11.

Friday, April 2

The NEC Arena, Birmingham

"Please welcome to the stage our special guest, the League One Manager of the Month for March, the former Bayern Munich trainer, the face of Soccer Supremo... Max Best!"

There was very generous applause as I strode past the sofas and hopped up onto the platform. While the clapping continued, I took in my surroundings. It was the kind of space where TED Talks happened - bare black walls, industrial-looking lighting frame attached to the ceiling, willowy curtains hanging down to soften the vibe and to make the exits a little less noticeable. Did I mention the sofas? Instead of the harsh conference chairs you might expect at such a venue, in this room the attendees were on plush couches in red, pink, black, or white.

The sofas were somewhat more diverse than the attendees. There were a few women, a few south Asian guys, but it was overwhelmingly white men in varying states of unfitness. All 7 of the abs in the room could be found on the stage under my third-nicest hoodie. Almost everyone else was wearing t-shirts with slogans such as 'Let's Get Warhammered', 'Live Love Slay', or 'My Brain Has Way Too Many Tabs Open'.

Let's be frank, it was a room full of nerds.

I had a lapel mic attached to me, which meant I could use my arms fairly freely. "Thanks, Jacob. Quick correction: Co-manager of the Month."

"Of course." The man on the stage with me was Jacob Childs, one of the bosses at the company that created Soccer Supremo. I had met him in Canada when I was doing World Cup analysis and that chance meeting led to me trousering a hundred thousand pounds to have my face on the cover. As part of the deal, I had to do a couple of events, so here I was in Birmingham at the UK Games Expo. I was motivated to put on a good show because I wanted to extend and improve my contract; I planned to blow everyone's socks off. Jacob said, "I'm sure we will have questions about that arrangement later. It could be something we include in future versions. Asynchronous co-play. Intriguing! Would you join me in the comfy chairs?" I eased myself into a massive, cosy armchair. On the arm rest was a remote control paired to a laptop that was virtually invisible from the front; I would need that later. Jacob sank into his chair with a little grunt. "What do you think of the Expo so far?"

"It's bewildering," I said, which got some laughs. "It looks big in the photos but it's ten times bigger than I would have thought. And it's bigger on the inside than on the outside. Is this the right audience for a Dr. Who joke?" Whoops and cheers told me it was. "Heh. I have a question, though. The Expo is all board games and miniature armies and that sort of thing. Not much in the way of computer games."

"No," said Jacob. "Normally we wouldn't be here, that's true, but we are experimenting with Soccer Supremo spin-offs." What follows is what he said, but he might as well have slipped into Greek for all I understood him. "We created a two-person deck builder with a focus on deck balance and synergies. You might sub in a target man and a full back with elite crossing, but focus too much on your attacking output and you could be caught out if your rival has enough counter-attacking points. One of our designers created a timed deck builder where you exchange resources - cash and squad slots - for new signings. The aim is to maximise your haul, with bonus points if you fill secretly-assigned holes in your squad. We have a ready-to-play demo of that one; we're calling it Win The Window."

So far I was pretty bemused, but the audience was getting giddy with excitement. The Venn diagram of Soccer Supremo player to board game nerd probably wasn't a perfect circle, but there would be soooo much overlap. And the more footy became data-driven, the more the thousands of people exploring the stands in the Expo would be attracted to games set in that world.

Jacob seemed to read my mind. "We have some ideas that are less centred around numbers and conventional mechanics and are more about wit and persuasion. Imagine there are four decks. From the first two, we draw a card each. I draw Sir Alex Ferguson from the managers pile and Tottenham from the club pile. You draw Pep Guardiola and Chelsea. The third deck decides the stadium and we pull Wembley. The fourth is a circumstance. It's raining heavily. Now you and I must explain why our cards would win."

"Ferguson is the GOAT but Pep's record at Wembley is absolutely crazy, plus he loves to drench the pitch before a match."

Jacob leaned forward. "And that's how it starts! We argue and the watchers vote on the winner."

"Okay but can we agree I won that one?"

Jacob smiled. "The possibilities are endless. Catan but instead of sheep and bricks it's players and stadium upgrades. Ticket to Ride but it's football clubs trying to get to an away match on time. We aren't planning a big pivot into board games but our staff have been working very hard and very single-mindedly on one game for a long time. We're letting them have half a day a week to let their imaginations run riot. Who knows? Perhaps some of the mechanics will make it into Supremo."

"That's really interesting," I said. "I like the concept of making jobs less one-dimensional. And I can think of another benefit of whipping up a few card games. It lets you book a space at this Expo and you can advertise to a demographic that is quite likely to enjoy your main product."

"That's awfully cynical, Max," said Jacob, seemingly delighted to have been caught red-handed.

I jabbed my thumb at the audience. "Who are these guys?"

"They're some of our most enthusiastic Supremos, our beta testers. They get to playtest new versions of the game with the latest player packs but one of the extra perks is the chance to win an invite to this event and to meet the guest speaker. When we announced you would be here, interest went through the roof."

"Really?"

"Yes. I think it's our second most popular event ever in terms of entries into the draw."

"I think I'm going to regret asking this, but who was the most popular?"

"Taribo West."

I laughed, and so did many of the audience. Taribo West was a Nigerian defender who sported funky haircuts and had a pretty good career - he played for both Milan clubs - but he was famous and beloved among Soccer Supremo players because when the game was in its heyday, West was available on a free transfer at the start of the season. He would sign for virtually any club and he soon turned into one of the best defenders in the world. It was the closest most Supremos would get to having Playdar. "Genuinely delighted to be in the same conversation as Taribo West. What a player he was! D LC. Every time I started a new game I told myself I wouldn't sign him, but I always did. He was so overpowered."

"Back to our beta testers. They are wonderful people, enthusiastic, helpful, passionate. Without them, the game would never ship."

"Ah, okay, so I don't need to dumb it down like when I talk to club owners." That got plenty of laughs. "Hey, guys," I said, to the room, "raise your hand if you rotate goalies." Most hands went up. I made an ecstatic noise. "I've finally found my tribe!"

Jacob seemed very pleased with me so far. "Okay, so the plan was to talk to Max about his career and the tremendous season Chester FC are having, followed by a Q+A, but our guest has a better idea."

"That's right," I said. I grabbed the remote control, stood, took a couple of steps forward, swept my eye around the room, and locked onto some of the nerds. "Some of you probably have exotic and clever questions which, let's be honest, are about you trying to show off. Hey guys, that's my job." Solid laughs. "Don't make me get my abs out." More laughs and a couple of wolf whistles. "Ha. But I think everyone wants to know the same basic things. What's it actually like being a football manager? How does it compare to Soccer Supremo? How well does Soccer Supremo compare to real life? If I'm good at this game, could I actually do well in a real football club? That's what you want to know. Am I right?"

Shining eyes everywhere. I was already overdelivering.

"Another good question is, to what extent is Max Best's management style influenced by hundreds of hours he spent playing the game? Well, let me just fess up now that I haven't played Soccer Supremo for years, apart from helping my COO get started. I played and loved an old version, back when the series had a different name. You all know the name but my sponsorship deal encourages me not to use it." I smiled; a room smiled back. "That's to let you know that the Soccer Supremo that's in my head looks a little different to the one in yours. Fortunately, as we can infer from things Jacob has said, his company is a pretty good one to work for. There are some guys who have been there for decades, including a few who worked on the version that I played for all those hours. Those kind chaps have helped me to create this little presentation."

I clicked, and on the giant screen behind me came a familiar image - the loading graphic from the old game. There was scattered but enthusiastic applause.

"This version was an absolute banger. Flawless. Well," I said, adding a little doubt to my voice. "A couple of typos." Laughter. "Seriously, though, a masterpiece. So what I thought would be fun would be to load up an old save and talk you through it."

I clicked. On the screen, the old menus appeared. An oversized cursor clicked on 'LOAD GAME'. It brought up a list of save files. The first one said 'Relegate Tottenham'. The second said 'Only Players Named Max Challenge.' The third said, 'Max Best Chester FC 2027 Pissing the League'.

There was much amusement. The cursor chose the Chester save and up came an old-school menu, which looked almost identical to the one in my head. The cursor clicked on Chester Women Squad and brought up the current squad list.

Jacob was beaming; we hadn't let him see this until now. "Wow. Such a nostalgia hit! So this is the actual, current women's squad at Chester. Does it use our data or have you written it yourself?"

"It's your data."

"Maybe it's a good time to point out that you're the manager of the women's team, as well as being the player-manager of the men's. But I assume from this that we're going to focus on the women?"

"Not quite," I said. "What I want to do is take your, ah, Supremos on a journey. It's basically the last month of my life until yesterday, told with the old Soccer Supremo format, the old font, the old system messages. I'll talk you through what happened and why I did what I did."

"Max," said Jacob. He seemed pretty emotional. "This is spectacular."

I smiled. "I had the idea, yeah, but your team worked hard on this. They had fun with it." I turned to the audience. "What do you think, guys? Is this what you want?"

Hard, sustained applause.

"I think we have a hit on our hands," said Jacob. "I'm going to sit at the front for a better view. I'm really looking forward to this! Okay, Max, take it away."

He departed and I was alone on the stage. Just me, a lapel mic, and a clicker. I clicked.

***

On the top left of the menus was the date: March 7, and the current fixture: Brighton W vs Chester W.

"Okay, first a bit of an overview of what's gonna happen here. We're going to start with the most important match that took place in the last four weeks, the women's FA Cup Quarter Final against Brighton. I thought about leaving that until the end because it's really the only match I got stoked about and it's always best to end on a high but it's hard to do this any other way than chronologically because mood affects decision-making.

"Right. The stakes of this game. It's Chester's first ever FA Cup quarter final, men's or women's, ever. Win and we're in the semi-final. Holy shit! We are only in the third tier, but we're top of the league, undefeated, and only Durham can catch us. We actually play them during this period so a heavy defeat against Brighton could send us into a tailspin that costs us promotion. As well as being a decent player and manager, I'm also something of an innovator. I have invented a new way of structuring content that I call in media res."

I clicked and the Match Overview screen appeared. There was the usual basic info such as the team names, number of minutes played, and the identity of the referee but the most important thing (apart from the score) was the match commentary.

One line appeared across the centre of the screen.

Scottie Love throws the ball underarm towards Meghan.

This disappeared, replaced almost immediately by:

Meghan looks for a forward pass. She plays it to Sarah Greene.

Greene drives foward...

But she's tackled.

I faced forward, mouth fixed in a flat grimace, as the clock ticked up with no more match commentary.

Then:

22'

Nice pass into space by Brighton's captain.

They have a chance to build an attack.

The ball is with number 8. She plays it early towards the front two.

Number 10 holds the ball up well.

She turns and looks for her strike partner.

9 has a chance to shoot!

But it's straight at Scottie Love.

"Twenty-two minutes," I said. "First shot on goal. What?" I smiled. "I think we need some context. Where do we start? Back to our squad screen, I think."

I clicked to show our squad again, but with the menus cut off so we could focus on the names. Three were written in bold and had an asterisk next to them.

"Not sure if the new versions do this, but the old game picked out three players as the stars. Ours are Sarah Greene, Meghan, Kit Hodges. You can see we've got two players out on loan, including our only DM. No injuries that would stop anyone from playing, no suspensions. Pretty much ideal. We have deadly strikers and rugged defenders, but our strength is our midfield. I often play five across the middle and most teams can't handle us. Brighton are in the WSL, though. Which brings us to our opposition analysis."

I clicked and the menus returned. The cursor slid to the left, where it clicked on 'news' and then filtered by 'scouting reports'. A card came up.

Your scout Fleur has been watching Brighton and Hove Albion Women in recent weeks. She reports that Brighton like to play a possession-heavy 5-3-2. Their main strength is their miserly defence.

"Think about this," I said, looking down, walking around aimlessly. "The WSL has some of the strongest women's teams in Europe. Brighton have decent resources but their pockets aren't as deep as the megaclubs so they do what their men's team does, which is to use data to find talented players they can develop. In the meantime, how do you survive? How do you pick up points against much better teams? If you're playing Soccer Supremo, you do something like this."

I clicked and brought up one of the old-fashioned formation graphics. It showed a flat back five, three midfielders positioned close together in the middle of the halfway line, and two strikers.

"Looks normal, right? Just have loads of defenders and hope for the best? No."

I clicked and the graphic changed slightly. The icons representing the players were in Brighton blue, but now most of them had thick white borders.

"That border tells you, the Supremo, that they aren't using the default tactic. So what has changed? I don't have time to go into every player's positioning or individual instructions, but basically the defenders and midfielders are triangulated in possession, short passing, defensive mindset. The objective, almost the only objective, is to keep the ball. Even in the WSL they have more than 60% possession on average.

"These guys pass sideways across the back five just endlessly. It's almost bizarre until you remember what I just said - they are one of the weakest teams in the top division and they play against Chelsea, City, United, and Arsenal for like 40% of their season. Those teams press high and get turnovers close to the oppo's goal. Solution? Outnumber the oppo's press to an absurd degree. Five defenders, three pivots. Cycle the ball around until there's a gap you can safely move into. Tedious? Yes. Press-resistant? Yes. Every pass is controlled, every player knows where everyone else is. They move the ball up the pitch and as soon as they see something they don't like, they come back to base.

"That's what I meant about this being something you'd do in a game. It's a kind of hyper-optimised min-max strategy you only see in simulations because it would be utterly tedious to play this and to watch this. Well, guess what? Someone at Brighton doesn't give a shit about that. This is efficient, so let's do it, no discussion.

"I picked a starting eleven I thought could do well against this 5-3-2, but I'll explain more about that in a minute."

I clicked to bring up Meredith Ann's player profile. There were quite a lot of single-digit Attributes and it didn't bear much resemblance to the numbers in my head.

"The game's all about numbers, right? Let's talk numbers. The most important ones aren't shown, are they, otherwise the game would be way too easy, but we need them for this chat." I clicked and two numbers were added to Meredith's profile - her CA and PA. The game had them crazily wrong, but it didn't matter for my current purposes. "Current Ability. What if we took an average of the two teams and compared them to each other. What would we get?"

I clicked to show just the top left square, the one with the date and fixture. I clicked again to add average CAs next to the team names.

Brighton W (Avg. CA: 105)

v

Chester W (Avg. CA: 65)

"Numbers are out of 200, of course. Okay, so we're big underdogs and they had home advantage, but I think we were a fair bit closer than those numbers would suggest." The real numbers were 100 for Brighton, and up to 80.7 for us. "Some of their CA is tied up in higher stamina. That makes sense; they're a full-time pro team and we're semi-pro.

"So let's get into the meat. What formation did I pick?" I clicked and brought up a very familiar formation graphic with the names of my players under their icons. "My mentor Ian Evans used to laugh at me when I got all clever and talked about expected threat or heat maps. You can play with your silly machines all you like but you'll always go back to four-four-bloody-two. I don't like making him right, so why do it? Two main reasons.

"First, it let me maximise my on-pitch talent. This was our maximum possible CA. Pure, ruthless, mathematical efficiency. Sometimes in these games I like to disrupt things, to subvert expectations, to see if I can cook up a bit of dramatic narrative by bringing on my best players late in the ninety. That has kinda stopped working as well as it used to, so I thought I would keep it simple. Start strong, compete for as long as possible.

"Second, I knew that Brighton wouldn't deviate from their plan and I wanted to use that against them. They want to play the ball around their defenders? Fine by me. We can settle into a compact 4-4-2, play defensive, and if we're lucky, absolutely nothing will happen in the first half. What does that give me? It turns the match into a 45-minute showdown. We're not as fit as a top-tier team, but we're pretty fit. Compress the match into one half and suddenly our CAs look a lot more similar, don't they? Manager tip - if you have a stamina advantage, do things that force the oppo to run around more. I learned that from Saturday morning cartoons!"

Some laughs, but not many. The audience were too engrossed to do anything other than listen, hungrily.

I pointed to the formation. "I decided on this within minutes of the draw being announced, told it to the players in the next training session, and we had been working on aspects of it for weeks. One advantage I have as a manager is that I can do an impression of pretty much any player. In training, I went into the middle of a back five and ran the game like Brighton's number 4 does, while my first-choice eleven kept their shape. Slightly tedious for all concerned, but players do like to know there's a plan."

I left a long pause, staring at a couple of guys. When the tension had risen sufficiently, I clicked.

The formation graphic changed. Now it had a huge giant red X over it.

"One thing I learned from playing Soccer Supremo... Sometimes your plans go to shit."

***

Chester, a month earlier.

Livia: Sorry to bother you, Max, but I thought you should know that one of our players has had a positive result in a urine test.

I stared at my phone with all kinds of things happening to me. The most immediately concerning from a medical standpoint was that my heart had stopped. The front of my head was abuzz, literally vibrating with wispy thoughts being born and dying mere moments later, like mayflies.

Failed drugs test. Huge worldwide ban for the player. A year out. Two. Career wrecked. Which career? Wibbers, Youngster, Roddy? Devastating for the club and the player. How many sponsors would drop out? Or would it depend on which drug had been used and why? Peter Bauer snorting the devil's talcum powder off the chiseled abs of a famous tennis player would be a lot different to Ryan Jack using the wrong hair-loss shampoo.

But why hadn't I seen it? How come there had been no hints in the player profile? I brought up the profiles for the men's team, swiping through. Couldn't find anything. Ditto the women. The squad seemed completely normal.

If I couldn't spot someone taking fucking steroids, that was a big gap in my powers. Who was most likely to be juicing? Realistically, Magnus Evergreen. He had been a bodybuilder; maybe he was addicted. Was that an unfair assumption? Possibly. Who had gained a lot of strength in recent months? Almost everyone. Tomzilla and Nasa loved being able to hit our gym any time they wanted. Peter Bauer was bulking up to cope with English football. Youngster, Wibbers, and Dazza were getting stronger, but surely that was at a normal rate? I frowned. Bark. He was developing physically faster than expected. Hmm.

And the women? A similar story. The defenders enjoyed the weights more than the midfielders. Femi and Meghan had added a couple of points of Strength this season. Luxury Bell, too. Her mood had been fluctuating a tad more than the others. Drugs caused mood swings, right? Should I have been keeping an even closer eye on that? Was that the clue?

I turned to look at Luxury, who was a few tables away, happily chatting with some of her closer friends. She appeared to be absolutely normal. What about Pippa Hoole? Juicing herself to avoid The Cliff? Nah, come on. She had been easing out of the squad a little bit more every week while five Welsh kids zoomed past her. No amount of human growth hormone could turn back time.

I looked at the message again, this time with a slightly less panicked eye.

Positive result... in a urine test.

Frowning deeper than ever, I asked myself why Livia had sent a text instead of just telling me. I searched and spotted her standing about ten yards away, behind a cameraman. She took a half step behind him. It was Henri. I quickly looked to the left and another camera was on me from that angle.

Urine test. Livia took someone's urine. My urine. She was taking the piss.

"You've got to be kidding me!" I said, bounding off the chair and rushing at her. She backed away with impressive rapidity.

"Whoa whoa whoa," cried Henri, using himself like a shield to protect the damsel in distress. "Calm yourself, Max."

"She fucking pranked me!"

Livia was holding on to Henri from behind, pulling him - and by extension, me - away from the others. Judging by her face, she was enjoying herself immensely. "Says the guy who hired an actor to prank the men's team!"

That calmed me about ten percent. Calmed me enough to get properly angry. "I nearly had a heart attack! That's a horrible message to get, Livia. What's funny about a failed drugs test?"

Henri moved the camera to the side, just long enough to make eye contact. "It is partly my fault, my friend. I thought we could test your skills."

"Test my patience, you mean. Jesus fuck." My heart rate was starting to return to normal.

"Max," said Livia, apologetically. "I didn't mean to stress you that much but it's not a prank. Read the message again."

Scowling, I obeyed. "Positive result. Positive. But that's bad. Negative would mean no drugs were found."

Henri and Livia exchanged a look. They didn't think I was going to work it out. Livia said, "Max, one of your players is pregnant."

That doused my anger like a bucket of cold water. "Er... oh."

"We thought we could prank you a little bit, and then see if you can guess who it is. She knows about this and agrees it could be a funny scene for the documentary and a cool way to tell the group."

Henri said, "She thinks you'll never be able to tell." I massaged my brows with my fingers while calming down. I did that for so long that Henri dropped the camera. "Okay, this was a bad idea. Or a good idea poorly executed. Livia will just tell you and that will be that."

"Wait," I said, meekly. I took ten seconds to compose myself while I bathed in a pool of liquid relief. Christ, that had been stressful! I tried to see things from Livia's point of view. She was one of the few members of staff who felt she could stand up to me, and in her twisted way was looking out for the interests of the club. A funny scene for the documentary? It had got off to a bad start, but it had the chance to end well. Could I guess which of 25 women was pregnant? The woman in question thought I couldn't. Challenged accepted, mate. But I couldn't let Livia off scot-free. I got a sad, weary look about me. "I don't know if I overreacted just now. Maybe this was funny, I don't know. We can play out the scene and see how it looks on tape. It just hit me hard because I was thinking that if someone we work with every day had a drug habit then we've really failed them collectively, you know, by not noticing, not supporting them, not helping them with their demons. It made me feel like a bit of a shit person."

"Oh, Max," said Livia. "I'm really sorry."

She seemed suitably miserable, but about thirty percent more than I had intended with my speech, so I threw my arms wide. "Hug it out?" She accepted. Henri turned and extended his left arm to create a hug zone. "You can get fucked," I said. "Okay, to business. Pregnant. Um... shit. Is it a good pregnant...?"

"Yes," said Livia.

"Okay," I said, slowly, as I sorted the women's squad list by Morale. The player in question wouldn't be at the bottom of the list, right? Not if she was happy to tell the team and excited about this mini-game Livia and Henri had dreamed up. A sudden thought hit me. Youngster and Meghan wanted to move into one of my flats! Was that because Meghan already knew...?

I looked around until I saw her. She was with her old mate Sarah Greene, plus Kisi and Queenie, our backup goalie (who had nearly overtaken Scottie Love in terms of CA).

I eyed the player profile that was hovering above Meghan's head, looking for clues.

There was just... nothing.

I squinted and turned in a slow circle, taking in the group as a whole. I thought I saw something flicker on a player profile and my feet took me towards a table with Femi, Scottie Love, Luxury Bell, and Pippa Hoole.

Pippa.

Hmm.

Was that why she was cliffing a couple of years earlier than Ryan Jack? Preggers Pips? Little baby Hoole? But then her Morale would be higher, right? Unless she had lied to Livia about being happy about the pregnancy.

I was out of my depth on this!

But then came another tiny flicker.

Luxury Bell, a 26-year old right back who could play in the centre of defence. CA 75, PA 88. Would be a very good WSL 2 defender. Being pregnant would rule her out for a calendar year at least, right?

I pulled at my bottom lip. The WSL was expanding, so next season two teams from WSL 2 would be promoted. We would definitely be one of the two. Luxury Bell was one of the players who couldn't come with us to the top tier, but I couldn't bin her off because she got pregnant. That would be monstrous. If she took a year off starting now, she would catch the last part of our WSL 2 season, and get close to her ceiling when she was 27 turning 28. We could put her in the shop window and I would be able to tell all our WSL 2 opponents that we had a good player they should snap up.

I stared at her profile; nothing happened.

Or maybe she would quit football. Be a full-time mum. Or what if she wanted to switch to a job where she wasn't liable to break her leg every single week? Something in our admin staff, maybe? She would be a good employee - she was smart and determined.

While I stared at her Determination score, it went up three points, down six, and returned to normal, all in the space of half a second.

Holy shit!

I felt my flappy gob slowly open as I stared harder. Her Decisions score went mad before settling back to normal, and then her Condition went from 100% to zero three times in two seconds.

"Luxury," I said. "Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

Femi, Scottie, and Pippa gasped. Luxury slammed the table, laughing. "No way! No fucking way!"

The other players, sensing that something was happening, rushed over. "What's going on?" yelled Angel.

All eyes were on Luxury. "I'm preggers!" she shouted, but the word was only one letter deep before joyous shrieks came from all directions.

***

Birmingham

I cleared my throat as I looked up at the slide. "Yeah, on the morning of the match," I said, smiling wryly, "I found out that a key player couldn't make the starting eleven. If you want to know why, watch season 4 of Chesterness."

The crowd seemed to like being teased in that way. Jacob shouted, "No advertising your products!" He was smiling, though.

I got introspective, trying to put myself back in the mindset of being on the team bus heading down to Brighton. Luxury Bell still wanted to play, which was crazy to me and I didn't know how to say that in a gentlemanly fashion, but Livia made up for the prank by telling Luxury it wasn't an option. "Okay, so as I said, my strategy had been to start strong and hope the subs added some value, but not to make the subs my entire tactical plan."

Tell me you're thinking about Bench Boost without mentioning Bench Boost.

"But plan A was out of the window. I still liked the idea of being super defensive in the first half, but could I achieve that with squad players? It's easier to defend than to score, isn't it? What if I kept four or five key attacking players out of the first half and put them on at half time or in the second half and asked them to run non-stop? Think about it. We make the game a 45-minute affair. No jokes about Brian Clough at Leeds, please. Coming out for the second half, Brighton are a little bit tired while we send on five wonderkids. Let's have a fucking go, yeah? Yeah. So which five players do I leave out?"

I clicked five times, and with every click a player photo appeared, along with some key stats and Soccer Supremo Attributes. I had included the CA as provided by the game company's data team, but mentally corrected them as I spoke.

"Sarah Greene." 90. "My most valuable player. My favourite Chester player depends on my mood and what day of the week it is, but if it ends in a Y, it's Sarah. Complete range of passing, vision, creativity, crosses, set pieces, volleys, dribbles, long shots. It's absolutely insane to leave her out of your team, even for a minute, but sometimes you gotta get crazy.

"Dani Smith-Smithe." 84. "Amazingly destructive wide player. Dribbles, two-footed, ruthless finishing. Deaf. You might have seen on Chester's socials that we announced that we had established a signing section. Loads of gammons and idiots piled on, laughing about our spelling mistake. Cue a reveal video! No, we didn't mean a singing section, we meant a signing section! A bunch of deaf fans all sitting together, doing rude chants in British Sign Language. Jacob, can I say what some of the chants are?"

"Please don't."

"Heh. Dani loves it. Guys, if you get a job in this business do what you can to look beyond what's considered normal. Dani would never, ever have made it at another club and that's genuinely pathetic because she's pure fucking class! And her so-called weakness is a strength on the pitch. You can't taunt her! You can't get under her skin. And because she played pan-disability footy, she got used to being clattered all the time and she doesn't react badly to it. What does that mean? It means I've got an absolute menace who can play either wing - or in the middle, but that's normally a waste - who can't be sledged or kicked out of a game. She's utterly fearless. Seriously, she's an immense player.

"If we're really going for it, let's rest both our strikers. Angel." 76. "And Kit Hodges." 95. "If you can create an opportunity for them, they'll put it away. Yeah, Brighton's strike duo is a little more physical, a little more dynamic, better defensively, blah blah blah, but sorry for being old-fashioned, I do like a striker who can score a goal.

"Finally, Meredith Ann." 63. I had wanted to use her as a sub even in the first version of the plan. A 10% boost would take her to CA 70, more or less, and my hope was that at such a level she would be able to dribble past CA 100 defenders and maybe slip a free kick past a triple-digit goalie. "I'm not going to say anything about her. If you don't get it, you don't get it."

That comment caused one of the biggest stirs of the speech so far. A murmur of chat that got louder and louder but when I spoke next, the room fell silent. Hanging on my every word, mate.

"So if I've got those five to bring on, what's my final formation going to be? 4-3-3 would work. I do love attacking down the flanks, though, and how do you fuck up a back five? With four forwards. Could we finish the match in a 4-2-4? Yes, if I start the match with Maddy Hines in the line up. She's M RC " - I liked that I could chuck out all the jargon - "and I personally don't mind using right mids at right back. Give them conservative instructions, nudge a team mate closer and bosh, they're fine.

"I don't have the biggest squad because there are far fewer fixtures for the women, so with what I've got left, I pick a 3-5-2.

"In goal, Scottie Love." 63, maxed out. "She had a neck injury a few weeks before this game, and I was able to let her recover while the young backup got some minutes.

"Three at the back were Dafina, Meghan, Femi." CA 62, 87, and 85 respectively. "Dafina is one of our Welsh youngsters and her progress has been amazing. She trains with us, gets some first-team minutes, and has regular contact with the Welsh under 17s. Getting your players into their national team is a bit of a hack, guys. Top tip.

"Midfield was Ridley T on the left, a central trio of Mari, Charlotte, and Pippa, with Maddy on the right." CAs 75, 61, 84, 45, and 73. "Ridley T is a left back and you can play left backs in left mid if you don't mind losing some attacking threat. It's funny, that. A left back playing at left back is normally more of an attacking threat than one playing two zones further forward. Okay then the most interesting choice in the middle was Pippa.

"She was one of the first players I found in Chester when I was building the team. I promised her that this new team wasn't going to be a passing fancy of mine, that she would get to be part of something serious. I kept that promise, but now her legs are starting to go. Will she mind me saying that? Um... yeah. Please keep that shush." Laughter. "But really, I felt like this would be her last big game and she's, you know, perfectly capable of running around, scrapping, playing neat passes. Remember how the first version of this line up was hyper-efficient, mathematical? One player drops out and I'm getting all sentimental, thinking about narratives instead of percentages. Is that the behaviour of an elite manager? Um, no. But also: definitely yes."

I took a sip of water.

"Em... for more context to that, I did have another option. Fioled, a very talented young Welsh midfielder, who has loads of energy and is mint. She's maybe 10 points in CA ahead of Pippa. Sometimes, though, you've got to go with your heart, right? You can still be ruthless. I told Pippa if she played shit I would sub her off but that we would pretend it was an injury. Leave with her head held high, kind of thing. Spoiler alert - she gave it everything she had and made it to half-time." Smattering of applause. "Yeah, it's hard watching brilliant people get to the end of their careers. Especially because I don't age and won't ever slow down." Amused chuckling.

"Then the 2 in the 3-5-2 was Kisi and Alwen." Kisi was 74, Alwen 62, giving an average CA for the starters of just 70.1. "Kisi's a winger very much like Dani, and Alwen is a clever forward, not a beefy target man. I needed some kind of focal point, though, so I asked Alwen to stay high and do a Tom Westwood impression. Tom's a brilliant guy we've got whose parents, weirdly, were an Energiser battery and a Duracell bunny. Er, that's a weird image. Cut that. Anyway, if the oppo want to do endless horseshoe passing around the defence, the last thing they want to see is Tom Westwood. Alwen understood the assignment. I asked Kisi to be a little more patient in case I needed her for the whole 90, and dropped her into the CAM slot so she could combine with the midfielders."

I took another swig of water.

"Back to the first half."

We returned to the Match Overview, with the match possession, shots on target, and shots off target stats being displayed in the corner. As the minutes ticked up, the amount of possession settled - 70% for Brighton - and the number of shots crawled up. When the 'action' stopped on 45 minutes, Chester had zeroes in both rows, while Brighton had 3 shots on target, 5 off.

I clicked to show the Match Ratings. Scottie Love was on 7 out of 10, but we had more than a few 5s and 6s. Pippa was one of the 5s, which was actually a triumphant way for her career to end.

I laughed and said, "Not gonna lie, that half was a total stinker. Heh. There were a few hairy moments, and I did make some tweaks, but it was mostly a case of sticking to the plan." I was about to move on when I picked someone out in the audience. "My job isn't on the line in this match, but yours could be. Imagine your team's had no shots after half an hour. Your own fans are booing you. The job information page has you moving from slightly insecure to very insecure. Do you have what it takes to stick to the plan? Extreme strategies need extreme discipline. Have you got diamond hands?"

The guy's neck tensed. He gritted his teeth. The guy was ready to run through a brick wall! I had barely put any heat into my voice.

I addressed the entire room again. "Little motivational speech, there. Can you do that? Life's not like a bog-standard RPG where it's press X for the kind option, circle to be a dick, triangle to ask for more money. You need to be able to wind people up or talk them down from ledges. You need to be able to scream in a six foot four striker's face and then calmly give him a tip on how to get the better of the centre half who's outwitting him. And when it comes to the women's team, you need to have off-the-scale emotional intelligence because as a male manager you can't be in the dressing room for the entire break so you need to go in and get your points across fast and in the right tone. Time becomes your greatest enemy. You can't waste a single second in there!"

***

West Sussex

"All right, shut the fuck up." I looked around the dressing room at the Broadfield Stadium in West Sussex. One day, Chester Women would be a big enough draw for Brighton to play their matches against us at the Amex Stadium, where the men played, but that day was in the future. "My favourite movie..." I said, rubbing my face hard. "Is..."

"Come on, Max," complained Angel. "Think about your speech before we come in here!"

"How could I?" I said, waving my arms around. "I was fucking asleep!"

"It was pretty rank," agreed Angel.

I saw Luxury Bell in her training gear - she had warmed up with the others and stayed out on the pitch taking shots at Queenie - and clicked my fingers. "Got it. My favourite movie is Junior, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as scientists who find a way for a man to have a baby, thus eliminating the need to have women at all. The ultimate gammon fantasy! Er... You know what? I haven't seen it and it sounds abysmal. No, my favourite movie is Look Who's Talking, in which Bruce Willis is the voice of a wise-cracking baby. Holy shit there was so much cocaine in the 80s! Yeah, you got me, I haven't seen that one either. Um... okay, look, forget the movie thing. Babies babies babies. Hmm... Yep. Check this out. We're here today to give birth to some football. We first conceived of this moment nine months ago, and victory has been inside us, ah, gestating - "

"Okay, no," said Charlotte, getting up and pushing me towards the door. "No no no."

"Wait wait wait," I cried. I should point out that almost everyone was laughing. "I've got parenting advice for Luxury!"

Charlotte relaxed a fraction. "Really?"

"Yeah! Get this on TV, guys, it's gold. Okay, what you do is you tell all your mates that when it comes to your little baby Bell - oh my God, baby Bell, like the cheese! - you tell them you're not going to give your kid a phone until they're 17 and no iPads until they're, like, 12. Or until they need one for school. And then, right, what you do is the first fucking minute the baby stresses you in any way, you download six hours of Peppa Pig and you shove that iPad right in that little brat's hands. Okay? That's - hey, stop shoving me. That's how you raise a child!"

***

Birmingham

The earnest faces of the Soccer Supremo megafans were turned to me like sunflowers basking in the powerful glow of my wisdom.

I took a breath and got my serious face on. One of the side doors opened, created a breeze just strong enough to ripple the nearest curtain. I nodded some more. "I repeat. Half time is a precious resource. Don't waste it."

***

West Sussex

A couple of minutes after being kicked out of the dressing room, I went back in like nothing had happened and went straight to the tactics board. "Okay, as I was saying, we're going to 4-2-4. Fuck these pricks. Seriously. Let's ruin their day.

"Ridley T left back. Maddy right. Charlotte and Sarah in the centre of midfield. You two can join the high press. Left wing is Dani. Right is Kisi for now. Kisi, run hard, yeah? Meredith will replace you later so put it all in. Strikers are Angel and Kit, obvs."

I stared at the magnets. There was a big problem with my tactical concept - nine times out of ten, Brighton would find it easy to pass the ball through us. The other time we would have an awesome chance to break into their penalty box. Our chances would be higher quality, but Brighton would have more of them. If I had complete tactical flexibility, I would have been tempted to go 2-3-5, a complete inversion of the home team's strategy. I had something that sortof came close, if I squinted hard enough.

"Be ready for a switch to 3-4-3. Meghan, there's a world where I move you up to DM and I might even ask you to mark their 8." In phases of play where Meghan was close enough for the marking instruction to kick in, we would effectively be 2-5-3. That would be a system I doubted Brighton had faced before, so it would ask them some questions at least. Put some stress on them. Stressed players made mistakes. "Captain, lead them out."

Femi stood and demanded the others form a huddle. "This is it, ladies! This is the biggest half of our season! Semi-final's 45 minutes away! Put everything in! Do it for your friends, your family, those who are here, those who have passed, those who are yet to be born. Make them proud. Make yourselves proud!"

I already had goosebumps before the roar came. Luxury Bell had tears in her eyes, and she wasn't the only one.

***

Birmingham

I walked along the stage, dangling one foot over the edge for a few seconds. It wasn't much of a drop but it was still pretty exciting. "One thing Soccer Supremo can't prepare you is the sound of management. I'm sure most of you have played football or been to a few matches. You know the sounds of the sport. I could probably play audio and you could tell if it was a volley, a short pass, someone taking down a high ball, a mis-kicked shot. Add in the buzz of the crowd, the ref's whistle, the songs and chants, all that stuff. But it all takes on a different meaning when you're the manager.

"When you've managed a hundred games, the way your players shout 'let's fucking go!' at half time sounds different. You can hear when they know they're gonna win. Or you can hear anxiety, tension, doubt." I gestured towards the screen. "This half-time break was one of the all-time top five let's fucking goes. Apex Mountain."

I looked down for about six seconds.

"I don't think I'm the best football manager. When I'm being arrogant and cocky it's normally, like, a performance. It's entertainment. I think I'm better than most at riding the emotional waves of a match, though. I think playing so much Soccer Supremo helped me with that. A match is a process, a process, a process. You refine the process and you get better outcomes. Okay. But your players are emotional and if you can tap into their emotions you can basically give your team a power-up. They'll run faster, concentrate harder, be more determined. Knowing when to be a ruthless technocrat and when to prance around the technical area like a deranged fan - that's where a lot of magic is born."

I clicked and we were looking at the Match Overview screen as the second half kicked off. We had sped up the commentary so that it was a rush of words culminating in phrases such as:

But she puts it over the bar!

But it's well saved.

But she overhits the pass!

The coders and I had made the stats area bigger for the second half, made the numbers pop when they increased. It was intended to make it feel like it was an all-action whirlwind, and it was pretty effective.

Every now and then, the stream of text would slow so that people could read it.

Chance for Chester!

Here come Brighton.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Chester again.

Brighton again!

Oh, the audience were thinking, if this part has been slowed down, it must mean there was a goal.

Nope!

I was toying with their emotions like the heartless bastard I was. And they were loving it. For a while it was like they were at the stadium, like it was one of their closest relatives or loved ones who was on the pitch.

The action paused.

"I don't have the xG stats and I wouldn't include them here because I don't have that live on the touchline as I'm making decisions. I only have my feelings. Are we battering? Are we getting battered? This first ten minutes was amazing, wildly entertaining, but I was getting more and more stressed. My body was telling me that the risk versus reward was out of balance. If you're a third-tier side against a top division outfit, things aren't going to go your way. But I felt that, yeah, we were getting some quarter-chances but the Seagulls were getting half chances. That's not sustainable. I did what I always do in that situation - I turtled up while I had a think.

"Not long after, I shifted us to 3-4-3."

I showed that on a graphic.

"Ridley T slotting into the left slot in the back three, Maddy right mid. We have two natural strikers and then a series of players like Sarah, Dani, and Kisi who are attacking midfielder types. Normally I wouldn't put one of them in the very front line because they're more effective one slot deeper where they can help the midfield connect with the strikers. But remember what Brighton are doing. Five at the back, keep the ball. I wanted bodies up there, disrupting them, annoying them, forcing them into mistakes.

"So I got Kisi over, told her to play as a right forward, get between the left back and the left centre back and cut out those passes. Work your arse off, I said. She looked at me, annoyed, and said, what do you think I've been doing?" Chuckles around the room. "I was like, you've got ten more minutes. If you aren't sprinting non-stop when Brighton have the ball, I'm gonna give you next Sunday off and you'll spend it in church with your parents." Bigger chuckles. "I call that 'putting the fear of God into her'. So we're doing 3-4-3 with a tilt to the right, okay? The back three and Charlotte have to stay in the rest defence, but the rest can bomb forward. With the way Brighton play, I'm hoping to turn the risk reward more into our favour. I'm hoping the number of chances keeps going up, but slower. And, of course, I'm hoping for a goal."

The second half resumed, and again the way the commentary went faster and slower wound people up.

Angel shoots!

Great save!

Here come Brighton.

They have created a good angle. Shot comes in...

It clips the outside of the post!

"I said, I'm hoping for a goal!" I called out, significantly, as the clock passed 70 minutes. A few people leaned forward, expectant.

The text slowed to a crawl and the sounds of a football stadium played over the speakers.

Scottie Love takes the goal kick short to Meghan.

Meghan plays a short pass to Charlotte.

She turns away from pressure and sends the ball to Sarah Greene.

As in a real stadium when Sarah went on a dribble, the volume rose.

Greene shows excellent close control. She goes past one player.

She flicks the ball to Hodges.

Hodges combines with Angel.

Angel turns towards Smith-Smithe, but turns again and plays the ball into the path of Greene.

Greene with a piledriver from 25 yards!

The roar of the crowd came to a crescendo.

The shot veers just wide!

"Ooooh!" went the audio. Some of the hands in the audience twitched as though their owners wanted to hold their heads.

I grinned.

"No more audio from now on," I said. "Text only."

There were chances. There were injury scares. Possible red card? No, it's only yellow.

There was even a disallowed goal, for Brighton. There was a cheer in the room when the referee disallowed it, even though it had happened a month prior.

With 15 minutes to go, I replaced Kisi with Meredith Ann.

The theme from Jaws played.

"Okay, no more audio startiiiiing... now."

I showed that we were now using a pure 3-4-3, with Meredith central, to the right of Kit. I even showed a close-up of Meredith's individual player instructions. Dribbling? Yes. Pressing? Yes. Free Role? No.

I showed a different screen, too. The one that said who should take our free kicks. The name changed from Sarah Greene to Meredith Ann.

"This is called foreshadowing," I said. "I invented this."

Time sped up and slowed down. Brighton had a flurry of chances, but we responded in kind. Finally, with 88 minutes on the clock, we got a free kick.

The theme song from Rocky started playing, to some nervous laughs.

A wonderful opportunity for Chester to take the lead. This is a perfect position for a left-footer.

Meredith Ann places the ball down with extreme care.

The Welsh Colombian takes a few steps back.

The referee blows her whistle.

Meredith Ann steps forward...

Looks left... Shoots right...

But the keeper guessed correctly. She catches the ball easily!

There was a groan from the audience.

"Yeah," I said, laughing. "Meredith Ann needs to put more pace on those shots. She'll get there. But what do you do when the full-time whistle blows, just after you've had a chance to win the whole thing? You know your players are thinking about that. We could have won! One kick and we would have won! But you've got to get them ready for extra time. We've got thirty minutes to go and we have plenty of gas in the tank. You have to get them together and get them focused on the task at hand. Do you tell them to forget that big moment? Show of hands. Do you tell your players to shake it off?"

About half the hands in the room went up.

"Yeah, maybe. Do that if you want. Me? I think you're just drawing attention to it. One thing I do well, by accident, is I almost always only look forward. Here's the plan for extra time. Here's our tactic. This is what we do next. Why mention the past? Who gives a shit?

"Okay so when I said we had plenty of gas in the tank, maybe that wasn't quite true. Our five subs certainly did, and the defenders did, but our wide players and Charlotte, a key midfielder, didn't. So I made everything more conservative. Back to 3-5-2, with Meredith Ann in the centre of the midfield. The plan was to get some control, take some time off the clock, and have Meredith dribble from midfield, cause some havoc."

The match commentary resumed, and there was a period of relative inactivity followed by a series of shots on goal.

"Shots are about two to one in favour of Brighton at this point and there isn't much we can do about it. Play for penalties, maybe, but we're a very young team and we don't have a lot of experience of shoot-outs. The balance of play was about as good as we could have got, which is why I didn't experiment with Meghan in the DM slot."

Meredith Ann dribbled, combined with Dani, combined with Sarah, passed to Kit, whose shot was saved.

Brighton cut through us like a knife. Shot over!

We tried again. Nothing doing.

Brighton once more... This time a shot on target.

GOOOAAAALLLL!!!!

I shook my head. "Gutted. Absolutely gutted. But look." I showed the match ratings. "We're 7s and 8s. What more can you ask for against a better team? Nothing. But I was out of options. There was nothing left to try."

I let my head fall, theatrically.

"Unless..."

We cut to some actual footage of the match. Our women kicked off and after a few passes, our strict formation seemed to melt. A few exchanges later and six ladies were over by the right touchline playing short passes to each other, doing flicks to beat pressure, keeping the ball in that area of the pitch.

We went back to the Soccer Supremo tactics screen. The 3-5-2 formation glitched, glitched again with some of the icons forming a little circle on the extreme right of the playing area, then it glitched a final time, the whole thing turned to greyscale, and in big red letters came the text RELATIONISM MODULE NOT FOUND.

This got a few hearty laughs from the users who knew what it was and had requested it.

The 'story' switched back to the match commentary, and now it was all about Chester possession.

Then...

Smith-Smithe is fouled!

But from her prone position, she flicks the ball to Charlotte.

First-time pass to Greene.

Greene with an incredible piece of skill to divert the ball to Angel!

The striker runs at goal and tries to tee up Hodges.

But the pass is no good.

The referee blows her whistle. She is bringing the game back. Angel was fouled when playing the pass!

It's in a threatening position.

Meredith Ann wants to take it.

She places the ball.

Brighton line up their wall.

Meredith Ann strikes it left-footed...

GOOOOAAAALLLL!!!!

Her shot clipped the wall and wrong-footed the keeper!

Chester are level!

On screen came a photo of a chess grandmaster calmly thinking about his next move. A caption said, 'Max Best deciding what to do next.'

"You see," I said, sagely, "football management is all about making calm decisions. You get new information, you reconsider what you're doing. The rational side of my brain was telling me to go back to 4-4-2 defensive, play for penalties, see what happens. The pressure was on the home team, right? It would be humiliating for them to lose to little old Chester. Yes, given our stamina levels and general lack of experience, the measured thing to do would be to park the bus and make Brighton do all the running. I'm actually quite a calm and rational person, you know."

The grandmaster vanished, replaced by actual footage of me at this point in the match, running around like a maniac, neck veins popping, hurling my arm towards the Brighton end. There was no audio but I was clearly screaming 'attaaaaaack!'

"Who's that clown?" I said, disapproving.

Back to the match commentary and the intensity rose a notch. There were under 10 minutes left but both teams were attacking with ease, neither team able to get much of a grip. Chance after chance after chance.

Smith-Smithe takes the ball down beautifully and turns to give the ball to Ridley T.

Smith-Smithe turns on a sixpence and dabs the ball past a surprised defender!

The winger is rampaging down the left.

She looks up.

Will she cross? A retreating midfielder slides to block.

Smith-Smithe pushes down the line and fizzes a low cross into the box.

Angel is there!

But her snapshot is blocked!

Brave defending by the home team's captain.

Greene is first to the rebound. She unleashes a shot left-footed!

But it's blocked again!

And it breaks kindly for Brighton.

The Seagulls break from defence with speed.

Some of the Chester players are flagging.

Meghan rushes at the ball and crashes into a tackle.

Bad foul!

The referee tells the home team to play on.

They're crossing the halfway line and suddenly they have four against two!

The first pass is a good one.

Brighton's number 22 has fresh legs. She drives towards the box and shapes to shoot.

Femi slides to block it...

22 knocks the ball to the right.

Scottie Love rushes out to narrow the angle..

The ball is played square.

Number 9 has an open goal.

But she has scuffed her shot!

Disaster!

But it is going in anyway.

The makeshift right back Maddy Hines has a chance to stop the ball crossing the line.

Or does she?

No!

GOOOOAAAALLLL!!!!

It was a heroic effort from Hines, but ultimately futile.

Brighton are going into the FA Cup semi-final!

Chester's players are on their backs, breathing heavily.

What a cruel end to this match!

I waited ten seconds.

There was dead silence in the room. You could have heard a pin drop.

Quietly, I said, "What do you do? The game's over. Your players have given it everything. They've carried out your instructions and they've been brave and brilliant and very nearly bridged a huge gap. What do you do? What do you say in the dressing room? What do you say on the five-hour drive home?" I counted to five and in a whisper-soft voice said, "If anyone knows the answer to that, please let me know."

***

I clicked to take us to a plain black screen. "Feels like shit, doesn't it?" I smiled. "This is it. This is the job. If you're amazing at it, like me, all you do is get yourself more and more days like these that hurt more and more. Next season it'll be the semi-final. Then the final. But this is what I said to my players. One day soon we'll be winning this competition and then they'll have to prise the trophy from our cold, dead hands because once we get it, we're never letting it go."

I took a sip of water.

"All right. Brighton 2, Chester 1. Intense. But reacting to that is the challenge. This isn't boxing where you've got months to stew on it until your next fight. I was back in action within days. You need to be able to compartmentalise your feelings. It helps if you have a good process. When I'm mentally frazzled I either go back to 4-1-4-1, my comfort blanket, or I ask Sandra Lane to take over and I take a back seat while my brain gets spongey again. You can't be that emotional every match, so if you're always the underdog it might be better to bin off a few games so you can keep your sanity."

I looked around the room and sensed that everyone was still thinking about the Brighton match. Still feeling the rawness of the defeat.

"I think it's best if we move on with the calendar. The rest isn't as intense, I promise. Okay, let me try to remember what came - " I groaned. "Oh, shit! It's an advert. Sorry, guys, it's unskippable. It won't take long."

On screen, we saw a handsome young man in a black hoodie, holding a football with a whistle around his neck. He was prowling around a space that might have been a dressing room. Already, some of the audience members were laughing.

"All right you animals, listen up," said the guy, in quite a lovely accent. The words Max Best (Player-Manager) appeared. "We've got a tough game today so I need you to really dig in. Get your teeth into it, okay? What I need is for you to smell danger."

To no-one's surprise, there was a cut to a group of animals. They were weird little things that looked like skinless sausages with four nasty teeth on the front. For the first time in this series of adverts, I had persuaded the guys from the zoo that we needed to explain what the fucking things were, because even an experienced Fallout player like myself didn't recognise them. Thus, as a handful of the creatures looked at the camera, some text appeared: Naked Mole Rat.

The camera cut back to me. I threw my hands up. "Why is no-one dressed? Is it shirts vee skins?" We cut back to one of the little guys, which were cute when you got over the shock of their strangeness, then back to me, scratching my head. "Guess we're the skins."

Then it was a drone shot of Chester Zoo's 'Heart of Africa' compound as the narrator went through his usual spiel, ending with, "Chester Zoo - we're simply the best."

That was the cue for the final joke. We saw Advert Max in the room that normally only the zookeepers would enter, where the mole rats lived in a series of boxes connected by transparent tubes. It looked quite fun, actually. There was one little mammal dude scampering around his domain looking for something to nibble, and we saw a close-up of my face, delighted to get such an intimate view, mesmerised by the little guy's energy. I smiled right down the camera lens. "I love a box-to-box midfielder."

The advert ended and was met with hearty applause.

I clicked and we returned to the Soccer Supremo menu, zoomed in on the date. It changed from March 7 to March 13, and the next fixture read: Chester versus Wigan Athletic.

I said, "The men's team were back in action. Wigan are relatively weak this season. What was the main factor in how I picked the team? Well, there was a week until our next recognised fixture but a few days later we had our Cheshire Cup semi-final, which is an important match for my club but the Soccer Supremo guys refused to write special code to include it in this presentation! Scandalous. I wanted to make sure we won the cup game, which meant slightly weakening the team against Wigan. That's why we only won 2-0." Some laughs at that, then smiles when the slower guys realised I was back in a joking mood.

I clicked and the date went forward by one.

March 14.

Chester Women versus Stoke City Women.

"This game was a test our of mental fortitude, wasn't it? How do you respond to crushing disappointment?"

I clicked, showing the next slide, and there was loud applause.

"You respond by crushing Stoke City 7-0, is what you do. Spoiler alert: another week later we beat Sheffield United, and a week after that we beat Durham. That could have been a titanic match, but we worked so hard and played so hard for so long that it was just another day. The women have three league matches and the Cheshire Ladies Cup final left to go but as far as I'm concerned, their season is over. They have been grinding for three years and their reward is to go full-time professional in the summer. I'm not sure how many will actually want to go pro, but that's out of the scope of this talk. Long story short, we pissed the league and gave a top-tier team a fright. Next year we start to be in a position to win the big trophies and you can quote me on that."

I rubbed my forehead. The long bus ride home from Sussex had been pretty brutal for the first half an hour, but then the singing had started and I knew they would be all right. I also knew that while the team could have flaws, we couldn't win big trophies until we had an elite goalkeeper. I would break the bank to sign one, if needed. What was the world record fee for a female goalkeeper?

I sat on the armrest of 'my' cosy chair. "Okay, in the interests of fairness, we're going to spend some time with the men's team. Who are also pissing the league while easing into the Cheshire Senior Cup final. Yawn. No big deal. I mean, they're also in the Vans Trophy final at Wembley, but that's no big deal, is it? That competition probably hasn't even been coded in Soccer Supremo." I put my finger to my ear as though I was getting a message from a producer. "What? It's in? It's going to contribute a decent amount to our Club Reputation? I'll get good Manager Points for winning it? Manager Points affect my Reputation which affects the job offers I get and how eager players and staff are to work with me? Oh. Okay, then."

I crossed the stage with my index finger tapping against my lips.

"Reputation Points. Manager Points. The game, computer and real-life, is all about numbers. It's just numbers. Forget me getting emotional before, that was an aberration. Let's look at some of my system messages and think about what to do based on the fact that this entire world is just numbers."

I clicked and a picture of Neo from The Matrix appeared.

"Oh, come on," I complained. "That's a little on the nose, don't you think?" I clicked again. The image was a traditional Soccer Supremo news item, written in the terse format that was de rigueur in the old days.

Your co-manager Sandra Lane has informed you that Darren 'Dazza' Smith was late for training today.

I stared at the message for a while before turning to the audience. "Star striker. An expensive purchase by our standards. Rapidly turning into a great hold-up player. Can score headers and is working hard on other parts of his game. Being late is a breach of team discipline. What do you do? Turn to the person next to you and discuss it. If you see someone who isn't talking to anyone, it's your job to include them. Come on. You've got sixty seconds to make a decision about what to do. Go."

I gave them a minute.

"Okay, now check this out."

Your co-manager Sandra Lane has informed you that Darren 'Dazza' Smith was involved in a training ground bust-up with American defender Zach Green.

"Uh-oh. First he's late, then he's throwing punches. Does this change your previous decision? Thirty seconds to discuss it in your group."

I was pleased to see that Jacob was taking part. He was talking to an old balding dude in jeans, shirt, and jumper, a look commonly known as old man casual. If I was a casting director, I'd have chosen him to be a detective's boss in a police show, or a Scottish steel baron. Yeah, he was either murders or girders.

I got everyone's attention, then asked, "Jacob, what do you want to do?" He called out his answer and I repeated it for the guys at the back. "He wants to take a hard line but if it's a first offence, it's a verbal warning. Yeah, that's measured. Hands up everyone who wanted to give the guy a two-week fine? Ha, that's about a quarter of you. I think that's how I used to play Soccer Supremo. Punish the guilty, protect team unity at all costs. Last question. Put your hand up if you're 100% sure that your decision is the right one. Whoa, that's most of you. Hmm. So what did I actually do in this case?"

***

Bumpers Bank

I was called to a quick meeting in Brooke's office, where MD and Secretary Joe were in celebratory mood. "What's going on?" I asked. I was in all my kit except my boots, nearly ready to train. The Easter weekend double-header was approaching and if I played one of the games it would take the pressure off the rest of the squad. Plus I wanted to stay match sharp because Bradford City were on the horizon and there was a chance we could mathematically secure promotion in their stadium. I was going to dazzle.

MD smiled at me. "We're smiling because the independent regulator bashed some heads together and forced the Premier League and the EFL to agree a new funding model. More money will go from the Prem to the EFL, and we'll get our grubby hands on it! We're hitting the Championship at the best possible time!"

I loved it when he got excited. "Okay, that's worth missing the start of training for." I closed my eyes while I tried to calculate what it could mean. When the clubs in the top division had formed a breakaway league in the early 90s, they had offered the EFL 25% of their TV revenues. The EFL, in one of the worst decisions of all time, had refused. The Premier League shrugged and turned itself into the world's most lucrative and influential entertainment product - apart from Minecraft. Missing out on 25% of the action had cost EFL clubs billions of pounds. Over time, some money had trickled downwards but had never come close to the initial offer. Now there was movement, and even a two or three percent swing in that direction could have been worth... "I can't do the maths," I said. "What are we looking at?"

Brooke clicked her mouse once. "Joe thinks two million a year. I think it could be three."

I was ecstatic. "We get an extra three million a year just for waking up today?" I looked left and right, waiting for someone to say something like, 'well of course because of depreciation and accrued expenses we have to reserve some of it blah blah blah.' But no, they were just smiling. "How much of it will I get?"

MD's lips twitched. "All of it." He slapped me on the back. "Don't spend it on ornaments!"

I was just about to say something witty when we heard a commotion outside. I rushed to the nearest window and saw the main training pitch, where Zach and Dazza were grappling. "The fuck?" I said, before flying out of the office and down the stairs. Although I was in a mad hurry, I pulled my boots on. If there was aggro I didn't want someone standing on my unprotected metatarsals.

In the interests of haste, I didn't tie my laces, but by the time I got outside, the scene had already been contained. Christian and Peter were pulling Zach away to my left, while Joel and Andrew Harrison were struggling with Dazza. I checked their player profiles. Zach had 'dislikes Darren Smith' as a new addition to his profile. Dazza's said 'late for training recently', while his Morale had fallen to abysmal, the lowest. I checked the squad's Morale not an hour earlier and his was high.

Anger surged through me, but I took a beat to think. There was no danger, so I bent to tie my boots. When I was done, I walked past a lot of shocked players - idly noting that Youngster had gone to Sandra's side. Guard dog. What a great kid! I gestured for Joel and Andrew to step away, then put my hand on Dazza's back and applied just enough pressure to encourage him to move away from the group, but not enough to appear aggressive.

To my relief, he obeyed, and we trudged away towards the dirt path in front of the gym.

What do you say in such a situation? I did what I thought Jackie Reaper would do, and waited.

Dazza was staring ahead, furious, but as I watched, his face crumpled and his eyes turned red.

"Mate," I said, softly.

"It's Lachie," he said. Lachie was his brother, who I had first met in Chile at the Under 20 World Cup. He was so cool, so at ease with himself, and I had been jealous of how Emma had responded to him. I later learned that Lachie knew who I was and was trying to get me interested in signing his little brother. And now he was, what? Dead?

"Oh my God," I said, as the utter shitness of the situation sunk in. I wanted to ask what got him, a shark or a jellyfish, but Jackie Reaper wouldn't have blurted that out so neither did I.

Dazza looked in my direction but he wasn't seeing anything. "He's in Thailand. He collapsed. He's in hospital and they don't know what's..."

"He's alive?"

"Yes," he said, shakily.

"Why are you in training, you dick?" Okay, yeah. Jackie Reaper might not have said it like that.

"I just heard... Just before. I don't know... I can't..."

I sucked in some oxygen to help me think. "What happened with Zach?"

Dazza groaned and fell into a crouch. "He was bodying me like he always does and I threw a tantie. Lashed out. Fuck, I'm such a smegger."

"Okay, don't worry about that. Let's focus on your brother. Where are your parents?"

"Back home, like, trying to work out what... Dad's gonna fly out."

"Good. Do you wanna go?"

Dazza pushed himself upright. "Go?" He didn't seem to have even considered the idea. He did now, and immediately shook his head. "We've got... The season's not over."

I tutted. "Yours is. Wait there." I jogged towards Sandra and called out. "Can you get the Brig here asap?"

Her eyes widened but she got out her phone. At the mention of the Brig, the rest of the lads looked at each other, wondering what the fuck was transpiring. Another thing happened right there and then, too - the 'dislikes Darren Smith' message vanished from Zach's profile. He rubbed his arm. "What's going on, boss?"

"Zach, come and help. Everyone else, back to work. Go on! I'll explain it in a bit. Colin, let me know who the last player to return to training is so I can punish them. Thanks."

Zach followed me back to Dazza, with some reluctance until he saw Dazza wiping his eyes. "Dazza, what the heck?"

"Sorry, mate," said the Aussie.

I said, "You can hug it out later. It's planning time. Ah, perfect." The Brig rushed out of the gym and came jogging towards us. He was topless and sweaty and gripping his phone. "John," I said, using his real name to show we had a situation. "Dazza's brother is sick in Thailand. I want this guy on a plane asap, okay? Sec Joe is in Brooke's office - work with him to plan and book the flight. The club will pay. Zach, can you drive Dazza home, help him pack - he's not thinking straight - and co-ordinate with the Brig about which airport to bring him to and all that?"

"Sure!" said the overgrown boy scout.

"Brig, Zach, this is your mission. Forget anything else. All right? Um... that's it, I think. You know what to do?" The Brig and Zach nodded. "Actually," I said, thinking of something. "Zach will you run over and get Sec Joe? I can't have the Brig running around looking like this." Zach took a step away. "One more thing," I said, stopping him. I put my hand on Dazza's shoulder. "If you guys ever fall out for real, let's do a proper fight, okay? In a ring, with rules, smothered in oil. The club can monetise that. Okay, hurry."

Zach shook his head, smiling, but then bolted away looking serious.

With Zach gone, I could throw around some confidential numbers. "Dazza, try to take this in. You're gonna get a big pay rise if you extend your contract here another year. Seven thousand a week, okay? So if you need to spend some money out there, do it. Do you know what I mean?"

He wasn't really processing the numbers but he got the gist. "Yeah. Like, treatment, or..."

"Hotels for you and your dad. Don't skimp. Yeah, maybe you grab a specialist from another hospital, that kind of thing. And when Lachie's improving, you move him somewhere better, I don't know. All I'm saying is that you're a Championship player now; you're rich. All right, why don't you grab a quick shower, mate?"

"Yeah... Yeah," he said, a little more awake. He moved towards the shower block.

When he was gone, the Brig leaned closer. "You specifically wanted Zach to take him to the airport?"

"Yep," I said. "They had a bit of a scrap before. Zach being the one to help out turns it into a bonding moment, right? Take their little tiff and nuke it from orbit. I mean, that's the idea."

The Brig nodded. "That should work, sir. Well done." Secretary Joe arrived, flustered. The Brig put his hand on the older man's shoulder. "You can leave it with us, sir."

***

Birmingham

The audience was waiting impatiently to hear how I handled the sitch.

"My response was swift and disproportionate. I put Dazza on the next plane to an idyllic beach resort and promised him a massive pay rise." There were some eye rolls and groans. "Hands up if you think I'm joking." Most hands went up. I eyed a few of those guys. "Put your hands down. That's what I did. The real question is why. Why would I, a known psychopath, do that? Well, the answer... will be revealed in my memoirs."

One guy yelled, "No!" with such frustration it broke the tension in the room.

I laughed. "Okay, it's a good news story in the end, so fine. Dazza's brother, Lachie, got really sick in Thailand so I told Dazza to get over there. It turned out to be a really bad reaction to something he ate or drank. The doctors did a great job. It's all good. Lachie will be up and about stealing everyone's girlfriend again in no time.

"The point is you can have principles and non-negotiables and take a hard line but what happens when you get a player who's already at their lowest point and you fine them, suspend them, scream at them in front of the other players, dig them out in the media? And only then do you find out what's up?

"Nah, it's hard, dealing with people. Really hard. I know I'm shit at it so I surround myself with people who are better."

I clicked and moved the date along to March 17.

"This was the date of the Cheshire Cup semi-final, which as you know, isn't important enough to exist in the world of Soccer Supremo. Boo, by the way, boo. Okay, so we started with some good players, got a big lead, put on more and more kids. Top. One of my earliest signings was a guy called Ryan Jack. Scouser, midfielder, some people say he plays like Peter Reid from Everton and England but I never saw Reid except for that time he tried to foul Maradona in the World Cup and got nowhere near him."

I clicked us into March 18 and another news item came up.

Veteran Chester midfielder Ryan Jack has announced his intention to retire from professional football at the end of the season. He hopes to stay in the game in another capacity.

"The Cliff, guys. I obviously don't have access to Ryan's real-life CA, but if I had to guess, I would say that at the start of February it was about 77, spent a couple of weeks at 76, fell by one point a week, then just, yeah, fell off a cliff halfway through that first half. It's like going bankrupt. You do it slowly at first, then all at once."

I nodded to myself for a while.

"Make sure you speak to all your staff about what they might want to do when their playing career's over. I made Ryan our loans manager ages ago. I ask all my players to do a coaching or scouting badge. I offer to pay for any courses they might want to do, even if it's just like a cooking course or learning Spanish or something, because their career could end any day and okay, they aren't going to go work in a busy kitchen the day after they retire but when's the worst time to think about your future? When your future has just been snatched from you.

"I don't pay for French courses, by the way, only things that are at least vaguely useful."

The next news item read:

Bayern Munich have reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League after a thrilling 5-3 aggregate win over Benfica.

"Nice to meet new people, isn't it? I want to know what happens if Bayern win the whole thing. Do I get a medal? Does Youngster, who played about five minutes? Also making a big impression in that match was Foquita, who spent a little time at little old Chester. Is it just me or are a lot of former Chester players doing really well?

"Nice to meet new people."

I clicked again and the screen went black. That was a reminder to myself about what was coming next because I had forgotten every time in rehearsal.

"Right." I cleared my throat and stared at a spot on the floor. "Erm..." I kept staring. I forced myself to move around, before clearing my throat again. "I don't want to stereotype the people in this room, but, er, remember that I was one of you. I think it's probably fair to say we tend to be introverted and we're probably happier lying on a bean bag reading a book than being at a loud nightclub. When, er..." I looked up at the ceiling lights. "When I started in football I didn't know anyone. I met a guy who became my first client. Because of him I met some people at FC United, including Jackie Reaper. I got to know the people at Chester, then Darlington, then when I became Chester manager that growth in my social life boomed. Add in Wales, Gibraltar, Germany... My phone is bulging with contacts now. But, er, that's not always straightforward. Being part of so many lives is not something I'm really mature enough to deal with, if I'm being totally honest."

I clicked.

March 19.

Chester FC players will wear black armbands during Saturday's home match against Stevenage in honour of a fan who passed away.

I turned away from the audience, scrunched up my face, rubbed my chin. I opened my mouth but words wouldn't come. I went to get some water. I spoke to the bottle.

"I get invited to weddings. People I've never met. And funerals." I took a swig. "Too many funerals." I shook my head. "We send flowers."

I clicked.

March 20.

Chester FC remain 8 points clear at the top of League One after a routine win over Stevenage.

"Black armbands, Dazza's brother still in a bad way at that point. Emotional day. We score and the lads go to one photographer who's looking after a Chester shirt with Lachie written on the back. They hold it up to the camera. I switch us to 5-3-2 men behind ball because I don't think we're in the right headspace for the next phase of play. Stevenage attack, we don't concede, and that's the game right there. That little phase where most managers would be too emotional to think straight. Me? I can be emotional and think straight at the same time."

My emotion at that point in the match had actually been anger. Couldn't holding up the shirt wait until full time? The club would make sure that was the photo that got used on our socials but Lachie would want us to win the match so that his brother could follow his dream of playing at the highest level possible. Why break concentration? Maddening, but expressing that to the players needed to wait until Lachie was out of danger.

I put my hands in the pouch at the front of my hoodie, and tried to add some pep to my voice.

"In less bleak news, the next week saw some white-hot transfer action."

March 22

Chester FC have agreed to sign Dominic Duckham from Altrincham for a fee of £400,000. The 16-year-old midfielder will join in the summer.

"This kid," I said, "is mint. He's what you might call slight. You see him in youth team matches and he's getting smacked around and it's no real surprise that a lot of coaches and scouts don't rate him. I do, though. I think he suffers from Charlie Dugdale syndrome, where he's got a sort of overly northern name so loads of people think he can't be talented. Bullshit. He's like another one of my midfielders, Dan Badford, in that he's elusive, has surprisingly good technique, and he's got some flair about him, too. If we're going to do Relationism for longer periods we need this kind of player. Alty have been shunting him out to the right and he can play there - I would list him on Soccer Supremo as M LRC - and I'll give him first team minutes on the flanks but for our youth team he'll play in the middle. Alty are in the National League and could use the money and they squeezed my pips on this one. I don't mind, in this case. I think it's a good deal all round."

Dominic was PA 139, the same as Hamish, the Scottish player I picked up for a quarter of the price. When they hit their peaks, they would be tolerable squad players in the Premier League, or would boss the Championship. Getting two players of that calibre for half a million? I was buzzing from that.

"Then a deal I had been trying to close for a while. If you're hoping I'm going to say something about Helge Hagen... Why? Chester are tiny. We can't be signing the next Haaland. That deal's dead in the water."

March 23

Chester FC have agreed to sign Wallace Wells from Stevenage for a fee of £800,000. The 17-year-old left winger will join in the summer.

"Wow. That's a hefty fee for a kid, isn't it? That matches our transfer record. As I said, I had been trying to close the deal for a while and the fact that we played Stevenage when we did was perfect. We could pin the club down - almost literally - while meeting Wallace's family and giving them the tours and the VIP treatment. This kid's going to be a menace."

He was an AM FL, so he wasn't just a winger, he could also play as a more modern forward who stayed wide and cut in on his right foot to shoot. Such players actually bored me, but Wallace was different in one key respect - he was two-footed. I would be able to coach him to mix up his game, sometimes cutting inside and shooting, sometimes pushing the ball down the line for low crosses or cut backs.

When I was done with him, he would be the ultimate terror in the Championship. He was 'only' PA 145, so his impact in the Premier League would be limited, but I saw him as Wes Hayward 2.0. Fast, thrilling, and if we could optimise him he would have much more impact than his CA would suggest. I could easily imagine him having a ten-match purple patch that would persuade a top-six Prem club to massively overpay for him.

Heh.

And in the meantime, he would be unstoppable in next season's FA Youth Cup.

"We're nearly done with my talk, by the way. Most of you seem to be pretty engaged, but maybe you're just being polite. Next news item, from the same day we announced Wallace."

Kaiserslautern have withdrawn their transfer bid for SK Brann starlet Helge Hagen.

A few in the audience turned to their mates and said something or pulled an excited face.

"Huh," I said. "How did this get in here? It doesn't affect Chester, does it?"

I swept my eyes around the sofas. It didn't seem like many of the listeners believed me.

"Yeah, this whole ordeal had been a totes mess, and I really wasn't thinking about it but when I heard about this latest development, I had to laugh. For those of you who aren't in the loop, I wanted to buy a hot young striker... and turn him into a right back. Everyone else wanted him to be a striker, because of that whole 'maybe he's the next Haaland' thing. I agreed a deal with his agent, his dad - hang on, let me rephrase that. I need to speak more precisely. I agreed terms with his dad. If Helge chose us from the many clubs interested, we would pay such and such in fees and wages.

"Okay, agreement reached in principle, so I was surprised when the dad hinted that maybe there was an auction going on and would I like to raise my numbers? Well, no, because we literally shook hands on the numbers yesterday. Now you want to change them already? I didn't want to have this issue every summer for the rest of time so I backed out completely. Have any of you seen Star Wars? No? It's a cult classic. This chap, Garth Marenghi or something, you know he's the villain because he makes a deal and then changes the terms. That's why the prequel trilogy is all about trade deals, right? We get hours of trade negotiation chat so that later, when Garth alters the terms of the agreement, it really hits home as a betrayal, and when he says 'pray I do not alter the promotion bonus any further' it's really shocking because, like, is there no end to his depravity?"

It was pretty funny to see the nerds react to me butchering Star Wars, but the ones with an advanced sense of humour were laughing pretty hard.

"Helge Hagen has top potential and in Soccer Supremo you just do what it takes to get the player, right? I can't actually do it in real life, though. I can't. Do I lose out on a major talent? Yeah, but I keep my sanity.

"Okay so after I dropped out, Kaiserslautern were in pole position. I stopped thinking about Helge for like the ninth time, and then it all kicks off big time. SK Brann have a fixture. Helge's a sub, he comes on with 20 minutes to go, plays right back. Kaiserslautern are like, what the fuck's this?" I tipped my head back and laughed. "Auction's over. Total number of bidders for the lad: zero.

"The dad, who is pissed at me because he thinks I had something to do with it, texts saying fine, deal's back on. I'm like no, mate. You scuppered the move when you wanted to renegotiate after we had an agreement. I sent him the Darth-Vader-altering-the-deal gif and said, this is you. He's like are you fucking kidding? You're going to reply to my offer with a clip from an obscure movie? I'm like yeah, bro, deal with it. I go, if Helge wants to come to Chester, hand your phone to your wife. That's not as random as it sounds, by the way. I met her and she's lovely and she's great and she laughs at my jokes. My thinking was, either the dad throws a tantie and that's the end of it, which is fine by me because I know I saved myself five years of grief, or I deal with Helge's mum and the future relationship has boundaries that are clear to everyone."

I picked out three attendees in turn and gave them strong eye contact to built the tension in the room.

"What happened next will shock you."

I left a dramatic yet insufferable pause.

"What happened next was, the mum called me and two minutes later we had a deal."

Jubilant Chester FC fans have gathered outside the Deva Stadium to rejoice at the news that the club have secured the signing of Norwegian starlet Helge Hagen from SK Brann for a club record fee of £4,000,000. The 18-year-old striker will join in the summer.

"I wrote striker there because that's where he had been playing and I thought I would come up with a joke about people being mislabeled in time for this presentation. As you can tell by the way I'm floundering, that didn't happen. Soz. But right now Helge is training as a full back and his manager has promised to give him minutes in that position. The Norwegian league keeps going when the English season ends, right, so by the time he joins us he should be pretty decent. By the way, I didn't want there to be any bad blood between the club and the dad, so I got my assistant to rush out to the local charity shops to find a Christmas card and I wrote a nice message and we mailed it out that same day. Christmas in March? Private joke, but I know he enjoyed it because ten days later, I got one back."

I stared at the text on the big screen and shook my head.

"Definitely the most chaotic deal I've been involved in. At least the player is Scandinavian, so calling it a transfer saga actually checks out." I looked around. "No? Nothing on that? That's a killer line, guys."

The old guy next to Jacob laughed once, loud.

"Couple more matches to tell you about."

I clicked and showed the Soccer Supremo page with the men's fixtures, with two more results filled in.

Fri

Mar 26

Stockport County

A

3

0

Mon

Mar 29

Leyton Orient

H

3

2

"Big Easter weekend. I played the full 90 against Stockport, really just being a DM, patrolling, intercepting, talking our young players through the game. Okay, I scored and got two assists, but who's counting? Our right mid, Bark, got a goal, which was really pleasing. He's grafting and not getting the rewards and there's nothing anyone can say to him except keep going, you're smashing it. If he doesn't believe it himself, though, what can you do? He's got all the tools to have a great career. One thing I haven't quite mastered is convincing players like him that I'm happy with their contribution.

"Then Leyton Orient was a bonkers game because I named a strong team and we played ten amazing minutes followed by five shit ones again and again. It ended up being pretty wild but we had too much firepower for them in the end. Life really doesn't need to be this complicated, though. That should have been two or three nil, no need to put our fans through yet another wringer. Why do things like that happen? There are too many variables to know for sure. As good as I am, I'm as much in the dark as anyone.

"Right, time for a couple of April Fools messages."

April 1

Max Best and Sandra Lane have been jointly named League One Manager of the Month for March.

---

Message from The Board:

The board are generally satisfied with your performance.

I shoved my eyebrows up as far as they could go, before turning towards the screen and doing a 'what the hell are you talking about?' gesture.

I relaxed and smiled. "The second one is a joke. I remember playing Soccer Supremo and taking Carlisle United to the Prem and after a few defeats you'd get a message like this. I mean, yo! What do you fucking expect, you clowns? The mad thing is, that part of the game is ultra realistic! If you're a successful manager, all you're doing is raising expectations and hastening the day you'll get sacked. Don't overperform your xG, kids.

"In my case, I'm happy to report, my boss is beyond delighted and the fans are in complete dreamland. If we beat Bradford City tomorrow, we're guaranteed to be playing in the Championship next year. Don't let that sentence slide off you; we were in the National League North four seasons ago. You're witnessing one of the top ten achievements in the history of English football, right up there with Leicester City winning the Prem, Notts Forest winning the European Cup in back-to-back seasons, or a drunk celebrity chef taking the mic at half-time and yelling at the Norwich City fans to sing louder.

"So, the last news item."

Opposition Report

Your scout Fleur has been watching Bradford City in recent weeks. Folke Wester likes to play a patient, compact 4-4-1-1, with a heavy emphasis on set pieces. Chester should look out for the dangerous runs of box-to-box midfielder R. Brown.

I glanced at the screen and probably showed a little bit too much disgust on my face. I forced myself back to blank.

"I said earlier that I always try to think about the future, but tomorrow's game is the perfect opportunity to think about the past. About a year ago, I went on a Bradford podcast and told the host I thought we would finish the season 40 points ahead of them. If we win tomorrow, we'll have 96 points, and Bradford will have 46. So I was miles wrong... We will be fifty points ahead.

"Who cares about the team in 17th? Well, I do. Their owners tried to steal Chester so they could gut it and I nearly lost my job trying to defend against that. Bradford's new boss, who treats a famous old club like his personal toy, signed a bunch of players I was interested in and won League Two with them. At that time, how many Chester fans wished they had sold their soul after all? Loads. But I had to keep doing what I was doing, keep believing in myself, had to try to stay positive and upbeat knowing that a day like tomorrow would come. All the decisions I have made, accumulated across a long enough time span, inspired by what I learned playing Soccer Supremo, has led to this. 50 points clear of the team that pipped us to the post last time round."

I rolled my head around my neck.

"Tomorrow I'm going to justify having my face on the cover of this awesome computer game. Tomorrow I'm going to propel my club into the second tier of English football. Tomorrow I'm going to reflect on the hundreds of decisions I have to make every week and give myself some credit. I get far more right than wrong.

"And what about you? I've tried to give you a tiny taste of what it's like. The variety of challenges, the emotions, the rollercoaster nature of just a single month. You might be thinking, yeah, no, I couldn't do that."

I grinned. I was about to give the people what they wanted.

"I tell you what, though. If you've played a thousand hours of Soccer Supremo... you probably could."

***

Rapturous applause. Mega. Massive. There's no way Taribo West got such a reception.

Jacob came back to the stage, we bantered for a minute, then he glanced at his watch and said we had time for some rapidfire questions.

To speed things up, he would read them out. He had a bunch on flash cards, and members of his team were running around collecting more.

He riffled through the pack like hundreds of game players in the halls of the Expo. "God, there are so many amazing questions. Okay. What do you think about the plans to let broadcasters interview players after they are subbed off?"

"It's insane. Who wants that? No-one. It's fascinating to me that almost every group with any power seems to only be interested in killing this sport. FIFA want to kill it. UEFA want to kill it. The Premier League wants to eat itself. The EFL, honestly, are relatively good but even this latest abomination passed through on the nod. The EFL admins decided there wasn't enough opposition to even put it to a vote. They don't want to annoy the broadcasters. Okay, so hang on - who's in charge around here? I wouldn't say that I'm livid but I know what I'm going to do about it and you'll find that the TV companies very, very quickly stop talking to the subs at Chester games."

"Wow, that's ominous. Okay, what next? Yes, here's one. You have resisted creating an academy but if you get to the Premier League, you will be forced to start one."

"Sorry, what?"

"Those are the rules."

"Er... I've never heard that. Wait, that can't be right. Brentford don't have an academy and they're in the Prem."

"No, they do have one. They had to start it up because of this new rule. I know for a fact because we had to programme it into our game. We try to be realistic, as you know."

Being forced to start an academy? So that the big six clubs could plunder my young players with impunity? "That is... abysmal. Um... We'll have to look into that."

"Okay. What's it like having a co-manager?"

"It's great. She's fantastic and I think it's good for Sandra, too, because if she's on her own and she loses, half the people watching will think it's because I told her to rotate the goalie or whatever their particular bugbear is. But she's a good tactician, great coach, sensational person. The way it is now, I couldn't imagine being a solo manager again."

"Is there anything especially hard about managing the women's team?"

"Yeah, they see right through my bullshit." I laughed. "That's not ideal."

"Apparently one of your first ever big decisions was to install solar panels instead of using the funds for transfers. The questioner thinks you were putting your ideology above what was best for the football club. Can you talk us through that?"

"Yeah, easy. I think that was a Soccer Supremo-inspired decision, subconsciously. When we got that unexpected money, the transfer window was closed and the bottleneck in our club wasn't transfer funds but the wage budget. The solar panels increased my budget because they slashed our electric bills, but the whole thing increased our facilities score, didn't it? I used to love football management games where you could buy bigger floodlights and expand the car park and make the club shop bigger. Very satisfying to add to the physical infrastructure, isn't it? It's just as good as buying new players."

"Do you really use Soccer Supremo's database to scout players?"

"It's part of my mix, yes. How big a part is not something I would reveal on a first date."

"Whose attributes do you think vary most from our database to real life?"

"Meredith Ann."

"What was it like managing Bayern Munich?"

"Uneventful."

"You mentioned players that have left Chester. Henri Lyons is bagging goals for Tranmere every week. Do you regret letting him go?"

"In Manchester, we have a saying: je ne regrette rien. I think it's Latin."

"Another one about your academy or lack thereof. You won the FA Youth Cup last season, to general astonishment, but this season you did no better than any other club your size. Was that win a flash in the pan?"

"Try asking that one after we win it again next season."

Jacob laughed. "Okay. Ah, here's a great one. When will we see full-blown Bestball?"

"Um... Well, my goal isn't actually to do what the question implies. I think Relationism is more sympathetic to the players but in its own way it's just as dogmatic as positional play. My vision is to get to a hybrid state, but you can't get there if you don't understand the two extremes. For a long time I was worried about other clubs copying us when we start to dominate with our new style but I'm not sure it will happen. What club owner would give a manager five years to build a team capable of doing both things well enough to be able to nail the hybrid? Nah, if what I think is possible is actually possible, we'll be the only team doing it."

"And Wales."

"Right. I should have said the only club. Good point."

"Why are you so involved in the Welsh national team?"

"I'm not all that involved, really. But to the extent I am, it's because my girlfriend loves those romantasy books about dragons. I'm relatively secure when it comes to our relationship. I think I'm a pretty decent catch, though I do keep half an eye on any Australians at a party; that's only rational. But this isn't a joke now. If a dude riding a dragon swooped down onto the Deva Stadium pitch and said, 'Emma, come with me through this portal, there is no possibility of return', she'd be gone in, like, ten seconds."

Jacob cackled, but got serious. "If the England manager asks you to play for England, what would you say?"

"I'd say, shit, when Emma went through that portal things got really fucking weird around here."

Jacob cackled again. "It's Saudi Arabia, the 2034 World Cup. Alan Turner, the most successful England manager of all time, has picked Max Best to start the final in Riyadh. What are the chances of this scenario coming to pass?"

"Nearly 100% if things go the way I expect. By then the players will be, like, actual robots, and I'll be in St. George's Park with the other England players and I'll be using a PlayStation controller telling my robot where to go. Probably they'd be better off choosing someone who knows what all the buttons do, but Alan Turner wasn't picked for his expertise, was he?"

"Let's end with a question from the audience. Er... yes, you sir." The old guy in the jumper stood up. He already had a microphone. Jacob said, "What's your name?"

"Ian Masters."

On hearing that, over a third of the audience stood up to get a look at the guy. Others were turning to their mates, mouthing the O from Oh my God. That was somewhat perplexing. Why would these nerds care about a Scottish steel baron?

"Okay, Sir Ian, what's your question?"

Ian looked at me. "Why did you choose Chester?"

"I didn't," I said. "Chester chose me."

Ian - Sir Ian, I supposed - nodded and returned to his seat. Bewildering.

Jacob looked at his watch. "Okay, that's all we have time for. We have to clear the room but I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did. Can we finish with a healthy round of applause for... Max Best!"

***

At the bar, I was pretty giddy. My talk and the format in which I had delivered it had gone down great, though I think the fans would have liked a longer Q+A. Maybe next time, if Jacob doubled my fee.

After a brief delay, the Sir Ian guy rocked up. Jacob was probably the only person out of the tens of thousands of Expo attendees who would even have suspected that I didn't know who he was.

"Max, this is Sir Ian Masters. Let me give you a quick overview of his CV."

Ian rolled his eyes. "Jacob, come on. He doesn't want to hear that."

"Oh, I really do," I said. "These guys are looking at you the way my girlfriend would look at an Australian riding a dragon."

Jacob shook his head. "Where do you get this stuff? Ian, stop me if I miss something. Okay, he started out by founding a certain games company known for its, ah, space-based military."

I looked behind me at a gigantic stand full of 10-foot-high models of space terminators and gun-toting aliens. "Um, that one?"

"Yeah," said Jacob. "That one. He wrote a series of massively popular books in the choose-your-own-adventure genre, but with extra numbers. Character sheets and dice rolls. A role playing game in the form of a book, if you can imagine such a thing. You've probably heard of these. There was Dice Dungeon, Medieval Knievel, Deadly Deeds. They were popular enough but then a mother wrote to the Daily Mail saying that her child played one of these demonic game-books and as a result he levitated. No, I'm not joking."

Ian smiled. "It was the best thing that could have happened. Millions of pounds in free publicity."

Jacob said, "How many did you sell? Five million?"

"Twenty," said Ian, cockily, as he sipped a pint of something dark.

"Fuck," I said.

Jacob continued. "Then he pivots into computer games. Guess what his first project is?"

"From what I've heard so far... either Pac-Man or Space Invaders."

Both men laughed. Jacob said, "Not quite. Soccer Supremo, Max. Ian was involved in the earliest versions."

Ian raised his glass in my general direction. "Your presentation hit all my buttons, young man. If I hadn't made a spontaneous decision to come today, I would have thought you had done it specifically to intrigue me."

I smiled. "That's cool but why would I want to do that? I mean, you had a great career, but - "

Jacob pushed his head out like a turtle. "I'm just getting started describing it!" He shook his head. "Do you know a video game franchise where a female archeologist has to, ah, raid tombs to gather treasure?"

"Yes."

Jacob pointed at Ian.

"And one where a bald assassin has to sneak around a variety of dwellings and cities, killing his targets in all kinds of creative ways?"

"Yes."

Jacob pointed at Ian.

I smiled. "I'd love that. I'd love to go into three different industries and smash them all." I sipped my orange juice. "So what made you come to this talk in the end?"

Sir Ian gave me a level stare. "You." He frowned and reached into his pocket and pulled out a pager. Talk about old school! He looked at its little screen. "I have to go." He didn't go, though. He looked into his drink, then eyed me again. "I was born in Cheshire, Max. South of Manchester. I went to school in Altrincham, and I really didn't expect to find that town mentioned tonight! When I was a boy, a very, very long time ago, the Cheshire Cup was hotly-contested. I went to a fair few matches, if you can believe it. It has been, I don't know, sixty years since I have even heard it mentioned." He got still, but I thought I saw his eyes lose focus. He was getting dreamy, regressing to his childhood. "One of my earliest game designs was a Cheshire Cup simulator. I can't have been much older than 7 or 8. You randomised the teams into a bracket, rolled one die per team per match and that was the score. 4-3! 6-2! You got the results that way. It's incredible that I'm only just remembering it now. I wonder if I still have it somewhere, in a box?"

"Did Chester ever win?"

Ian laughed. "As I remember, Chester used to roll a lot of ones."

"Yeah. That's why they're winning the league."

"Pardon me?"

"Because they rolled a one. I'm the One."

Ian stared at me, eyes burning. I thought I got a sense of why he had spent his life creating games. Yeah, he was a genius, but more than that, he had a burning, all-consuming need to win. My arrogance triggered him, but he softened. "The one manager to rule them all."

"I was thinking more like The Matrix, but I'll take Lord of the Rings." I looked left and right at all the people, all the exhibits, the incredible outpouring of creativity. "This place makes me wish I was more of a geek. It's lore heaven, isn't it?"

Sir Ian eyed me a while longer. "I do have to go, but it was a great pleasure hearing you talk and seeing those old screens again. Here, take my card. Why don't you come and visit me sometime? I'll dig out my Cheshire Cup simulator, ha! And we can play a game of something. Could be you aren't being challenged enough, young man. Pick on someone your own size, eh? I live between Chester and Manchester. It's a route you often take, yes?"

"I do and I'd like that, but you'll be disappointed if you think I'll be a challenge. While you're explaining the rules of the game I'll be thinking about the latest injury news and when I'm landing on your hotels I'll be catastrophising about our next opponent's dribbly winger. If you want to smash me up anyway, I'm pretty chill about it. Hey, though. Why don't you come to the Cheshire Cup final? You can be our guest of honour. Local boy made good. That'd be sick." I looked at his business card. His email was there. "I'll email you the details and you can decide spontaneously. I expect you're busy."

We shook hands and he bustled off.

"That was something," I said. "I get the feeling I'll look him up in my hotel room and kick myself for not asking some specific question."

Jacob's eyebrows rose half an inch. "You'd probably end up asking what everyone asks him."

"What's that?"

"Why did you make the archeologist's boobs so very triangular?"

I laughed and excused myself so I could go to the bathroom. I looked around, found the nearest option, then looked for one that had less foot traffic. I headed that way with not a care in the world. The bathrooms were round a corner, and I was practically whistling as I went. What would I spend next season's Soccer Supremo sponsorship money on? Surely I would get two hundred grand next time. I had been the Bayern Munich manager, for God's sake! I had got four promotions in four years! Time to buy a plot of land for my dream house? Or would I need the cash to go towards building the stadium in Chorlton?

As I was reaching out to push the bathroom door, a strong hand gripped my arm, turning me. I found myself looking into the wide, bulging eyes of a genuine crazy person. I regretted not having Briggy here with me. Why the hell hadn't I taken Briggy? "Max Best," said the guy, in an Indian accent. "I am so glad I have finally cornered you." He smiled, and it was genuinely disturbing. "I am Pradeep." Shit! The stalker! The nutjob! His grip intensified; I worried my bones would snap. "I'm your biggest fan."

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