JJ's decision to stay sent a ripple of joy and relief through the club. It was a massive statement. It was a declaration that what we were building at The Railway Arms was more than just a temporary, feel-good story. It was something real, something worth believing in.
The players saw that their star player, a lad with the talent to play at a much higher level, had chosen to stay with them, to fight with them. It galvanized the squad, lifting our already high morale to stratospheric levels. The 'Player Loyalty Boost' skill I had unlocked was a tangible force, a kind of gravitational pull that bound the players to the club, and to each other.
We were on a roll. We were unbeaten in seven games, we had the best player in the league, and we had a team spirit that was forged in the fires of adversity and tempered by success.
We were flying high in the league, climbing from the rock bottom we had occupied for so long into the heady heights of mid-table respectability. For the first time all season, the prospect of relegation was no longer a looming, terrifying spectre.
But the league, as any Football Manager veteran knows, is a marathon, not a sprint. It's a long, attritional war of consistency and endurance.
The cup, however… the cup is different. The cup is about glory. It's about single, glorious moments of drama and passion. It's about the chance for a small team to dream big, to bloody the nose of a giant, to write their name into local folklore. The cup is about magic.
And our cup run was about to begin.
The Manchester Sunday League Cup was a grand, chaotic affair, a sprawling knockout tournament that threw together teams from every division, from the elite, semi-professional outfits at the top to the hungover pub teams at the bottom.
It was a great leveller, a competition where reputations counted for nothing and a single, ninety-minute performance could change everything.
As a low-ranked team from the bottom division, we knew we would be unseeded. We knew we would be drawn against a stronger opponent. But when the draw was made, it felt like a particularly cruel joke.
We had been drawn away to North Manchester Athletic, the reigning champions of the Premier Division, the best Sunday league team in the city. They were a team of ex-professionals and top-level semi-pros, a team that hadn't lost a league game in two years. They were, to put it mildly, a juggernaut.
The reaction among our players was a mixture of gallows humour and outright fear. "Well, lads, it was a good cup run while it lasted," Baz had joked, to a chorus of nervous laughter. No one gave us a chance.
The bookies, if Sunday league had bookies, would have had us at a thousand to one. It was David versus Goliath, if Goliath had a team of twelve other Goliaths and David had a dodgy hamstring and a hangover.
But I saw it differently. I saw an opportunity. This was a free hit. A no-lose situation. No one expected us to win. The pressure was all on them. We could go there, play with freedom, and test ourselves against the very best. It was the perfect barometer of how far we had come. And, deep down, in the secret, optimistic heart of my footballing soul, I believed we could win.
My belief was not based on blind faith. It was based on data. The system, my secret weapon, was about to give me an edge that no one else had.
I had unlocked the 'Opponent Scouting Reports' feature, but I had only used it for teams in our own league. I decided to see if it would work for a team in a different division. I focused my thoughts on North Manchester Athletic, and a new, detailed report began to form in my mind.
It was a treasure trove of information. It gave me their entire squad list, with full CA and PA ratings. It gave me their tactical preferences, their set-piece routines, and their recent results. It was like having a mole inside their dressing room. As I scrolled through the data, a plan began to form in my mind. A mad, audacious, and brilliant plan.
North Manchester Athletic were an attacking team. They played a fluid, expansive 4-3-3, with fast, tricky wingers and a big, powerful target man. They were a great team, but they had a weakness. A fatal flaw.
Their two centre-backs, both former professionals in their late thirties, were slow. Their CA ratings were high, but their 'Pace' and 'Acceleration' attributes were a dismal 7 and 8 respectively. They were two old, classy Rolls-Royces who had been brilliant in their day, but whose engines were now starting to fade.
And I had a Ferrari.
The plan was simple, and it was brutal. We were going to play the most defensive, the most negative, the most unapologetically cynical brand of anti-football imaginable. We were going to park the bus.
Not just one bus, but a whole fleet of them.
We were going to defend on the edge of our own box, we were going to frustrate them, we were going to bore them, we were going to foul them. And then, when they had pushed all their players forward, when they were frustrated and complacent, we were going to hit them with a single, devastating counter-attack, a long ball over the top for JJ to chase.
It was a plan that went against every romantic, idealistic bone in my body and at least it was still football. But it was the only plan that had a chance of working. To beat a giant, you can't play their game. You have to drag them down to your level. You have to drag them into a dogfight.
I also found another, more subtle weakness. Their set-piece defending was surprisingly poor. The scouting report showed that they had conceded several goals from corners in recent weeks.
They used a zonal marking system, a modern, fashionable approach, but one that can be vulnerable to clever movement and well-designed routines. I spent an entire evening on my laptop, researching and designing a series of intricate corner-kick routines, assigning specific runs and blocks to each of my players. It was the kind of obsessive, nerdy detail that I loved, the kind of marginal gain that could make all the difference.
I presented the plan to the players at training. They were, to my surprise, completely on board. They were a team of underdogs. They relished the chance to be the spoiler, the party-pooper. They bought into the 'us against the world' mentality that I was selling them.
We spent the entire week working on our defensive shape. We did drills until the players were sick of them. We worked on compactness, on communication, and on discipline. I was a drill sergeant, barking orders, demanding perfection. By the end of the week, we were a well-oiled defensive machine. We were ready.
***
NOTE:
Thank you to nameyelus and silentjester for the gifts: I'm burning through my chapter reserves way faster than planned, so please slow down!