Knowledge Is Money

Monday came, and the men from the Championship club came with it.

Priya had the letter on my desk before I got my coat off. brr, the fax roller still warm behind her.

"They sent it at 9, then the chief executive rang to say the fax was coming, in case we took it for a hoax." tap, her nail on the header.

"It is genuine. Permission to speak to Craig Sadler, and a number to release him from his contract."

"What number?"

"£75,000."

Maureen made a noise in her throat like a kettle deciding whether to boil.

"£75,000. For the best manager in the 4th tier, 3 games from taking a village up a division."

"It is what his contract says he is worth." I turned the letter over, as if the back of it might argue my side.

"2 years ago I signed him for buttons, and I wrote the buttons into the deal. That figure is my own handwriting come back to bite me."

"Then we tell them no."

"We cannot, Maureen. Not this one." I sat down.

"Vardy is a player under contract. A player I can hold. You cannot hold a man. If Craig wants to walk up to the Championship, there is a clause with a price on it, and they have counted the money out to the penny."

Priya folded her arms.

"So that is that. They pay, he goes, and we run at promotion with a caretaker and a prayer."

"£75,000 is the price on paper." I laid the letter face down. "What he is worth is a different sum, and I am the one man in this building who can see the whole of it."

Maureen looked at me the way she does when I start talking as if the ledger has a second page only I can read.

"Go on, then. What is Craig Sadler worth?"

"More than any club has yet paid for a manager his age."

"You cannot bank a hunch, Sam."

"It stopped being a hunch 2 years ago." The words came slow. I had never said the size of it out loud to anybody before.

"I have watched him take lads other clubs had given up on and make them into a team. What he does belongs 2 divisions above the one I found it in, and every month since has made me surer of it."

Maureen guards the club’s money the way other people guard children, and she was not finished with me.

"£75,000 is real money, Sam. It puts a roof on the stand. It is a year of wages." She tapped the figure.

"You are the one who taught me to sell high when the market comes knocking."

"This is not selling high." I put my hand flat on the letter.

"It is selling the best thing we own back to the world for what he cost me 2 years ago. That is the one deal in football I will never put my name to."

She held my eye. "And if he wants to go?"

"Then I make going cost what he is truly worth, in place of the buttons I wrote down when he was nobody." I picked up the phone. click.

"Get me Craig. And that figure stays in this room. If the town hears £75,000, they will price him at a minibus."

The town heard by Wednesday.

It was not us. It never is. Somebody at their end wanted it in the papers to smoke Craig out, and by Wednesday teatime the fans’ forum had run to 4 pages.

AMBER ARMY · fans’ forum · "SADLER TO GO??"

• heard it off my brother in law who does the pitch. Champ club in for Craig. told you good things dont last at this club

• 3 games from UP and this happens. typical Town

• hes not going anywhere. Mercer will sort it. Mercer always sorts it

• with what money lol. we are a village

Danny Vine rang me himself before he printed a word of it.

"I have had the compensation figure 2 days, Sam." rustle, paper down the line.

"I am not printing it. A number that low, in the paper now, and every player in that dressing room reckons the club rates the gaffer at the price of a used van. That wins us nothing on Saturday."

"You are a better man than whoever leaked it, Danny."

"I am a man who wants Town up. Same as you." A pause. "Is he going?"

"Ask me Friday."

Craig came up on the Thursday and stood inside the door with his coat still zipped, the way he stands when he means a conversation to be short.

"You have seen the letter," I said.

"I have seen it."

"And?"

He looked at the wall a foot to the left of my head. In 2 years he has never once looked straight at me when the talk turns to himself.

"I told you the day you gave me this job that I wanted to manage as high as I could climb. That has not changed. I would be lying if I sat here and said different, and I promised you a long time ago I would not lie to you."

"I remember the promise. I have kept my half of it."

"You have." Just 2 words, and they cost him, the way words about anything but his back 4 always cost him.

"So sit down." I pushed the other chair out with my foot. scrape.

"Lying is walking out on 3 games with a rehearsed line about respect. Telling me straight is sitting in that chair and saying what you want out of your life. Sit down and say it."

He sat. He kept the coat zipped.

"I want to find out if I am any good," he said. "Down here I will always be the fella who did well with no money at a club that could fall no further. Up there, I would know for certain."

"Then go up and find out." I meant it, and I let him hear that I meant it.

"I have wanted you to climb since the day I gave you the keys, and I will not sit here and pretend otherwise now to keep hold of you. So we agree on the where. What is left is the when, and the when is the only quarrel in this room."

"You are good, Craig." I stood up from the desk.

"I knew it inside a fortnight, before you had won me a single game. My own eye told me, and my eye has had 2 years to watch yours work."

"You are the chairman. You are meant to say that."

"I am a chairman who does not say things he cannot stand behind." I leaned on the desk.

"So here is one. You are 3 games from taking this club up, and no caretaker alive walks in this late and does it with a dressing room this raw. You get us there. You, or it stays undone."

Something worked in his jaw and went still.

"Stay and see it through," I said, "and you go up to League One in June yourself, with a budget worth the name and a chairman backing your eye with real money for the first time."

"It is not the Championship."

"No. It is the road there, and it runs through a squad that owes you everything and a town that would carry you out on its shoulders."

"You leave on the day you choose, and the club that made you pays you full whack for going. That is the best road up a young manager was ever handed, and it is already under your boots."

He said nothing to that. Craig says nothing when a thing has gone in.

"They want their answer inside the week."

"They can want. You are not a parcel, to be signed for by Friday." I held the eye he would not give me.

"You once stood in this office and asked me whose team it is. You remember that."

"I remember."

"You were telling me to keep my nose out of your team sheet. You were right, and my nose has stayed out of it ever since."

"So I will put it back to you the once. Whose team is it, Craig?"

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!