Glory Of The Football Manager System

I went in and the tap was running.

Somebody had turned it on to fill a bottle and left it, and it was the only thing making a noise in that room, and above us the whole thing was going, muffled, like a party 2 doors down.

I walked the length of that room and turned it off.

Then it was 30 men breathing, and a strip light, and the noise of a stadium coming through 4 feet of concrete like weather in another county.

Wilfried Zaha sat under his peg with his shirt over his head. Aaron Wan-Bissaka was on the floor with his back against the wall and his legs straight out in front of him. James McArthur had his boots off and was looking at his own feet, and he is 30 years old and he had just run further than any man on that pitch.

Christian Benteke was flat on the physio bed with Rebecca's hands in the top of his leg and his eyes shut.

Steam off all of them. The room smelled of wet grass and wintergreen and 29 degrees.

Michael Olise, 16, was stood by the door in a tracksuit that had not been touched, and he did not know where to put himself, and nobody had told him he could sit down.

"Sit down, Michael."

He sat down.

I let it go quiet for about 20 seconds and I let it stay quiet, because I had 11 minutes and I needed 20 seconds of them to get it right.

Then I did the only thing I know how to do in a room like that. Start with the truth, and start with the part of it that costs me something.

"Sarah told me at 29 minutes that Rúben was doing 3 jobs and could not do any of them properly.

"I said no. She was right. I was wrong."

30 heads came up.

"I am telling you that first, before anything else, because in about 40 seconds I am going to change 3 things and I want every man in here to know it is because I got 1 wrong and not because I have panicked."

Bray, by the door, did not say anything at all.

I pulled the tactics board off the wall and I did not draw on it.

I turned it round and put it face down on the bench.

"We are not doing shapes. There is 1 thing happening in the second half of this football match and everybody in this room has to know it before we go out, and it is this.

"At about 4 minutes past 4, Gündogan comes on."

Marcus did not look up.

"He has been warming up since the 42nd minute and Sané has been stood next to a physio who is not touching him, and when it happens they will have 4 men in that middle and we will have 3.

"They are not doing that because they are winning. They are doing that because they have watched 45 minutes of us and Pep Guardiola has decided we are worth a midfielder.

"Nobody in this building has ever had that said about them before."

"James."

James McArthur looked up off his own feet.

"You have got Foden and you have got nothing else. Not the base, not covering Aaron, not starting anything. If he goes for a walk, you go for a walk with him."

"Aye."

"Rúben."

"Coach."

"You are free. Everything we score in the second half comes off you and I do not want you to defend anything at all."

"And Pierre?"

Pierre-Emile Højbjerg had a bottle halfway to his mouth and had not drunk any of it.

"Pierre holds."

"I hold."

"You hold. You do not go. Not once, not in the 90th minute, not if we are 2 down and there is a minute left."

That is the bit nobody in that room liked and I could hear them not liking it.

3 of our 4 shots in the first half started with a 22-year-old going 60 yards up a football pitch, and I had just told him to stand still for 45 minutes in a Community Shield at Wembley, and he is 4 weeks into this football club and cost 10 million pounds and had every right to say something.

"Gaffer, that is our attack."

"It was our attack for 45 minutes."

"And now?"

"And now it is 4 against 3 in that middle the second Gündogan walks on, and if you go it is 4 against 2, and they will pass us to death out there and every single person who paid to be here will have to watch it."

Højbjerg put the bottle down without drinking any of it.

"So I stand there."

"You stand there, and you will hate every minute of it, and about 20,000 people are going to shout at you to go, and you are going to hear all of them."

"And what do I get?"

I looked at a 22-year-old who had asked the only question that mattered.

"You get us still in it at 70 minutes with 3 men on that bench who can win it," I said. "That is what you get. That is the whole of it."

Then I said the last bit, and I said it because 5 weeks ago I stood in a room under the Luzhniki and said something like it to 23 men in green, and it is the only thing I have ever found that works.

"We are going to be worse for 10 minutes.

"You will feel it. They will have the ball and you will be chasing it and you will look at that clock and think we have gone backwards. Some of you will think I have got this wrong and 1 or 2 of you will be right to think it.

"Do it anyway.

"Because at some point in the next 30 minutes they are going to be 4 forward with a tired left back, and when that happens I have got a 32-year-old on that bench who has been waiting since the 5th of May, and everything we have done since half time will be worth it in about 9 seconds."

Nobody asked who.

Jesús Navas was sat 4 feet from Michael Olise with his boots already on, and he had had his boots on since 20 past 2.

Sarah said 1 thing at the door and she said it to the players.

"He is right and I was only half right at 29 minutes. Do it properly and we win this."

That is why she is my assistant.

Rrrrrrrr.

City came out first and Gündogan came out with them.

Marcus, on my left, without a laptop.

"4 minutes past 4."

"You said 4 minutes past 4 at 43."

"I did," he said, and sat down.

And they did it to us for 12 minutes.

It is not pressure. Pressure is somebody attacking you.

This is 4 men passing a football 12 yards to each other, 30 yards from their own goalkeeper, at walking pace, while 11 of yours run.

Tk. Tk. Tk-tk-tk.

Fernandinho, Gündogan, Bernardo Silva, Foden.

Rúben Neves went to press Gündogan and Gündogan gave it to Fernandinho before he arrived. Rúben turned and went at Fernandinho and Fernandinho gave it to Bernardo Silva before he arrived. Rúben turned again.

Shhk. Shhk.

3 sprints, 40 yards, no ball, and the fourth one he did not make, and Pierre-Emile Højbjerg stood 8 yards away and watched him not make it and did not go, because I had told him not to go.

I was on that white line for 12 minutes and I did not sit down once.

"RÚBEN. ONE. ONE MORE, THEN STOP."

"JAMES. HE IS BEHIND YOU. BEHIND."

"CHILLY, TUCK IN. TUCK IN, SON."

And I moved Ben Chilwell 4 yards infield on 49 minutes. That one was mine and nobody else's, and Leroy Sané did not get past him again in the 8 minutes he had left on that pitch.

71 per cent became 78 per cent.

Hooooo.

That is a whole end watching their own team chase, and it is the sound of a crowd getting quiet in the middle of a noise. I did not know that was a thing until that afternoon.

"GET OUT! GET OUT!" Somewhere behind our bench, over and over, a man who had been shouting it since half time.

51 minutes. Mahrez came inside Ben Chilwell and hit it early and Nick Pope had to go to his near post at full stretch and beat it away with 1 hand.

Thump.

Corner. Bray was off the bench and Konaté was not on the pitch yet and Tarkowski went near post because Bray had told him at 27 minutes and told him again at half time.

Stones came from outside the 6 yard box.

Tarkowski beat him to it by about 4 inches.

Boom.

54 minutes. Agüero got across Mamadou Sakho for the first time all afternoon, 8 yards out, and there is nothing anybody can do about Sergio Agüero getting across you 8 yards out.

Nick Pope got a forearm on it.

OOOOOH.

Not a hand. A forearm, coming down, and it went off the top of it and over the bar and Pope lay on his back in his own 6 yard box for 4 seconds and then got up shouting at Aaron about the near post again.

56 minutes. Bernardo Silva, 20 yards, outside of the post.

Dnk.

OOOOOOH.

A noise like a bus going into a wall, all the way round, and then it stopped dead.

Bray had both hands on top of his own head. Rebecca was 4 feet down that touchline shouting a number at James McArthur that he could not possibly have heard.

I had already changed 3 things in 11 minutes.

Chilwell 4 yards in. Bowen dropping to make a 4 in that middle when they had it. Zaha told to stay high and touch nothing, because a tired Zaha in the 70th minute is worth more than a busy one in the 55th.

None of it was enough and I knew it was not enough at about 56 minutes, and I was already down that touchline looking for Marcus when it happened.

Our end had worked it out before I had.

58 minutes.

John Stones intercepted a Zaha pass 6 yards outside his own box.

That is where it started. His own box.

Shhk.

Stones to Gündogan. Gündogan into Bernardo Silva with the outside of his boot, first time, without looking.

Tk.

And Bernardo Silva did not take a touch either. That is why he was the best player on that pitch.

Reverse pass. Wrong foot. Into a corridor between James Tarkowski and Mamadou Sakho that had been there for about a second and a half and was going to be there for about a second more.

Sergio Agüero was already in it.

I was already off that bench. NICK. NEAR POST. NEAR POST. Both arms going, 2 steps onto the grass, shouting at a goalkeeper 70 yards away through all of it, and it did nothing, because a manager cannot carry 70 yards with his voice and I have known that since April 2017 and I do it every single time.

And I knew. It went out of my stomach like a drain emptying.

Everything went slow.

I saw Nick Pope come off his line and I saw him come off it correctly, 4 yards, low, wide, making himself into a wall the way Michael Steele has been teaching him since January.

I saw Agüero's head stay down. It did not come up once. He has been doing this since he was 15 years old on a pitch in Los Eucaliptos with grown men trying to kick him and he has never needed to look at a goalkeeper in his life.

I saw the 8 inches between Pope's left knee and the ground.

fsst.

He did not hit it. He rolled it. Under a diving man, off the inside of the post, in.

201 goals for that football club.

RRRAAAAAAAA.

7,000 in the north east corner went up like a struck match and it came round that bowl and hit me in the back of the neck a second later.

RRRAAA. Aa.

And then nothing.

Not silence. It went out in stages, section by section, like somebody walking down a corridor turning lights off, and what was left underneath was the sound of a lot of people breathing at the same time and a single voice somewhere behind me going "oh, no. No."

***

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