TJ spoke bitterly. "They've heard things, have they? Heard things."
I took in a deep breath, exhaled, and reached over the table to take TJ by the wrists. "Timo, listen. I like you. You're a good person and a good manager. You've got the worst team in this league and you're making them better than the sum of their parts. You had an interesting plan today!"
"That you snuffed out before we even kicked off," he said, snatching his arms away.
The accusation hung in the air. I leaned back.
Briggy said, "What did you do?"
"TJ has one good player. Why is he good? I trained him myself, the way I trained Lee Contreras, who is yours for five hundred K."
"Are you fucking kidding me?" said TJ, as he slapped the table.
I put my hands to the sides of the wobbling wine glass, while Briggy did the same with the bottle. I smiled. "I knew we'd be a good team." I slid the glass into the middle of the table while my assistant put the bottle on a shelf at the back of the room; it was close enough to reach without her getting up. I said, "Where was I? Okay, Crawley have a player called Sharky. He's lightning fast, even faster than me. Don't tell him I said that. He was falling out of love with football, the same as TJ here, but I did an intervention on him even better than this one that's happening now. We promised to teach him how to play. How to really play, to his strengths. See, not everyone can do everything on a football pitch. It's a sport that needs a lot of different skills and that's why I love it. In basketball you need to be tall, pretty much, right? I'm sure there's loads more to it than that but did you see Pascal Bochum out there? He's a tiny little German guy but he's fast and he's smart. He couldn't play basketball but when he plays football it's like I've got another brain on the pitch. He makes connections and makes things happen. If you've got Pascal on the ball then a fast winger who can make repeat sprints becomes a legendary weapon. Sharky is like a lightsaber. Point him in the right direction and he'll slice teams up. TJ based his whole plan today on using Sharky to do just that."
Briggy was trying to follow. "Yes? And?"
TJ gripped his greying hair in both hands and gave it such a tug I expected huge clumps to come loose. "Max man-marked Sharky. The best player in this league played on the left side of the defence, where I have never seen him play before, and every time the ball went near Sharky, Max got there first. He didn't even do any tackles. Didn't have to. He excised Sharky more cleanly than any surgeon."
I couldn't disagree with any of that. "Okay but then you moved him to left wing. That was smart."
"Was it?"
"I mean... in theory, yeah. It's proactive. You were trying to be the protagonist. That's right. That's how it should be."
"But it didn't work?" said Briggy.
"It did not work," said TJ, eyes blazing, daring me to gainsay him.
I squirmed. "Yeah, but it was a good idea, though. I'm marking you on a scale, TJ. You get points for trying. I'm not facing loads of interesting strategies in League One."
"What's League One?" said Briggy.
"So... you've heard of the Premier League?"
"I have heard of the Premier League."
"There are 20 teams in that. Every season, three get kicked out. Demoted. They go to the second tier of English football, which is called the Championship. There are 24 teams in there. Three will get demoted into this league."
"League One," she repeated. "The names appear to be quite stupid."
"It's a by-product of the sport's history. It's very old and a lot has happened. It's called League One now but before that it was called Division Two and before that it was called Division Three. Some older fans refuse to call it anything other than Division Three."
Despite his bleak mood, TJ smiled. "Is that right? Why are people so strange?"
I shrugged. "It's the only name that actually makes sense. When I'm king of the world, all the names will be rationalised."
TJ took a big swig of wine and turned to Briggy. "All you need to know is that I had a good plan, a clever plan, and it didn't even make a dent. When I tried to change it, Max trusted his young right back to handle Sharky - "
"He's fast," I explained. "And TJ doesn't have a player as clever as Pascal to create space for Sharky so there wasn't much risk."
"And now that the danger was on the other side of the pitch, Max ran riot on the left. He created two goals in three minutes until I switched Sharky back to his starting point. Max didn't so much as cross the halfway line after that. He didn't need to - he'd already won the match." He thumped the wall. "But he won before he even stepped foot on the pitch."