Glory Of The Football Manager System

Dougie had told me to sit down and I did not sit down, and 40 seconds later I wished I had.

"It is not a bid," he said.

"You said sit down."

"I know what I said. It is not a bid, son, it is 14 of them."

Shhhh. Rain on a canopy 40 feet away and nothing else in that car park at all.

"14 what?"

"Since Sunday night I have had 14 telephone calls off agents, and 9 of them were between the final whistle in New Jersey and 11 o'clock this morning, and not 1 of them has asked me for a transfer.

"Every single one of them wants a new contract."

I stood in that rain at 20 to 1 in the morning and did not say anything for a while, because the moment he said it I could hear how obvious it was and I had not seen it coming for a second.

"Say the names."

"I am not doing names at 20 to 1, you will be up all night with it." A drawer went on his end, in a house in Croydon, at an hour when a man of 44 should be asleep. "Danny, we finished 2nd. We won a European trophy. You took a country to a World Cup final and 4 and a half million people are going to watch a television programme about it this week.

"Every man in that squad has just watched his own market value double, and every agent in Europe worked that out on Sunday night before you had got off the pitch."

"So they all want paying."

"They all want paying. And here is the bit you are going to hate."

"Go on."

"They are right."

He was right, and he knew he was right, and he let me stand in the rain and get there on my own.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka is on a contract he signed at 19 when he had made 4 appearances. Somebody offered 40 million pounds for him 11 days ago and got told no in 25 minutes, and he is on less than 2 of our substitutes.

Eberechi Eze made 19 appearances last season on an academy deal.

Nya Kirby is 17 and on £600 a week and he walked from a halfway line in front of 38,000 people in Pennsylvania 6 days ago and put it in the bottom corner without looking up.

Rúben Neves signed in a summer when we were 14th.

Pierre-Emile Højbjerg has been here 4 weeks and cost 10 million pounds, and on Sunday night Serge Gnabry spent 51 minutes watching him and then beat him, and every analyst in Europe who was working that evening will have seen exactly why he had to.

"How many?" I said.

"11 that I would move on tomorrow, and 4 more I would want to talk about."

"And the ones we do not?"

"There is 1," Dougie said, "and it is not a decision either of us gets to make."

"Jesús."

"Jesús."

Jesús Navas is 32 years old. He came to us on a free 13 months ago when nobody in England would look at him, and he signed a 2 year deal, and he asked for 2 years himself. Not 3. Not 1 with an option.

He sat in Steve Parish's office in July 2017 and said he wanted 2 seasons in England and then he wanted to go home to Andalusia, and Steve wrote 2 years and did not argue with him.

"He has not asked for anything," Dougie said. "His man has not rung me. He is the only senior player at that football club whose representative has not been on this telephone since Sunday, and I have checked twice because I did not believe it."

"He is going home."

"He is going home in June, and he has known it since the day he signed, and he has never once let it come out of his mouth in a dressing room." A chair went. "Do not offer him anything, Danny. It would insult him."

I drove home at 1 in the morning and did the sums in the car, and got about 3 hours, and did them again at 6 with a coffee and no paperwork in front of me.

We have got 130 million pounds in the bank and 9 days of a window, and everybody in England has spent a fortnight arguing about what I am going to spend it on. Carragher wants a centre-half. Neville wants me to spend it or be asked about it in February.

And the actual answer, the one nobody at that desk said and nobody in a newspaper has printed, is that a squad that finishes 2nd and gets into the Champions League does not need 4 more players.

It needs 15 of the ones it has got to still be there in 2021.

Bzzz.

Steve Parish, 06:41.

Dougie has told me. I have got the numbers in front of me and they are not frightening. Come and see me Thursday.

Bzzz.

And Danny, before you start. This is the good problem. I have had 8 years of the other one.

I got to Beckenham at 5 to 8 and Sarah had the whole thing on a spreadsheet before I was through the doors.

She had done it overnight, on her own, because Dougie had rung her at half 11 and she is the only person in that building who knows what everybody actually earns.

"Right," she said, in my doorway, with a laptop under her arm and no hello. "Before you sit down. Nobody has downed tools, nobody is unhappy, and not 1 player has come to me. This is agents doing their job.

"It is going to feel personal for about 3 days and it is not personal."

"Sarah."

"I am saying it now because on Friday somebody is going to say something in a newspaper and you are going to take it the wrong way."

She put the laptop on my desk and turned it round.

15 names. 3 columns. Current, market, and what she thought each of them would sign for today.

I read it twice.

"Sarah, this is 40 million pounds a year."

"38 and a half, and it is spread over 5 years, and the whole of it is half of what Chelsea paid for a goalkeeper 3 days ago." She did not look at the screen once while she said it. "And it is not the number you should be looking at anyway. Last column."

The last column was the expiry dates.

AARON WAN-BISSAKA: JUNE 2021. EBERECHI EZE: JUNE 2020. NYA KIRBY: JUNE 2020. MICHAEL OLISE: SCHOLARSHIP, JULY 2019. CONNOR BLAKE: JUNE 2020. TYRICK MITCHELL: JUNE 2020.

"There it is," Sarah said.

Every man Thierry Henry was talking about on Tuesday night, every one of the ones I have decided has more coming, and 5 of them are inside 2 years of walking out of this building for nothing.

"Somebody would have got Eze on a free in 18 months."

"Somebody was going to," Sarah said. "Somebody has probably already had lunch about it."

I saw 6 of them before half 9, in my office, 1 at a time, and I did not do a single meeting about money. I do not do meetings about money. Dougie would have me shot.

What I did was say the same 3 things to every one of them.

Dougie is ringing your man this week. Nobody is being sold. And whatever you hear between now and the 9th, you hear it off me before you hear it anywhere else.

4 of them said thank you and left. Rúben Neves asked me a question about Sunday and did not mention his own contract once, and I have never known him mention anything about himself in 14 months.

And Eberechi Eze sat down and said, "Is this because of the programme?"

"What programme?"

He looked at me for a second to see whether I was serious.

"On Netflix," Eze said. "It went up at midnight."

Jessica Finch rang at 10 past 9 and did not say hello.

"3 things and I have got a hard stop at 25 past."

"Jessica."

"1. West Ham. I know. Steve has told me, Dougie has told me, and I am not doing anything about it because there is nothing to do about it."

"That is not a thing, that is a thing that has already happened."

"Do not be clever with me at 9 in the morning." Paper. "2. The Sony thing is confirmed for the 3rd."

I sat up.

"The 3rd of what?"

"The 3rd of August, Danny. Friday. In London." I could hear her turning something over. "You agreed to it on the 14th of May in my office with a coffee in your hand and you signed the availability letter, and I have got a scan of it, and I am going to send it to you because I can already hear your face."

"Jessica, the Community Shield is on the 5th."

"The Community Shield is on the 5th and the shoot is on the 3rd and it is 1 scene and they have you for 4 hours."

In May, a man from Sony wrote to Jessica and asked whether I would consider a cameo in a film. Not an interview. Not a documentary. A cameo. In a Spider-Man picture. They were shooting exteriors in London over the summer.

I said yes in about 9 seconds, because somebody had asked me to be in a Spider-Man film, and because in the middle of May the biggest thing in my August was a Carabao Cup second round tie.

Then I got given a country and a World Cup final and a Community Shield.

"How long is the scene?"

"They have not told me and they are not going to tell you either." Jessica's voice did the thing it does when she is enjoying herself and will not admit it. "You get the NDA today. You get it by 2 o'clock and you sign it before you get anything else.

"You get the sides the day before. Not the script. Sides are your scene and nothing either side of it.

"You get them on the 2nd and you hand them back on the 3rd.

"There is no script coming to this building, Danny. There will not be a piece of paper in your office with that film's name on it."

"Why?"

"Because a lad on a crew in Atlanta put 4 pages of a Marvel film on the internet in 2016 and it cost somebody their entire career," she said. "They are not being dramatic. They are being professional, and I would like you to be professional back, because I have spent 3 months on this and it is the single most fun thing I have ever done for a client."

"You have enjoyed this."

"I have enjoyed it enormously and I am not going to apologise for it."

"What is the 3rd thing?"

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.

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