Chương 51: 10.1 - The Cambrian Explosion

Player Manager 10 The story so far: Max Best, player-manager of Chester FC's men's team, has assembled a talented squad that sits ninth in the fiercely competitive National League, England's fifth tier of football. Having seen off a destabilising takeover bid from a Texan multi-millionaire, Max must now refocus his squad on the task at hand - glory on the pitch.

"The creatures of the Cambrian period tried on every possible anatomical costume." Ancient Oceans, Discovery Channel Sponsored Content DEVA STADIUM - MID-MATCH HOME DUGOUT AND TECHNICAL AREA MAX BEST Gosh I love our sponsors, BoshCard. There's a huge cheer. MAX looks up. MAX BEST What now? A Frenchman runs into shot. HENRI LYONS Boss! I scored a goal. Pay me. MAX BEST Excuse me, what? HENRI LYONS My goal bonus! MAX BEST Oh, right. MAX tries to hand over some CASH. HENRI recoils. HENRI LYONS Cash?

What am I, a stripper? Use your BoshCard! MAX whips out a credit card and frowns. MAX BEST What, this?

CLOSE-UP OF MAX'S BOSHCARD - IT SAYS MAX BEST BUT EVERY NUMBER IS 7 HENRI is suddenly holding a card reader. MAX hesitantly pushes the card closer until it beeps. HENRI LYONS Thanks, boss! HENRI runs off. MAX's phone pings. He lifts it up. MAX BEST Ooh, it's in the app already. That's handy. Hey, nice interface. Check my credit score for free? Don't mind if I do. Wait, I spent HOW MUCH on defenders? There's another huge roar. MAX looks from the pitch to the app to the pitch.

MAX BEST [comically stressed] Stop scoring goals! A card reader slides into view. Max shakes his head and beeps it. CLOSE-UP OF CREDIT CARD AND APP INTERFACE HENRI LYONS AND ON-SCREEN TEXT Don't just buy it, Bosh it!

1. Monday, January 20, 2025"Soggy," said Sandra.

"Damp," I replied.

"Aquatic."

"Heavy."

"Sodden."

"Sod this," said Sandra. She was my assistant manager and far too talented to be stuck down in tier five, although there were compensations. One, when I was away or having a meltdown, she managed Chester's men's team. Two, I let her do almost all the post-match interviews. She was already one of the most famous women in the English football landscape and it was a matter of time before a football club owner offered her a serious job.

"Okay," I said, giving the grass one last pat. We couldn't train on it - it would do more harm than good. I sighed and got to my feet, clapping away some tiny flecks of mud and frost.

"So we've got the plastic pitches." We were at BoshCard HQ, which would be Chester's training ground for a while longer. I had recently spent the last of my budget on a new player, including the money I had reserved to get our own campus started. Normally BoshCard was a decent facility, but the heavy rains over the winter had wrecked grass pitches all over the north-west. We walked a few yards to the closer of two unforgiving, concrete-like plastic pitches.

They were a far cry from the modern 3G options which felt almost like natural grass.

"We can't do serious work on these or we'll get more ACL injuries. I could get Brooke to sweet talk us some slots at the King George centre - they've got a nice 3G pitch. But our lockers are here, our BoshCard buddies are here, and the Best Bistro is here."

"It would be a shame not to have access to the Bosh Bistro," agreed Sandra. My attempts to name the mobile kitchen after myself had utterly failed, but it had been a great addition to our facilities and had been the slight boost we needed to sign a quality player from a higher level. We had two chefs working inside it, boshing out meals so delicious and nutritious that the place actually made a slight profit. I tried to summarise the dilemma.

"If we train there we can't eat here. If we train here we can eat here but we'll lose one guy a week to injury. Do we want better pitches or better food?" Sandra clicked her tongue a few times.

"What does Jonny say about the Deva?" Jonny Planter was our groundsman.

"Says it'll be a potato field against Halifax and Forest Green but if he works like the devil it'll just about be okay against Barnet. But then we've got Solihull three days later. The guy's suffering." I pulled the toggles on my hoodie; it was damned cold out.

"I think it'll be a while before we get a nice surface again. We should train at King George."

"We can move the kitchen. That's the whole point of it."

"We agreed with Bosh that we'd let their staff use it this season. Chester FC doesn't break promises." I thought about that statement.

"I don't, anyway." Sandra stomped her feet to get warm.

"The boys bring packed lunches. Sandwiches, chocolate bar, apple. Every day away is a field trip." I grinned.

"Once a teacher, always a teacher."

"Careful, Max. You've clearly got teacher DNA."

"Noo," I wailed.

"Don't say that. I was the cool kid."

"Were you?" she said.

"No, I was a weirdo." I thought about how the next couple of weeks would go.

"Players go to King's. Train and go home? No, we need to make sure they don't eat shit three times a day. We... We bring food there. Right, check this out. The Brig and Vimsy come here and grab, like, twenty tupperwares full of stuff from the Bistro. We make it an event. Lads bickering over who's got all the custard crumble, who gets the last spoonful of blueberries."

"How long before Henri starts bringing his own baguettes?" I smiled, but it didn't last long. I crouched and touched the grass again. Over the course of weeks of pleading and persuading Sandra to leave her cushy job at Manchester City, I had broken her defences down and made some rash promises. Most, to be fair, I had kept. One, though...

"I'm sorry, Sandra."

"For what?"

"This," I said, feebly. Our facilities were getting worse. Meanwhile, her former club, Manchester City, had bought another couple of postcodes to lay down pitches and mini-stadiums and luxury battle bunkers for the real stars of that show - City's lawyers. If the club kept expanding at its current rates, City's campus would cover the entire surface of the earth by 2050. Me? I ran a bog.

"It's not the Death Star, is it?" I shook my head.

"And the football we're going to play. It's... It's not suitable for a lady of class and refinement."

"Are you catastrophising again?"

"No. I just want better for you. Like you deserve."

"Deserve," she scoffed.

"Yeah, okay, I had it good at City but that's the past. This is now. If you feel bad you can give me two things." I stood and slapped my hands together again.

"Tell me your heart's desire."

"One. Let's go inside." Her hands were tucked under her armpits. I laughed.

"Kay."

"Two." Her face lit up.

"Hurry up and do your presentation." I laughed harder.

"Come on. It's not that weird." Her only reply was to raise one eyebrow. She turned and almost skipped away.

"It's not that weird!" I called out.

We were doing things a little differently. The new plan was that the lads would get changed and leave everything in their lockers. You know, so they couldn't get distracted by their phones and smartwatches while I was telling them the plans. Almost the entire first team squad was waiting for us, plus all the physios and coaches. No admins. I blew on my hands, while Sandra put hers in Vimsy's pocket. He took his training coat off and wrapped it around her. What a gentleman!

"Couple of quick introductions are in order," I said, with my teeth chattering slightly.

"Er, Noah, can you get me a tea, please? I'm literally freezing my bits off." He ran out to do my bidding. I swept my gaze across the room.

"My name's Max Best."

"Hi, Max Best," said quite a few of the lads. Morale was fucking high - the entire squad had come together to defend the club against an invader and judging by their player profiles, they cared more about that than the dubious political skills I displayed in the second half of the Fans Forum.

"New guys, here are the key players at Chester. Most importantly, me. Max Best. Second, my assistant, Sandra Lane. Do her bidding and all will go well. Your coaches include Vimsy, Jude, and Spectrum. Over there we've got The Brig. Head of Performance. Talk to him if you need to learn basic life skills, if you have complaints about me, or if you want to know what it's like being airdropped eighty clicks off target in a hot zone on a cold night in - " The Brig coughed. I grinned.

"The rest of that sentence is classified. There's Physio Dean. He's your go-to for medical stuff. Livia's his next in line. Those stories she tells about her family? Best to imagine she's making it all up. Trust me, it's less surreal that way."

"Uncle Mike says hi," she said, which caused lots of laughs. I shuddered.

"Whatever you do, don't ask what Uncle Mike's nickname is." More laughs.

"Er, Glenn's your captain. Sticky's goalie coach. Ryan Jack's a crafty midfielder and he's helping me out off the pitch with stuff. He can help you get settled into the area. He's busy this week helping me finalise this season's loans but, yeah, hit him up for advice." I was about to move on when Ryan said, "What, no joke? No, hit him up for advice about anything other than where to get a haircut?" I awarded him a smile.

"In a parallel dimension where I didn't have hyper-accurate maps and mental reviews of every stylist within fifty miles, you'd be the first person I asked, Ryan mate, even for haircut advice."

"Fuck me, where's Max and what have you done with him?"

"Max is having a good morning," I said.

"Max is going to blow Ryan's socks off with a presentation if Ryan will stop interrupting." At the mention of the word presentation, Sandra did a gleeful little squirm. I went to get the flipchart and brought it to the centre.

"Oh! I forgot the new guys. Okay, can we get a Chesterness-filled round of applause for the God of Walls, Christian Fierce." Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Christian Fierce half-stood as the room erupted into claps, cheers, and, yes, one whoop.

"Nice to be here," said the dreamy dreamboat.

"Ah," I said, swooning into the flipchart.

"It's Christian Fierce!" While I hugged the inanimate object, I brought up the wonderful words, the words I thought I would never see. Christian Fierce - Kidderminster Harriers - Chester FC - £175, 000"The greatest ever Christian," I suggested.

"Hey!" said Youngster, who went to church by choice.

"Okay, let's agree he's top five." I sighed extra happily for comic effect, but it wasn't that far from how I felt. Fierce was six foot five, which as you know is 195 centimetres, and he had high heading, positioning, and influence attributes. He was highly rated as a non-league player but most of our competitors thought I had been well and truly rinsed by Kidderminster. They were wrong. The guy nearly touched the ceiling but his personal ceiling was much higher.

The curse - given to me by a dastardly demon called Old Nick - showed me that Fierce's Current Ability (CA) was 71. That was near the top of the National League range, which my estimates put at 74. At CA 75 he would be a League Two quality player, and we very much hoped to be playing in League Two very soon. Fierce would be our rock for at least one and a half seasons. The curse also told me his upper limit, measured by an attribute called Potential Ability.

If we got our training centre up and running and kept hold of Sandra, we would be able to bring Fierce to his maximum of 120. He was 28, so there was a risk he would never quite get there, but I had been doing some testing on older players and I thought with good training and regular breaks - something Fierce had never had - I could push him to a much higher level.

"Boss," said Sandra, because I was still hugging the flipchart.

"Right," I said, snapping back into the room. There were some laughs but Henri and Pascal looked at each other. They knew me well and were worried about my mental health.

"Please also welcome to the stage... Chipper!" Chipper was Leslie Thomson, a player I had signed on loan from Crawley. Chipper was a very strong, stocky, 29-year-old Welsh forward. He had helped Crawley get promoted to League One and his reward was to watch as my mate TJ bought a shiny new striker. Chipper lost his place in the team and had become quietly bitter and surly.

He really didn't want to resurrect his career down in the National League, but I had worked with him briefly and I had been able to convince him that six months with me would very much put him in the shop window. Chipper was something of a risk in terms of morale, and as always with loan signings I was spending big money - two thousand pounds per week, five hundred more than Fierce - to develop someone else's player. His wages represented basically all the remaining profit from our FA Cup run.

I reckoned it was worth it, though. Chipper was CA 80, PA 102. A huge upgrade on what we had. He was getting generous applause, though not as much as Fierce, who most of us had played against several times. For most in the room, Chipper was an unknown quantity.

"Top, top," I said.

"We're very lucky to have him. We're also lucky to have with us today the manager of Saltney Town. He's going to do some coaching for us. That's weird, isn't it?" It wasn't weird. I had bought Saltney Town and persuaded the Welsh FA to lend me one of their most promising coaches for the rest of the season. I had picked the one with the best coaching profile and holy shit, this cocky bastard had more twenties than a drug dealer. He was, on paper, the perfect football manager. Off paper, he was a twat.

"Llewellyn Kenrick, everyone." Llewellyn massively resented being picked for what he thought was the Welsh equivalent of being sent to Siberia and wasn't shy of showing it. At least with Chester he would get to work with some proper players so his six month sojourn in the far north wouldn't be a total waste.

"Okay, now, I expected Llewellyn but the Welsh FA had a surprise for me. Can we get a super-duper extra special welcome for... Elin Butler!" Elin was a decent coach, one I'd happily have employed to work in a rotation, but she had one very special and amazing skill.

"Can you...?" Elin blushed under the weight of all the stares and spoke to us with her hands. Almost everyone smiled patiently, not understanding.

"I said, thank you for the kind welcome." I signed 'good job'.

"Sign language! It's made my year. She's going to help coach the women and that's just crazy amazing for Dani, obviously. I fucking love Wales, man. I want you to teach Elin everything you know about coaching and football and life, okay?" Noah came back with my tea. It looked pretty good. I sipped it.

"Oh, man. Five gold stars to whoever taught Noah to make a tea." I took another sip.

"Christ, that hits the spot. Er, why is Noah here? Basically because I sent all his mates out on loan and he's lonely. Loan-ly? No, cut that, that's terrible." I put the cup down for a minute; I needed my hands free for the next thing.

"Er, Friday night was pretty intense. Thanks for all your help. Yes, I got myself into a bit of bother at the end, but it turned out just about okay. The main thing is we killed the takeover and there won't be another one for a long time."

"Oh?" said Henri.

"Have they agreed to the three-year moratorium?" I wanted the Chester fans to vote not to countenance any takeover bids for a three-year period so I could have some certainty about my planning.

"Not yet," I said.

"But imagine the next Chester fan who comes to a meeting and says 'I've found a rich guy who wants to buy the club'. He'll get savaged. People like drama but this was too much drama and they need a break. I mean, even people who want to rejoin the European Union - people with a functioning brain - don't want to talk about it for, like, five years. We need a fucking break, right? So, look. Soz if I was a bit tonto but we've got loads of long coach rides where we can chat it out."

"Are you going to tell us the valuations that got bleeped out?" said Pascal.

"Of course not."

"But Henri knows. It's not fair." Henri had worked with a wonderful media studies student called Sophie to create the surreal clip show that had saved me from having to leave Chester FC.

"Henri doesn't know."

"He does!"

"Henri the filmmaker knows. Henri the football player doesn't know. He operates under a system known as a Chinese wall. Feel free to look up the concept in your own time." William B. Roberts, according to me the second-most valuable player at the club despite being two months short of his seventeenth birthday, had his hand up.

"Boss, we want to know if you're friends with Sumo or not."

"I am. He's a ledge. He was pretending to go against me to make the takeoverers complacent." William nodded.

"Okay. We was wanting to go on his streams. Like, play FIFA against him and that but we thought he was maybe not on our side."

"He's one of us. Go on his streams," I said.

"He's fucking mint and he'd like that. Yes, do that. Bonus kudos if you mention Glendale Logistics." William nodded at Noah and Josh. They looked pretty stoked by the idea of going on Sumo's channel. Good for them, I thought. I glanced around and noticed that Llewellyn was deeply unimpressed with how this meeting was going. Unprofessional, wasn't it? And weird. Well, from his point of view it was about to get a whole lot worse.

I sipped my tea and checked I was ready to start.

"Ah! One thing before I do this."

"What are we doing?" said Henri.

"New Maxterplan," I said. I went to Zach Green and pulled some cash out of my pockets. Zach was a quality player - a tough defender with good passing accuracy and decent range. He was an essential cog in the machine I was trying to build, and after a tricky start, he had very much settled into our patterns. His dad had flown across the Atlantic to help out with the dental project I was starting, and through Zach I had developed a moderate interest in palaeontology and the ancient world. Shame about his abs.

"Zach, here is two hundred pounds in cash. I'm putting one hundred in this hand... here. And one hundred in this one... here. Okay?"

"Appreciate the thought, boss," he said, in his Texan accent.

"What this is, right, is I'm going to do my Maxterplan and if you can manage not to speak, I'm going to donate this here two hundred pounds to the charity in old Nicaragua. The one your dad helps at. It's a cause close to your heart, right?" Zach frowned at the cash.

"Sure is, boss. We've spent a lot of happy days there."

"And that's good money, isn't it? It'll make a tangible, specific difference to the lives of some of those people you met." Zach felt like I was easing him over a trapdoor, so he was guarded with his smile. It crept up on one side of his face, though.

"Yes, boss. I'm highly motivated to earn this two hundred pounds."

"Top," I said.

"And all you have to do... is keep shush."

"Oh, boy," he said, squirming, while those nearby suppressed giggles.

"Boss," said Glenn. As captain it was part of his job to collect fines from the other players - not the official fines from the Football Association but self-imposed ones meted out for being late to meetings and so on. The money was generally used to fund Christmas and end-of-season parties, but thanks to our cup run he had a bloated party budget already.

"On behalf of everyone here, can we chip in?"

"What are you thinking?"

"We'll see your two and double it."

"Sold," I said.

"Zach. There's four hundred big ones on the table." Everyone was on edge, now. Okay, the newcomers might have been more confused than excited, but everyone else was showing their interest by bouncing, jiggling their knees, or leaning forward. I drank the moment in - this was so much more fun than trying to convince the fans not to blow up their club - and centred myself.

"All right," I said, gripping the edge of the flipchart's cover page. This was going to be, in more ways than one, epic.

"Five hundred and forty-two MILLION years ago," I said, but I had to stop. The pained noise that escaped Zach's lips was insane. I flipped to the first page. I had written three words: The Cambrian Explosion. Reading them caused Zach to shoot to his feet and writhe, crushing the money I'd placed in his hands.

"Urgh," he said, slapping himself in the forehead with a hundred pounds. Zach was the only person who knew what the words on the chart meant, but everyone knew it was funny that he wasn't allowed to speak.

"Ughhhh," he said, slipping back into his chair.

"Extraordinary," I said, sniffily, as though I had no clue that would definitely happen. I looked at Sandra.

"How's it going?"

"You don't get this in the Death Star." I grinned. Fuck yeah you didn't. Christian Fierce was having trouble remembering how to blink.

"Guys, listen up. We've played twenty-three league games. There's twenty-three to go. The goal is to win the league. Please pay attention for five minutes, okay?" I tapped my flipchart.

"The Cambrian Explosion. This isn't a bad explosion, so don't get stressed. It's a good one. An incredible one. Right, Zach?" Everyone looked at him, but he only nodded. The big ol' labradoodle.

"Cambria is the Latin name for Wales and some of this stuff was first studied in Wales. We've added a Welsh player here, we've got two Welsh coaches helping us out for a while, I've got five Welsh girls joining the youth setup, and holy shit, wait till you see the kid I just signed for the boys. An explosion of Welsh stuff. Need I say more? I'm gonna say more." I turned to the next page. I'd sketched a basic cross-section of an ocean. Just an undulating surface and below, the sea bed.

"This is the ocean loads of years ago. Can't remember exactly how many. Maybe Zach could... ah, no, because of the charity. Life then was pretty much all in the ocean. The sea bed was covered in goo and these little creatures ate it. The creatures looked like soft rocks." I sketched in some little circles lying on the bottom curve.

"That was basically life on earth." I looked at what I'd drawn. The concept was pretty mind-blowing.

"Right, then we get to the Cambrian era and things got all kinds of bonkers. One day it's all soft rocks, the next there's infinite diversity in infinite combinations. How? Now, science girls will tell you that it's all very mysterious. Some people even call it The Cambrian Mystery." I held up a printout of a book cover with that title.

"Well, I know exactly what happened so don't worry about it." Zach bashed his forehead into the table in front of him. I briefly hid my mouth behind my hand, then turned to the next page, onto which I had glued pictures of all kinds of sea creatures.

"Look at these bad boys. Dude looks like a cockroach. This one is pretty shrimpy, right? Virus with spikes. Eels. The alien from Alien. One day, the world is a hundred percent soft rocks. Suddenly you've got all these weirdos. What happened?" I turned the page. I'd sketched the cross-section of the sea again. I drew one soft rock. At the top I drew a big O with an arrow going into the water. I wrote 'minerals' with another arrow.

"Stuff's happening. The environment is changing. There's more oxygen in the water. There are more minerals, which got released from the melting of ice caps and rocks falling into the ocean. These soft rocks are like 'oh that's nice but I'm perfectly happy just sort of lying here, thanks'. These guys are on a multi-million-year holiday and they're loving it." Next to minerals I wrote the sinister word 'eyes'. I looked around.

People were interested, of course, because I was their boss and either I had actually cracked or this was somehow relevant to their careers.

"One of these cheeky fucks thinks to itself, whoops I've got a lot of money. Ah," I said, slapping myself on the wrist.

"I said money. But I meant oxygen and minerals." Zach's eyes bulged so hard it lifted him two feet off his chair. He looked around to see who else understood where I was going. He didn't see many allies. He forced himself down as he blew masses of air from his cheeks. I smiled.

"What does he do with all these resources? He grows eyes. Fucking eyes, mate. He's like, wow, that's handy. I can see. Top bins." I rubbed my forehead.

"Thing is, this twisted little fucker looks at all these soft rocks sucking up nutrients and he thinks, ah, no. Veto. I want all these minerals. Go get your own ocean. So this little shit - and seriously, guys, it's impossible to tell you what a fucking monster I'm describing - he grows himself a fucking mouth like the worms in Dune. He goes and gets two big lobster arms so he can chuck food in his gob. And he gets all fins and that so he can swim around.

No-one knows what this animal was called - " I paused to enjoy Zach's despair - "But I'm going to call it an anomalocaris." Zach untensed. Was this the most fun I'd ever had with my clothes on? Possibly.

"This guy swum around eating all these soft rocks. Just nom nom nom. So very rude. Now, check this out." I returned to the page with the images of the weird sea creatures.

"This is the guy I've just been talking about," I said, tapping the guy on the top-right.

"These other dudes used to be soft rocks. They said to themselves, guys. We need to do something. Lying here waiting to get eaten isn't a valid strat. We got nerfed, yo." I tapped other pictures.

"These eel things swam funny. Made it hard to get grabbed. This bro got himself five eyes looking up so he could see what was coming. Five eyes! Love the hustle. This guy burrowed. Loads of these things learned to burrow. This guy's got loads of little legs to help him swim but he could run, too. See? All the ways of defending yourself. And guys, you need to defend yourself when there's a predator. This is life in a nutshell - predator versus prey and who can evolve faster? Did I say shell?

Yes, I did, because I planned this. Look at this dude." I pointed to the cockroach-looking thing.

"This guy got himself an exoskeleton. He could swim around eating stuff and the baddie could catch him and take a bite, but he had a chance to survive. Hard shell, right? Always a good idea." I lifted the flipchart and pulled it to the side.

"Sticky, Cole, Glenn, Christian, Carl, Magnus. Can you come up here, please?" There was much scraping of chairs and the guys came up. I moved them into the beginnings of a 4-1-4-1 formation and pushed them close together.

"Sticky, put your hands up." He did. I walked around. I was as tall as Cole but the others had a few inches on me, especially Christian and Sticky. I nodded a few times.

"Guys. Not that long ago we were in the relegation zone in the National League North. Then we won the league and now we're gunning for the National League. But we need to be humble. We have to accept that in this league we're the prey." I popped myself on the edge of the table in front, then hopped right off.

"You know what, though? This doesn't look like a soft rock to me. It looks like a fucking exoskeleton. I wouldn't mess with that." I turned to the rest of the group.

"Would you?" Some shakes of the head. That back five plus goalie was imposing. I angled the flipchart so that everyone could see it.

"I didn't mention these guys." I tapped a picture of a sort of soft rock with long spikes coming out.

"Spiky boy. How are you going to eat a thing with all spikes all over it? It'll fuck you up if you mess with it. Ruin your whole Saturday. Josh, Aff, Wisey, Andrew, Henri." The last five guys got up and joined their mates at the front. I moved Aff to right midfield and put Josh in Aff's customary left mid slot.

"How's this for spiky? This eleven is massive. Biggest in the league? Direct ball, set pieces, Josh Throw-Ins." Josh Owens was a long-throw specialist, hence the awesome nickname I'd given him. I nodded.

"This is just to illustrate the point. In reality we'll probably do 4-4-2 because we will use Chippy in almost every match, but do you see where I'm going with this?" Everyone did - it wasn't subtle.

"Guys, you can sit down." They did and there was a low murmur from everyone. I dragged the flipchart back to the middle.

"In our league we've got a big predator - Grimsby. Good news: they've just lost their teeth. Barnet are the next biggest beast. They've got an exoskeleton, they've got spikes, but no teeth. Solihull and Gateshead are wannabe predators. Forest Green just got a million pounds of oxygen and minerals but they haven't spent it yet. Which way will they choose to evolve?

"Ah! Choose. That's the fucking key word today, guys. Because these little creatures in the Cambrian period weren't choosing shit. They were flailing around trying not to get eaten. If they were lucky, the spikes and the evasive manoeuvres worked. If they were unlucky, they didn't live to tell the tale.

"But you aren't alone in this great big terrifying ocean. You've got a floating megabrain guiding your evolution. For the new guys, that floating megabrain is me. Flash forward to when we climb out of the ocean, guys, and I've got a million pounds in TV money to spend. I mean, hey now!

"But we have to start out being a hard rock with spikes. Why? Mostly because our home pitch is knackered. We can't play short passes. We literally can't. But neither can the other guy. So we get big. We get huge. We get fucking Cambrian, mate!" I was nodding a lot but I changed to head shakes.

"No fucking way are we conceding a goal. Do you hear me? No goals against. If it's nil-nil, it's nil-nil. But I'll come on for the last twenty and we'll see what we can do on set pieces. Next two home matches, four points. Will I take six? Yes, but we're not stressing about every little thing. We don't concede and we pick up points every single match. Every. Single. Match. That's our DNA for the rest of the season. Hard to beat? Try impossible to beat."

I'd worked myself up, so I used the little bit of free space at the front of the room to pace around. I returned to the flipchart and turned to a new page. At the top I wrote Dorking followed by Eastleigh.

"Our next away games are down south. The rain was all right there. From what I've seen, these pitches are in good shape but just to be sure, I've got scouts on the case. The hope is the pitches are in good nick so we can go there... as predators. Ben in goal. Zach and Eddie in defence. Ryan Jack bossing midfield. Pascal and Sharky on the wings. Maybe," I said, playfully, "maybe a little flash of WibRob. On Tuesday night we're huge, powerful, a team of guys who can run in mud, run for days, run anyone into oblivion.

Imagine you're Dorking and you're looking at the tape of that game going holy shit, we need to bulk up. You put out your biggest eleven. What happens? Eleven fucking artists turn up doing mind-boggling things with a football. You can't get a kick. It's too fast, it's coming from too many angles. You've never seen so many fucking teeth, mate!" I inhaled through my nose; it calmed me.

"There's no team like us anywhere in the world. We can play to one extreme and the next match do the exact opposite. This week we're the Hard Rock Cafe so the rest of you will be doing extra skills work. The starters - basically everyone who stood up plus Chipper - you'll take it easy in training, do some basic shape work with Vimsy. Tomorrow night will be like the Somme. Recovery time, more shape work, you go again on Saturday. Around the away games you'll do more fun stuff with our special guest coaches.

Llewellyn has some elite drills you'll enjoy. Clive OK has agreed to come in for a couple of hours a week." Pascal and several of the younger guys exploded.

"Yes!" I pointed.

"That's the right reaction but don't sleep on Llewellyn. He can elevate your game. Help you with your personal evolution. And I've got another guy, too. Ray from the podcast. He's amazing on tactics and he'll be doing extra shape work and some funky pressing drills that we probably won't even use until next season. Guys? We are going to evolve so fucking hard this season you'll need five eyes to track all the changes." That was pretty much it. I scanned the room to see if people had got it.

The bright ones certainly had. Some of the less academic ones were vaguely puzzled but optimistic nonetheless. That was fine - the others would explain it to them and it would sink in over time. As for Christian and Chipper, I think they enjoyed it but were reserving judgement until they had seen my theories play out in reality. Sandra was mirin' me big time. I knew what she was thinking - that boy has teacher DNA all right. Josh Owens had his hand halfway up. I indicated that he could talk.

"Boss, that Welsh era was, like, dead long ago right? What happened to all those animals? The eels and the spike-rocks and everything?" I beamed at him.

"They lived happily ever after. Didn't they, Zach?" He thunked his forehead into the table.

"Pitch three in five. Let's roll, Chester."