pass came, she pounced. I nodded.

"Eve thought Kisi would be playing. That move would go great against her."

"Maddy's scrappy," said Angel.

"In a good way," she added, quickly.

"Yeah, she's mint," I said. Maddy's CA was 52 - not too far behind Kisi - but her PA was 'only' 80. She couldn't come to the WSL with us.

"Next season we've got the move to the Deva but I think the football will be quite monotonous. Just loads of wins. We can't do The Relentlessness again."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm wondering if we should skip the documentary next year."

"Ha ha," she said.

"I'm not joking. The worst thing is to oversaturate, spread ourselves thin. Take a year off, keep the quality up. There's no point doing it for the sake of it."

"There's always mad things happening, though. It will still be interesting."

"Hmm," I said.

"What about the team from Colombia?"

"That's this year. That's soon."

"But we can go and visit them. Chester abroad."

"That's desperate."

"It was your idea!"

"Meh."

"Well, what have you got planned for us on the football side? What about Relativity?"

"The general theory or the special theory?" Bonnie was once again locking horns with Wrexham's dangerous striker. This time, the Welsh menace won the duel and fired off an early shot that Queenie wasn't expecting. The ball seemed to bounce through her outstretched hands and it trundled into the net. One-nil!

"Fuck," said Angel.

"That's interesting," I said.

"What? Was it Bonnie's mistake? What did you see?"

"The goal? That was all about the striker's determination. Good hustle, good goal. Queenie will do better next time. It was interesting what you said. Teaching you, ah, Relativity fits another idea I had. Yeah, that's really interesting. I think my head is expanding right now. Yeeeees." Big changes next season. A mini big bang to keep things fresh.

"Maybe there will be enough content for the documentary. Yes, you should start learning Relativity. The longer the players play with each other and practise, the more impactful it is in games." My experiments with 3 R Welsh and the Youth Team had continued and it was abundantly clear to me that the players on the pitch 'programmed' the Relationism module. 3 R Welsh had togetherness and team spirit but very little quality. That meant there were few in-game boosts or mini-games.

My experience of using Relationism with them was quite sedate. The Youth Team had been together for years, had a lot of talent, and loved being told to do flicks, tricks, and skills. Relationism with them was wild and crazy but against Everton it had made them giddy to the point of self-destructiveness and I had needed to calm them all the way back down. As an experiment I had turned up to one of the evening games at BoshCard and had taken over as 'manager', claiming it was to get ideas for my next advert.

I had switched on the Relationism module but hadn't done anything, and nothing had happened on the pitch. The players stuck to 4-4-2 pretty solidly and didn't generate any heat, energy, or excitement. Maybe it worked different in South America but British players needed to train it before they could use it in a match.

"If we're gonna do it," I mused, "we should start soon. Yeah. Behind closed doors, I think."

"Max!"

"Could be good content. Imagine a caption on screen. Says something like: Max Best brackets Manager of the Month for February and March close brackets insists the cameras be turned off for a secret training session. The camera films the side of the Sin Bin or something like that and we hear some whistles and shouts and then we cut to you lot leaving the pitch and you're all hyper and talking about it. That would work, right? That's good TV." Angel's face told me she agreed.

"I don't have time because I'm busy scouting for next season's youth teams. Pascal could do it. Do you like Pascal?"

"Yeah, he's much cooler now he's got a girlfriend. Does the camera love him?"

"I don't give a fuck. He's killing his coaching course; he's a natural. Yeah... Pascal can teach you Relativity."

"Can you explain what it is?"

"Sure thing," I said.

"In the olden days, football was played in straight lines. Have you ever seen that thing where all the men in a village go in the main street and they try to push a ball from one side to the other?"

"No."

"It's like a huge tug of war thing. That was sport in the old days so when football was created, that's how people played it. It was all they knew, right? Get the ball, run in a straight line. As Einstein said, an Englishman moves in the straightest possible path. It was my new best friends the Scots who invented passing. Now imagine a match between the English and the Scots. One's all straight line dribbling, the other has created triangles.

To pass the ball in front of a player who is running you need an appreciation not only of motion and matter but of space and time. Football became the juxtaposition of space and time versus matter and motion. The triangles become curves. The midfield began to exert the biggest gravitational pull on the ball." Angel's head dropped back so that she was looking almost straight up.

"Whaaaaaaat the fuck." She brought her head back to its normal position and let out a tiny grunt of frustration.

"I'm asking you to explain Relativity."

"I'm trying to tell you!" I said, pretending to be helpful.

"Look, in positional play, spacetime tells matter how to move but in my special theory of Relationism, matter tells spacetime how to curve. Easy." She narrowed her eyes.

"Did you talk all that shit because I said Relativity instead of Relationism?"

"Yes."

"Can you not?" I laughed.

"No."

"Relativity is E = mc², right?" I nodded.

"Do you understand that?"

"Not really," I confessed.

"I understand the start of it but then, bam! My brain overheats. Oh, but check this out." I'd spotted that Jackie had tweaked his formation so that Sarah was playing like a DM and Diane was in the CAM slot. Diane's new job was to help the strikers press the CBs while Sarah had been set as a deep-lying playmaker. Wrexham played the ball out from the back in a very ambitious way given the technique scores of their defenders.

Sure enough, the goalie passed to a centre back who was surprised to find an aggressive Scouser closing her down. Diane collided into the CB, the ball spat out, Julie touched it to Kit, who again shaped to cut onto her right foot. The defender went to block it again but Kit moved it back onto her left, burst forward, and dinked the ball over the onrushing keeper. One-all. Angel leapt to her feet, squeaked, and clapped.

She drew some unhappy glances from the nearby Wrexham fans but most recognised her and the frowns turned to smiles. She sat down and slapped me near my knee.

"Talk more shit. That brought us luck."

"That was good from Kit, great from Jule and Diane, but amazing from Jackie. I think he's back to his old self, don't you?"

"I never met him before this," she said, still buzzing from the goal. Bonnie looked towards us and Angel jumped up and waved. Bonnie smiled and got back to work. Angel sat again.

"He's getting better, yeah. He's more creative and takes more risks."

"Is training still good?"

"It's always good. What was all that shit you were saying about Relationism? Was any of it even real?"

"Relationism is really simple. It's about players connecting with each other outside some formation prescribed by the manager. It can happen anywhere on the pitch but the most natural place is at the sides where you can use the touchline as an extra defender in case you lose the ball. As a coach you want to get your players doing one-twos and rondos and to feel very comfortable under pressure. What I like about it is that no-one else in this country plays like that so what's the defence against it?

Having the ability to switch back and forth could be quite important when we get to the top levels, but what's even more exciting is the hybrid of positional play and Relationism. You saw our goal against United, right? And you've seen the Youth Team making strange patterns with their runs and letting the ball go past without touching it and all that kind of thing. That's hard to defend against and it's amazing to watch." Angel thought about it.

"The blob thing everyone talks about. Is that based on a black hole?" I smiled.

"I can't tell if you're joking."

"Is it called..."

"Relationism."

"Is it called that because of Relativity?"

"No. It's called that because the most important thing in that system is the relationships between the players. There's some of that in positional play. You know the way Jackie coaches you not to be in the same horizontal zone as two other players?"

"It's more he coaches them not to be in the same zone as me." I let out a laugh. Strikers, man. So cocky.

"You need to learn it better. Kit learned it."

"Oh," she said, worried. I wondered how long I'd be able to play the 'Kit can do that' card as a motivational tool.

"There aren't zones in Relationism but you have to move based on what your mates are doing. You wouldn't all stand in a line, would you? You need to offer passing angles but the ball's always moving which means you're always moving. You don't think 'I'm in zone 8 I need to obey my programming' you think 'if the ball goes there I need to move there' or 'Diane's got two players moving towards her so I'll drop here to cover'. It's very much about being in a flow state instead of being mathematical."

"So interesting. We have to try it!"

"Yeah. It's time." We were quiet for a while. I noted that Jackie swapped Diane back to DM as soon as Wrexham decided to go long from goal kicks. Quick decisions from JR! He didn't move Sarah Greene, though. She stayed in the DM slot, acting as the heart of the team, pinging passes everywhere as part of a double pivot, putting miles into those Wrexham legs. I thoroughly approved. An increasingly rare Wrexham attack ended with a tame shot that did have me worried for a second.

Queenie gathered at the second attempt, got up, and punted the ball towards half-way. I smiled, thinking back to when I first saw her and she could barely kick the ball out of her penalty area. The ball rose, and as it started its descent, Kit jostled with a centre back.

"Oh," I said, leaning forward with hungry eyes. Angel's head snapped towards me. Kit used her strength to nudge the defender backwards, using her arms to keep her opponent pinned. The ball bounced... and Kit spun and chased it. The defender had been expecting to pounce forward as soon as Kit controlled it. She reached out to grab Kit's shirt, but a foul risked a red card. By the time the defender realised there were covering defenders and the ref would probably only give a yellow, it was too late.

Kit pulled away, dribbled towards the goalie, and slipped the ball through her legs. Angel celebrated as before. Before sitting, she looked down at me.

"Why don't you stand up so I can hug someone?"

"I don't want to trigger that particular avalanche of fan fiction," I said.

"What about fan fiction with you and Kit?" I shrugged.

"I wouldn't encourage it but I'd read it." Angel flopped to her seat, grinning about the goal. She scanned the pitch for a while. Her gaze rested on Kit.

"You think I can be better than her."

"I know you can."

"You bought her to teach me a lesson."

"You were right when you said you were our star striker. We need competition for places." She eyed me.

"You bought her to teach me a lesson."

"Did you learn any lessons?" Angel tutted.

"No." Shortly after, she said, "Yes. I learned you're a ruthless bastard. I should make sure I have the power to defy you before I defy you."

"Or we could work together and both win. That's an option, too." Another pause.

"What do you want?" I shifted uneasily. Talking to Angel about her future was strangely hard but she was 18 now and was fully in charge of her own destiny. She had impressed me by letting Ruth and Emma continue to control her social media accounts (with her input) - she didn't want to ruin her chances of getting the perfume deal. If I repeated things I'd already said, that was fine. It was like talking to a new person.

"I want you to watch the rough edit of the Durham match when you were trying to stay on the pitch even though you were injured. That was authentic and emotional and that's what sport's all about. I can sit up here, detached, looking at a bunch of numbers swirling around in front of me but when you're out there you're creating an emotional world for people to live in and that's where you get lasting fame. Who's the most famous man in the world? Ronaldo maybe? I only ever picture him in a football kit.

Do you know what I mean?" She nodded. I'd made a good point.

"Remember I did the Combined Eleven series for the United match?"

"That was brilliant."

"Thanks. You've got players in that team who the United fans still sing about, right? What I don't want..."

"Go on." I squirmed.

"I don't want you to turn into David Beckham. You think he's super famous and he's got everything he wants but I don't think that's true. I think he knows he blew it when he lost his focus on football. Short-term he got more famous, true, but he lost his chance to become an all-time legend like Bobby Charlton and George Best. Everything that he did after he left United he could have done a few years later. Do you know what I mean? No, he blew it.

He's so famous now it's hard to think like this but I'm convinced he'll be mostly forgotten in sixty years."

"You really think long-term, don't you? I'm more interested in, like, today."

"You can have a great life today. You've got your perfume thing, right? How cool is that?"

"Bonnie's not a fan. I didn't think you was, either."

"As long as football is your number one, I'll support you in all these side hustles. No, seriously. But you know I can spot when an injury is real or fake and you better believe I'll know to the minute when football stops being your number one. If the perfume job means you have to miss training you say get fucked."

"I might ask them to rearrange it," she said, "before I start dropping f-bombs." She looked at her hands.

"You don't have these conversations with anyone else, do you?" Sarah exchanged passes with Pippa and slid the ball thirty yards into the path of Kit. She turned her marker and slipped the ball left. Dani raced onto it and with her first touch clipped the ball over an incoming sliding tackle. Dani was into the penalty box, moving at goal. She had Kit and Julie to her right along with a couple of defenders.

"Pass!" yelped Angel. Dani shifted the ball onto her right foot, let her left arm swing all the way up until she was pointing at some distant star, and in the same motion, swung her left leg behind her right and toe-poked the ball past the stupefied goalie. This time I joined Angel on my feet and hugged her. Half the Wrexham fans stood and applauded along with us.

"Yes, mate!" I said, clenching both fists.

"Fuck, that's satisfying. Wow."

"She should have passed," said Angel.

"What!"

"Kit's right there. You've got a striker on a hat trick. If that's me, I'm fuming." I shook my head. Strikers have their brains wired funny.

"Kit's happy enough." The women were celebrating in a blob - foreshadowing of when they used Relationism, perhaps?

"That's terrible, cut that."

"Cut what?" Something occurred to me; I put my hands on my head.

"How about that for closing a loop?"

"What do you mean?"

"Last time we played Wrexham I was struggling to get Dani to use her left foot and there was the whole 'you're not welcome here' thing from the referee. Two years later she's scoring rabonas with her left and Wrexham fans are applauding her." I took Angel's elbow and pulled her down into her seat.

"David Beckham left United. United won just as many games, sold just as many shirts, kept filling the stadium. You can always replace a player. But why would I want to replace that?" On the word 'that' I pointed to the spot from which Dani had scored.

"It's fun buying Kit and watching her crush teams, but it's more fun watching Dani do it. Or you. You're right, I don't have these conversations with anyone else. Dani doesn't want to play for another club. Wibbers is football crazy. Youngster is on a mission from God. You're the only one who has a choice. You might wake up one day and think, I'll go to L. A. and become an actress. Or you might wake up and think, 'I've got twenty mill in the bank, that's enough, seeya.'"

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. She listened with a serious air, but then she gave me a crooked smile.

"Better keep me entertained then, hadn't ya?" I bounced the crooked smile right back at her. I took my phone out and pretended to dial.

"Hello? Sheffield United? I heard you've got a two-footed striker. Is she for sale?" Angel scoffed.

"Yeah, yeah." She shook her head before reaching out for a handshake.

"Truce?" I smiled and shook it. She got thoughtful.

"Can I still go to Paris and Angel City and all that?"

"Course," I said.

"Got to keep things fresh. I'm planning a short spell abroad myself."

"Oh, where?"

"Secret."

"Probably Gibraltar," she mused. When she saw my face, she punched the air.

"Yes!" I sulked.

"We were on a truce."

At half-time, what seemed like the entire stand wanted to take selfies with us. More specifically, they wanted selfies with Angel and since I was there, they said 'why don't you join in too?' Angel was really good with the younger girls who were at the match. She asked what position they played, who their favourite player was, all that guff, and she never got bored. Not visibly, anyway. I would have noped out after the third one if I had the choice, but Bonnie would have battered me if I'd wandered off.

There was one guy hovering around who looked like he was trying to pluck up the courage to talk to Angel, but when I scowled at him, he pretended to take a phone call and fucked off. Angel finished telling a young striker she needed to get her left foot as good as her right because 'the best managers' liked that. The little girl smiled back, and I think a small one crept onto my own face.

"You're good at that," I said, when the second half kicked off.

"Thanks," she said, distracted. She leaned forward and pushed her knuckle into her lips. She shot back.

"Look, are we going to win this?"

"Yes."

"How are you so sure?"

"We're bossing it and we've got Scottie Love, Meghan, Charlotte, and Kisi on the bench. Jackie is out-thinking Eve. This one's done."

"So I can relax?"

"I don't know. Can you?"

"What about the final?"

"It's against Cardiff or Swansea, isn't it? I'm not sure how good they are. Better than Wrexham, but better than our best eleven? It could be close but..."

"But we've got Kit." I smiled.

"And you'll be back. No way they can stop you both. It's 60/40 in our favour I reckon."

"What about Gwen?"

"Ah, she'll be fine. And who knows? Maybe you'll stuff up the final and save us all a headache." Angel tried to give me a withering look.

"We're not going to stuff up the final, Max. We're going to crush it." My eyebrows rose with amusement.

"Gosh. Is that your fierce face?" She sat back and folded her arms, but that didn't last long. She unfolded them and smiled.

"This is kind of like Relationism, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You said it's about building connections between the players. This is us doing it."

"You just like that the conversation is all about you."

"Yeah, so? I don't think the director of football at my next club is going to sit with me when I'm injured and tell me how he's in a constant state of dread that I'll leave." I tipped my head back and laughed so loud some of the players looked up.

"I'll confess to some intermittent dread, okay? Are you happy with that?" She leaned back and matched my level of relaxation.

"Very." A long ball bounced over Bonnie and the Wrexham striker got goal-side of her, just as Kit had done to her marker. Bonnie fouled the player with no hesitation, and since Femi was covering the ref only gave a yellow card.

"Come on, sis," said Angel. Ten years fell off her as she turned and pleaded with me.

"Max, you're a wizard. Can't you do something? Can't you coach her?"

"Sorry," I said. It would take a far stronger version of my God Save the King perk to get Bonnie up to the level of her sister.

"But listen, she's lucky."

"Lucky how?"

"She's got you. She loves when you score almost as much as you do." Angel sat up straight as Meghan was sent to the touchline. A centre back coming on... for Ridley T. Angel sagged with relief; her sister would not be humiliated today. She mumbled, "Relativity's a bitch."

Posted by the Football Association of Wales Final Scores Wrexham Women 2 Chester Women 4 Cardiff City Women 3 Swansea City Ladies 2 The final will be held on Sunday, May 3 in Cardiff.

Extract from the Pyramid Schemers Substack. Tuesday March 3 League Two Round-Up Chester Surgin' As Best Goes Urgin' - Tranmere Need a Surgeon Chip Van Stalls At Hadrian's Walls Albion Gone for a Burton Big excitement at the Deva stadium where a shockingly rampant Chester team took Tranmere Rovers to the cleaners. The 4-0 win was even more comprehensive than it sounds, leaving Tranmere boss Jimmy Mustard in deep trouble.

Chester remain sixth but they are very much the form team, have an easy run of fixtures, and suddenly have weapons all over the pitch. Peruvian sensation Foquita scored a brace, bringing his goals tally to 10 in just 11 matches. Darren 'Dazza' Smith's 11 goals for the season have been rather harder to come by, but with Dugger Dugdale already terrorising League Two with his mazy runs and pinpoint crosses, Dazza will be expecting to add to his haul.

Tonight's thumping header against a low block bodes well for Chester's promotion run. There was another goal involvement for Pascal Bochum, whose surges down the right stretched Tranmere's defence past breaking point and led to the own goal that sealed the scoreline. Ominously for the rest of the division, Max Best never looked like going onto the pitch; he spent a good twenty minutes of the second half talking tactics with the latest of his production line, the Baby Bale himself, Roddy Jones.

Will we see either man on the pitch this season? Best appears to be surplus to his own requirements! Up in Carlisle, Bradford City found themselves firing a rare blank in what turned into quite a drab nil-nil. Bradford's Double Dragons, Chipper and Gareth Davies, had a rare off day - to the delight of Mansfield Town, who are now only three points behind having played three games less. Mansfield are odds-on to win the title and the point was not much use to Carlisle themselves.

That's because in the other playoff spots, Fleetwood and MK Dons won while Cambridge drew. That was doubly bad news for Burton Albion's head coach Simon Blake, who was sacked when his team lost to struggling Swindon. Burton are six points outside the playoff spots and one thing's for sure - they won't be overtaking Chester any time soon.

Saturday, March 7 League Two Match 35 - Walsall versus Chester The 90-minute ride down to Birmingham was a good time to stop and reflect. Off the pitch, I liked Walsall. They were our soulmates in terms of overperforming our budget, having faith in young players, and successfully seeking out value in the transfer market. On the pitch, I had little to fear. There was no room for complacency but they hadn't replaced their dodgy keeper and their average CA would be in the region of 80. Ours was a simply titanic 89. 9.

We were close to going platinum. Swanny was close to returning to full fitness - no need to rush him into the team given our fixtures, but his CA (85) was seven points higher than Sticky's, so our strongest eleven was definitely over CA 90. Our other weak link, Cole Adams in the left back slot was really not all that weak. I had been giving Cole 50 XP a day to boost his training via the Secret Sandra perk and he had raced ahead of his former peer, Josh Owens.

Three months of consistent investment had moved Cole 8 points ahead of Josh. The perk was all kinds of genius. The effect was crystal clear and I couldn't imagine a time when I wasn't pumping at least 50 XP a day into it. As I grew stronger, I would increase that towards the maximum 200 a day. It meant I had to keep my nose to the grindstone, had to keep generating XP for Old Nick. Some players were growing more slowly.

Ryan Jack's increase from 75 to 76 was something of a minor miracle - I thought the guy had capped. Lee Hudson and Henri - training again after his knock - were stumbling at the finish line as they neared their limits. Both would peak in the coming weeks. Youngster had been growing slowly, but suddenly, like a cricketer getting 'em in singles, found himself on 99 not out. He would be my first home-grown triple digit dude! Would he catch up to Foquita this season? No chance.

The guy loved our style of play, and loved being cajoled by Sandra, geed up by Vimsy, and slated by Luisa and I. He had eased up to CA 106, easy as you like. Wibbers (75), Andrew Harrison (71), Bark (69), and Dan (66) had slowed, but I put that down to me not rotating the team as much and them being in a kind of 'digestive' process. I wasn't worried about their growth in the slightest. Brooke: Can you call me please?

"How's my favourite Texan? Wait, is Dolly Parton from Texas?"

"No."

"Levar Burton?"

"No."

"Zach Green?"

"Yes."

"How's my favourite Texan?"

"Good, thanks, but I'm here having a chat with the project manager for Bumpers."

"On a Saturday?"" You're working on a Saturday."

"That... is a fair point. I think?"

"Max, listen. They want to do the gym and the shower block together. If we tell them today we can guarantee the slots."

"Sounds logical and I'm sure there isn't a catch."

"Well..." It wasn't like Brooke to be hesitant.

"Go on," I said, getting nervous. She exhaled.

"They want to start at the end of March. Bumpers will turn into a huge construction site - again. It won't affect the evenings too much. The women, the youth teams, the pitch hires will be okay. We can try to redirect some of the five and six o'clock bookings to Hoole or Saltney - if that's all right with you."

"Course it is. But..."

"I know! The noise, the disruption. It will mess up first team training for the men for April and May. If there's a playoff run..."

"There won't be, but give me a second..." I imagined dozens of diggers and cranes and hundreds of guys in hard hats ambling around Bumpers with their arses hanging out, smoking, being incredibly noisy. It would be absolute hell - we could say goodbye to our CA growth.

"There's no way we can...?"

"The alternative is the fall. September, maybe. At least this way it'll be done in time for the new season. But I don't know how it goes from the football side. I don't know how critical the last few weeks of the season are."

"We're probably about as good as Bradford right now. Three more weeks of quality training should be enough for us to keep this run going. I think... Yeah, I'm not worried about this season so much as next. I really need us to get off to a flyer. Actually, let me look at the fixtures again." I brought them up on my phone.

"Okay the match where it could cost us is Cambridge. The rest we should be fine. When the builders start work, can they move some of the units to Saltney so we can train there? At least it's a good pitch. That might help us keep the levels."

"I think it depends on the water pipes, the sewers, the electrics."

"Right," I sighed. Saltney was fairly barren in terms of those basics, as far as I knew. We wouldn't be able to simply slap down any old cabin.

"It's your call, Max." I tried to find a silver lining.

"This will help you in terms of the new stand, right?"

"There will be much less overlap between the two projects, yes. It should make my life easier."

"Okay, let's do it. It's growing pains, isn't it? In a way, this might be the best time. The squad has done the hard yards. The summer regression might be a bit more pronounced but what can you do? You know what? We need a good summer camp. Maybe Mateo will let us rent his gaff in Tenerife. The lads will love that! Yeah, go for it, Brooke. Bosh."

"Bosh. Good luck today."

"Mmm. Do you like it when I'm arrogant?"

"It's not my favourite."

"Hmm. Okay. Thank you for wishing me good luck. I will pretend I need it." She laughed.

"Was that you trying not to be a jerk?"

"Yeah."

"At least you tried." She rang off and I shook my head. The best I could hope for at the end of the season was five weeks of stagnation but when the lads came back from their summer breaks we would have a beautiful new gym and a hugely practical block with showers, lockers, and boot rooms. It would be a huge leap forward. What about those five weeks? We could do Mondays at BoshCard, the rest of the week at Saltney. Maybe players who weren't involved in matches could train on the weekends.

That would let me use Secret Sandra on them. Yes, anyone whose CA slipped in April would get a blast of my experience points to lift their levels. There were solutions. I had tools. I had been buying more tools recently while building my stash. I'd dismissed the March perk. It was called 'The Max Planck Constant' and promised me XP multipliers if I selected the same eleven a few games in a row. It very specifically said I couldn't be in that team, though, so that was an instant veto. No-one tells me what to do.

I'd bought Manager Stats for 300 XP. It added another layer of detail to a manager's profile.

Now in addition to seeing my ranking among all managers in the country (I was the 80th best manager in England) and my current reputation (poor) I saw how many cups I'd won (zero, according the curse, which was slightly surprising because some perks counted winning the Cheshire Cup as an achievement), how many leagues I had won (two), how many Manager of the Months, how much I had spent on transfers, how much I had recouped.

It was quite a fun page but as I had always suspected, nothing I couldn't have gotten from Wikipedia. Next I bought the average ratings perk for 500 XP. Now when I looked at Charlie Dugdale's player profile there were two new numbers. One showed this season's average rating from his time at Reading: 6. 34. Above that was his average rating as a Chester player: 8. 40. Again, the curse was inconsistent.

The Form section counted games in the Cheshire Cup, but the data provided at the bottom of his player profile ignored Cheshire Cup games. Then I'd finally taken the plunge and added the boys under eighteens squad to the curse. That cost 2, 000 XP but at once I could see that Benny had a slight knock he had not reported, that Chas was depressed, and that Jamie Brotherhood considered Chester to be 'a stepping stone towards his future'. Cheeky fuck!

Being able to keep an eye on them was all kinds of relaxing, especially for when I had the discussions with them about their future careers. Being able to see their Morale fluctuate would help me say the right things. Even with those three additions, I still had loads of points left. XP balance: 8, 333 I might need some of that to keep our levels up while Bumpers was being butchered, but I was tempted to add another Attribute. The team was in such a good position, though, I felt it could wait.

Improving Playdar wasn't needed in the short term - I was killing it with adding boys and girls to the youth teams - but I would want it by the time I got to Canada. I wouldn't be there for long so I had to maximise my scouting. Sandra Lane eased into the seat across the aisle.

"Vimsy got good at cards," she said, wide-eyed.

"No," I said.

"You lost your touch." She smiled.

"Any thoughts about today?"

"Yeah. Foquita's gonna murder them. I told him if he got to twenty goals I'd give him a surprise."

"What's the surprise?"

"A week off."

"He'll hate it."

"I know. That's why it's a surprise."

"Are you gonna play today?"

"I cannot be fucking arsed," I declared. I stretched in a contented way before remembering Brooke's call.

"We've got a problem." I told her about the upcoming building work.

"Do you think we could do double sessions for a while and then sort of coast to the end of the season?" She considered that.

"I'll talk to the Brig; he's got all the fitness data."

"Top."

"You're not worried about it?"

"The faster we go, the harder it is to go faster. That's science," I said.

"So profound," said Sandra.

"I can't wait till Jamie starts saying things like that."

"Oh," I said. It sort of burped out of me. Sandra realised she'd let slip her secret.

"Shit. I was trying to drag it out the way you do with Andrew Harrison's rating."

"Jamie Lane-Beeks," I said. I repeated it a few more times.

"Scans well. JLB. J-Lob. J-Lub. Jlubby." Sandra got a sour look.

"No-one is calling my child Jlubby. Least of all..." She went through some kind of preparation before eyeing me.

"Max, my favourite movie is The Godfather. It's about a football manager who agrees to look after Little Baby J if anything happens to his mum." Deathly silence. My assistant manager had detonated a nuke right there on Sealbiscuit. It took ages for the air to return. Sandra's eyes were darting all over my face trying to gauge my reaction. All at once I shot to my feet and ripped my hoodie off, provoking wolf-whistles from the back of the bus.

"Let's fucking go!" I screamed.

"Let's start the fucking match right fucking now! Where's my top?" Vimsy stood as much as his card game would allow.

"It's in the trunk, boss."

"Pull over!" I yelled.

"Pull over and start the gaaaaame! I'm ready to explode!"

Extract from the Pyramid Schemers Substack. Saturday March 7 League Two Round-Up Saddlers Depressed As Goal-Pest Best Is an Unimpressed Guest The Chip Van Slams Into Magpies' Big Man Stags Dragged As Gills Swill the Goal Pills Gravity finally hit the top end of this MAD League Two campaign, as most teams in the top seven hit turbulence. In a season with unusually high points totals at the top, it looked like Bradford City and Mansfield Town would battle it out for the title.

Both lost tonight meaning the big winners were... Chester! Max Best has looked a distant figure in recent weeks, bored to death on the touchline wondering why a player of his quality is slumming it in England's fourth tier. Why he chose to unleash hell on Walsall in their Bescot Stadium we may never know, but his three goals in the first half had data wonks all over the world wailing and gnashing their teeth. He doesn't fit the models!

The first two were typical Max Best fare - one a harum scarum dribble from an opposition corner that left defenders choking on his exhaust fumes and a goalkeeper wallowing in his own inadequacy. The second a free kick so tasty the word sumptuous doesn't even come close. The third, amusingly, was a tap-in on the line after great endeavour by Pascal Bochum. Best seemed embarrassed to have scored it and appeared to apologise to his assistant Sandra Lane, who had tears in her eyes. What do they smoke up there?

Goals from Dazza Smith and Henri Lyons secured the 5-0 win and the goal difference. Chester's is so much better than their rivals it can scarcely be a factor in this title race. Yet another data point that Best has broken. Meanwhile Notts County's misfiring attack roared to life in a ding-dong seven goal thriller against Bradford, and Mansfield were stunned by an early burst from Gillingham. There's life in this title race yet.

Bradford are eleven points ahead of Chester, and while they have played three games more, Chester will experience fixture indigestion no amount of antacids can ease. Mansfield are a clear eight points ahead with only eleven games left to play. Despite these inarguable advantages, some bookies now have Chester as title favourites, which is patently absurd. There is no way. No way. Is there?

Monday, March 9 On the 3G pitch at Bumpers, I watched training from the touchline, eagle-eyed, sometimes calling a player over for a chat. That was my role in this part of the season. Ask questions, listen, cajole, motivate, sympathise. In recent days I'd had long chats with Dazza, with Josh, with one of the Lees. I had taken Tom Westwood out scouting, had asked Vincent Addo to help me move some boxes from my cousin's attic to my mother's bungalow.

Small things, little things, unimportant things, but as Angel had reminded me, players liked it when I spent time with them. This was the time of year to do it. Let everyone know they were valued even if my team selections didn't reflect that. It was having an effect. The story of the season was crystallising. We were getting close to the end. Something amazing was at hand. MD arrived, right on time. We were supposed to have a talk about the budget but he wanted to enjoy the session first.

I had worked hard to get us to this point, but so had he. He'd put years of service into Chester long before I'd been blessed with supernatural gifts. I found myself getting more and more sentimental around him.

"Max," he said, smiling, "what am I looking at?" I smiled back. MD got no credit from anyone except the people who saw him in action. Me, Brooke, Inga, Secretary Joe. MD had told me that Ian Evans and the previous managers had treated him poorly, like an outsider. I enjoyed telling him how advanced our drills were.

"We're doing an attack versus defence drill."

"Okay."

"We've got three things going on." I pointed.

"On the right it's Pascal doing the old Art of Slapping but with Lee Contreras and the right-sided striker making up the numbers while Lee Hudson stays back. Lee H can do it but I want numbers back in the rest defence."

"Is that why the defence is so fucking watertight all of a sudden?" I laughed; MD rarely swore.

"We either concede none or two. Mad sport, isn't it? We're solid these days, yeah, but that's mostly because the defenders have worked their arses off this season. Okay in the middle we've got Ryan Jack who is playing simple passes left and right but if you stay long enough he'll ping one to Foquita. Don't ask me how they know when to do it - some things can't be coached."

"But Ryan isn't playing much."

"No but this is one of our weapons. There have always been inexplicable connections between players. Did you ever see Harry Kane play a pass to Son without looking?"

"Of course. And vice versa."

"Yeah. It's innate, but we still practise it. The third avenue is Duggers on the left."

"I love him," whispered MD.

"The way he dribbles. It's like a little fishing boat out in the middle of an ocean storm, completely unbothered, unaffected. He does his own thing while the world is happening around him."

"Yeah, I get that. I love the aesthetics, that's why I wanted him, but I've been surprised by his application and his output. He's way better than I thought. I'm getting oppo managers saying things like they had a plan to shut us down but when we signed Duggers the plan went out the window. Which I can believe, too. Oh, and see this now?" Charlie did a shimmy against Magnus, who was playing right back for this drill, and dribbled past him on the outside. Duggers pushed the ball forward and crossed it.

Dazza smashed the ball home with his enormous forehead, to generous applause from all watching. Sandra swapped a load of players out and in. I started walking away and MD followed.

"A lot of the pitches are still worn and cut up from the snows and rain, but the middle is always worse than the edges, right? Duggers, like most wingers, has been coached to come inside when he gets the ball and drive towards goal at an angle. I've been telling him to stay wide and do a big cross, like the olden days. Even on shit pitches, the grass is still in good shape there so he's able to do his moves. He jinks past the defender, pushes forward, crosses.

We have three strikers who love a header so you can't even do a low block on us." I shook my head.

"It's too easy." MD slapped me on the back.

"Rather this than your heart attack football. Come on." We got in his car and drove the twenty seconds to the Deva. We were supposed to talk in the boardroom but MD wanted to walk around the pitch first. We made small talk until we got in front of the Harry McNally stand. He looked at it with such reverence my head dropped. I was going to knock it down. I was a vandal.

"Last game of the season's at home," he said, crouching like Pedro Porto.

"AFC Wimbledon. I've told Brooke she'll be in charge of any VIPs that day, any sponsors. I'm going to be in there with the lads, getting wasted, going mental." I chuckled.

"I'm worried we'll have twenty thousand people in there and no-one in the rest of the stadium." MD closed his eyes as he smiled.

"It's not Old Trafford, is it? We don't have any European Cups." He bit his lip and was quiet for a long time. His Adam's apple bobbed violently before he croaked, "But it's ours." I grabbed him and laughed.

"Come on. Get emotional in front of your Chester mates, not me. I've never even watched a match from there. What would I know?" He wiped his eyes and nodded.

"Yeah. Sorry." I scoffed again.

"Don't be sorry. I'd be in bits, too. If I gave a shit," I added, which made MD roll his eyes.

"It's budget time. Come on, mate. Think of all the numbers!"

This budget discussion, perhaps surprisingly, wasn't about Chester FC. It was about Max Best. After his mind-blowing financial presentation to the squad, MD, Brooke, the Brig, Ryan, Jackie, and I had been having conversations about footballers and their personal finances. Our conclusion was that there was a good reason 40% of footballers went bankrupt after their careers ended and it could be summarised in three words: they were fucking clueless.

Yes it was good to get our lads to buy low-cost ETFs but who was helping them decide how much to put in? What if we were accidentally making them spiral further into debt? We had convinced MD to offer one-to-one personal finance sessions to our players and he had agreed (reluctantly, because he saw other people's finances as none of his business). He would check their incomings and outgoings, help them set a budget, explain tax, national insurance, pensions, and all the basics. I was first up.

"Okay," said MD, as he clicked a pen. He cleared his throat, demonstrating how uncomfortable he was.

"Right. Um... what assets do you have?"

"Assets?" I said. MD made a note.

"Need to define terms," he said to himself. He didn't, but before I corrected him I wondered if me being a bit dim would help him prepare for when he did this with the other players.

"What things do you own that you could sell for quick cash?"

"Er," I said.

"Do my shares count?"

"Yes."

"I've got just over four thousand pounds in shares." He smiled.

"You didn't buy more since my presentation."

"I want to but I'm always on edge about what's coming in and going out."

"That's why we're here," he said, in a soothing, non-judgemental voice. I found myself relaxing into the conversation.

"That was good. Say that with everyone." He brightened.

"Will do. Anything else?"

"I own Saltney Town. And West Didsbury, sort of. And some electronics and two great suits. My universe is expanding." MD scribbled a few things.

"Thing is, Max... actually, let's come back to that. Have you got any savings?"

"Yeah, about forty grand." MD's eyebrows shot up.

"Normally I'd encourage people to build an emergency fund. Yours is, ah, maybe on the high side?"

"Well, Sebastian Weaver - and Rachel! - took care of my mum, so... But I realised I get stressed if I don't have a big wedge, you know? Mad things can happen. If there's a big bang in the night, I like to think I can deal with it."

"Do you have any liabilities? That means anything that costs you money on an ongoing basis like a student loan or a car purchase. A mortgage."

"I'm renting my car. Most things I buy outright. If I can't afford it, why would I go into debt to get it?" MD stared at me, then looked down at his notes. I leaned on my arm.

"What? You want to say something about my transfer dealings?" He got a cheeky grin but forced it away.

"This is about you, Max. I'm trying to help you, the individual. I mean, it is a bit rich that... no! We have to separate the two things." He got super serious.

"Okay, let's talk about your income. What's coming in?"

"Yeah, so, you know I've got the three grand a week from Chester."

"Gross," he said. I thought about making a joke, but rose above it.

"Yeah, before tax. That's going up this summer."

"Is it?" said MD.

"Yeah, when we get promoted."

"If," he said.

"Write five grand a week," I said, staring at the point his nib met the page.

"Five grand a week," said MD, dropping the pen so he could better pinch his nose. He suffered for a while but then said, "You know what? You need to sort out your image rights."

"Yes," I said, because I'd heard the phrase before.

"You know what that is?"

"Yes." He gave me a quizzical look and decided to assume I didn't actually know.

"What you can do is take twenty percent of your income and siphon that into a company that deals with your image rights. The company pays a lot less tax than you do. As your income rises, so does the benefit of having that process." I got fidgety.

"MD, I've been given a gift. I think people should pay taxes so that we can have roads and schools and hospitals. I really don't want to get involved in shenanigans."

"It's not shenanigans," he said, earnestly.

"It's completely above board. If I did it, sure, that would go down badly, but it's standard practice for actual stars. We use your face on posters, on our season tickets, all kinds of media. It's absolutely fair we should pay you for that and His Majesty's Revenue and Customs agrees."

"I heard about those footballers investing in movies and art and shit like that as a tax scam." MD nodded.

"Yes. They were badly advised. This isn't that, I promise."

"We need someone we can trust to help us with this, MD. There are too many sharks." He got a faraway look.

"I could set it up for you. What about Wibbers? Youngster? Angel? There's a lot of opportunity here. You need to max out your Individual Savings Accounts, too. Those are government-approved tax-free investment wrappers. There are some basic steps you could take that would save you a small fortune. It would be quite fun to have a tax planning meeting with an England player. Lots of my peers would be quite jealous."

"Are you creating yourself a side hustle in the middle of my financial planning meeting?" MD shook his head, annoyed at himself.

"You're right, that's unprofessional."

"No, I love it. I hoped you'd offer. If you tell Wibbers he can't afford some house he's looking at he'll probably listen to you because I've spent all this time listening to you. Yeah, it's perfect. Let me see if I understand the image rights thing. The big-name players get 20% paid into a different bank account? That seems easy enough."

"Yes, it's a well-worn path. I'll help you set it up before you sign your next, ah, contract." He stumbled over the word because mine was unusual in being month-to-month. In football terms, it barely counted as a contract.

"You have some other income, I think? BoshCard?"

"Yeah, I get a chunk when I do an advert for them but I only do one when I have a fun idea. What else? In theory, Ruth's agency pays me a consultancy fee. That's twenty grand a year at the mo."

"Twenty grand a year?" MD couldn't believe it. I think the number gave him the impression Ruth's agency was raking in cash on a scale he couldn't have imagined. It wasn't smart to put him right.

"I don't take the money," I said.

"It's getting put back into the clients so I can make more later." I realised the number was out of date.

"It's actually getting closer to thirty grand and it's rising quickly. Ruth wants to add Cole, Dan, the two lads from United, and the League Two Legends. With Duggers the numbers start to get serious and most of Ruth's clients are young and their wage rises will be exponential." I laughed.

"Plus she gets a cut of Angel's perfume deal. Christ knows what that might be."

"And... you get some of that?"

"Yeah."

"Holy smokes," said MD, as his eyebrows rose.

"Plus I've got Youngster and Ziggy as private clients. It's not much but it adds up." MD smiled.

"How's Ziggy doing?"

"Great. Slow start to the season but now he's banging the goals in. He's up to 16 for the season and he's loving life!" MD rubbed his chin.

"You're quite exposed to the world of football, aren't you? It's understandable but you should diversify as soon as you can. You've got your income from Chester Football Club, from Ruth's football agency, and from your football clients."

"And a huge wedge coming from Mateo's team in Gibraltar when they win a few matches in Europe next season. That reminds me, I'm going to loan myself to College 1975 in July and August so I can make sure they get into the group stage where the big money is. That's going to net me half a million or so. Shit, I forgot to mention I owe Mateo a hundred grand from when I bought West Didsbury." MD dropped his pen and went for a walk around the boardroom. He came back and stood behind the chair.

"Max, next season we are going to start with seven or eight away games in a row to give us breathing space for the relaying of the pitch and the construction of the new stand. It means we'll have a run of home games later in the year, which will be great, but there's a thing in investing called the sequence of returns risk. In football terms, it means you don't want to start your season with five losses. Having a long run of defeats puts everything in jeopardy: your position, Sandra's, mine.

If you are not here at the club during that time we could easily lose all eight." I shook my head.

"Not this time. We're going to be a mid-table League One team pretty early on and you know how we accelerate. We're going to annihilate it. Honestly, mate. Wait till you see my wage demands for the Championship season. That's going to blast my money troubles into orbit." MD looked like he was trying to press his eyeballs into his brain. He untensed and tried to look unbothered.

"If we get promoted this season, you can do what you want. Why shouldn't you have a nice break working for the owner of Tranmere Rovers?" He laughed, humourlessly, before getting a bit of a glint in his eye.

"For half a million quid, though..." I held my hand up.

"The exact amount depends on loads of mad equations. It's all coefficients and country-specific TV deals and shit like that, but yeah, it will be worth it."

"Your expenses?" said MD.

"Rent?"

"No. I've got the car payments. Phone contract. Some bits like that."

"You don't buy a lot of new clothes."

"Have you been talking to the Brig?"

"The football clubs run themselves, I suppose?"

"Oh, no," I laughed.

"West is almost breaking even but I need to chuck a few grand into it every now and then. Saltney is a bit of a money pit. It would have been nice to win the Welsh Cup but we didn't have the players in place in time. Next season we have a shot, but we'll probably win the league anyway. I'm rambling, aren't I? Money. I'm probably shipping out... two grand a month? Sometimes more." I saw the horrified look on MD's face.

"What? We're doing a UEFA tournament speed run at a club with no fans or sponsors."

"You listed those as assets, do you remember? Things that cost you money are liabilities."

"They are going to make money, mate. If West win the rest of their home games this season, we get a big bonus from the sponsor. We're going to rinse him and The Wall even more next season. We're going to tier 7 and then 6 and we can develop some young players and start getting transfer fees. Saltney's a literal goldmine and I'm sitting on it. A goldmine is an asset, right?"

"It is until you start spending more money than you earn in order to develop it. Remind me what your plans are for Sandy Lane." He meant the road Saltney Town lived on, not my assistant.

"Just your basic two or three thousand seater mini-stadium, whatever I can get away with so it's fit for the Welsh league and, if poss, Europe. Sprinkle a few extra pitches around. Leave space for a geodesic dome."

"A dome?"

"Yeah, we're going to have one there and one at Bumpers. It's only a couple of million each. You get a big UFO-looking tent thing that goes over a pitch. Lets you play year-round, lets light through so the grass can grow. Better than 3G in lots of ways, but we don't rent it out. It's for elite footballers, hundreds of whom will be registered to Saltney Town."

"Hundreds," scoffed MD. I couldn't understand his doubts.

"I've already got twenty guys better than Wes Hayward."

"Who we sold for 300, 000 pounds," said MD, in a strange voice.

"Yeah. I think I'm not explaining my plan very well. At its heart I need a place to hold my training camps so that's all quite normal. The extra bits, the fancy bits, will be complementary to what we've got at Bumpers. Things like a counter-current pool and a Footbonaut."

"What's that?"

"It's a big cube that you stand in. A machine fires footballs at you and you have to kick them into random squares that light up. Bargain at three million quid." MD stared at me.

"That comes with a good return on investment, does it?" I shrugged.

"Probably. What's it worth to turn a Championship player into a Premier League regular? Ten million at least. What's the value of keeping Roddy Jones around? A hundred million. At a certain point, all these costs fade into insignificance." I tapped the table.

"I'm not buying mad things just yet. We need toilets, showers, a gym, a video room, boot rooms, lockers, more pitches. I'm just thinking ahead and making sure we've got space free for everything that'll make the Bumpers plus Saltney combo pretty close to what elite teams have. I'm pretty sure we can get seriously close for a fraction of what the big six have spent. From what I've seen, they've lost their minds chasing the last couple of percent of improvement.

What I'm building will be sustainable for Chester and for the Welsh FA."

"When you're gone."

"Right."

"When will that be?"

"When I'm done." I smiled. I turned and looked outside. I hadn't even rebuilt one-quarter of the ground!

"I'm nowhere close to done, Mike." MD got up again and walked to the window; I copied him. He turned and leaned against it.

"I was worried about doing the investment presentation for the players. I thought if you saw how well I was doing you'd be on my case to invest in the club."

"What? No."

"You didn't say anything about me buying bonds, stumping up cash for new players, or joining Henri's syndicate. I really appreciate that."

"Well," I said.

"Someone - wasn't it you? - put the idea into my head of not having all your eggs in one basket. Right now I'm doubling down on black every year but that makes sense because every thingy in the roulette wheel is black..."

"Always bet on Best," mumbled MD.

"As soon as someone changes the wheel, I'm getting as much money off the table as I can, I promise you that." I laughed.

"My safety net is Youngster, a potentially world-class player who may never agree to a transfer." I shook my head at the insanity of it, but remembered we were talking about MD.

"Your money is yours. You should keep it as far away from this game as you can, that's my advice."

"I've been thinking of investing some with you."

"Great idea, let's talk about the exciting opportunities I can offer a man of your taste and discernment." He laughed and rubbed the back of his head. He pointed to his notes on the table.

"Your finances are a mess. You've got money coming and going, you're sending cash to your clubs willy-nilly, and yes, it's easy to see how that turns into profit but how would you even account for it? You need someone to get a grip on it all."

"Agreed."

"And you need money to turn Saltney into a place where actual training can take place. Pitches, showers, dorm rooms, everything you've told me about. I've popped in on the odd Sunday morning and seen the coaches in the car park and the top brass from the FAW milling around with clipboards. It's the football factory you always talked about. It's exciting! I think I'd be interested in getting on board, if you'll have me."

"I'd love that. But... why now?" He donked his head against the glass behind him.

"Fear of missing out, Max. When I was negotiating with Henri and his mother about the loan to lay down the pitch at Ellesmere Port I was thinking, this is free money. I could be doing this. I do think it's better that I don't put any money into Chester FC because that has the potential to turn sour. Saltney is a free-for-all, though. The Chester fanbase as a whole accepts that it's your latest executive toy and you're doing mad Max Best things with it.

If it turned out I was helping you with Saltney's finances, people wouldn't care. As long as there's a clear and strict separation between the finances of the two clubs, there won't be complaints." I hadn't expected this. I thought MD would go through my bank statements and ask why I subscribed to a Cheese of the Month service and he would try to switch me to a cheaper phone plan.

"Let's talk about buying a Footbonaut," I said. He smiled.

"Let's not. Let's talk minimum viable product. What's the smallest amount you need to get a workable training facility? A version without a spaceship." It was impossible to say what it would cost but there was an easy way to judge MD's risk appetite. I looked almost apologetic as I said, "A million?" MD seemed to shrink even though he wasn't moving. I think it was because my life was suddenly accelerating, zipping ever faster towards the speed of light while he was stationary.

"Oh, Max," he said, weirdly distorted.

"That number causes me physical pain."

"Nine hundred and ninety thousand," I suggested. He got some acceleration of his own, sped up enough that I could hear him properly.

"That... is honestly better." He laughed at himself before getting thoughtful.

"I could make a few hundred grand helping players set up their image rights companies. If we do get to the Championship, maybe I'll pay myself a salary. Be like you."

"Yeah, you probably should." I didn't say it but his position needed to come with a salary so the club would be able to replace him without the fans demanding someone do what MD did, to the same level of skill, for free. I moved over to the table and sat on the edge. MD stayed where he was.

"Are you going to do Relationism with the lads tomorrow night?" He was talking about the FA Youth Cup Quarter Final against our third Premier League side of the campaign.

"Away to Ipswich? Maybe a little just to mess up their analysts." It was another measure of how far the club had come that I wasn't even tempted to use Bench Boost against Ipswich. I would probably use it for the semi-final, which looked like being against one of the real big dogs. Turbocharging the lads and then using Relationism seemed dangerous - they would reach critical mass in minutes. If I was being honest with myself, that wasn't why I was thinking about sticking to a pure positional play strategy.

"It's strange. The closer I get to the end, the more conservative I get. I know we'll win if we play 4-3-3. Why risk it?" I frowned.

"That's lame, isn't it?"

"It's not lame, it's normal. You don't have to be Einstein to realise that as you get closer to a body it exerts more pull on you. Quarter-finals, semi-finals, first dates, weddings." He looked behind him.

"Demolitions. It's the same for everyone."

"Yeah, that's what I don't like. I'm the megabrain; I'm supposed to be above all that." MD shook his head.

"You're not nervous because of you. You're nervous for the lads. Benny, Tyson, Captain, Bomber, Henk. Tomorrow night could be their last hurrah." He came over and sat next to me.

"I think it will be their annus mirabilis."

"Totally," I agreed. MD laughed.

"It's what people call 1905, the year Einstein published four papers that rocked the scientific world and redrew our understanding of the universe. I have to admit I never got my head around E = mc² but I always loved the idea of having a year so awesome you needed to dip into Latin to explain it. I feel like that's happening for Chester in general and those boys in particular." He checked his watch then stretched out four fingers one by one.

"Win, win in style, lose, go down in flames. Only one of those doesn't fit my mental model of the Max Best Universe."

"Amazing," I said.

"What is?"

"You just won the Nobel Prize for pep talks. You get a CEO of the Month award." I gasped.

"I just understood it!"

"Understood what?"

"The equation. You're an executive at Chester. That's E. If you join me at Saltney you'll be an executive there, too. E = md²!"

"Wouldn't it be MD = E²?" I groaned.

"I can feel my skull overheating; I just can't get my head around those mad equations. Let's do something basic, something that I can cope with. Let's go to Sandy Lane and talk about where to put our swimming pool. All right?"