Michael stood in the tiled corridor outside the home dressing room, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his suit trousers.
He could feel the tension radiating through the closed door.
He'd seen the look from Captain Dave Bishop as he passed—a "this is what we get" expression of pure frustration.
He was nervous. His entire gamble, his entire empire, rested on the man who was about to walk into that room.
If Arthur lost the players now, on day one, he might never get them back.
Arthur himself walked past Michael, his face an unreadable mask of calm. He didn't look angry. He looked like a surgeon about to perform a complex operation. He gave Michael a single, sharp nod and pushed open the door...
Michael slipped in right behind him, positioning himself in the corner, a silent observer.
The room was a pressure cooker. The players sat on the benches, some staring at the floor, others pointedly avoiding looking at their new manager.
This was the moment for the "hairdryer treatment," the legendary screaming fit that managers used to peel paint from the walls. The players were braced for it, their muscles tight.
Instead, Arthur walked calmly to the tactics board at the front of the room. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't throw a water bottle.
"Right," he said, his voice level and analytical. "We've got a problem. But lucky for us, I've got the fix. And it's absolutely not what you're thinking."
He turned to his analyst, Mark, who was already plugging his laptop into a large monitor on the wall.
[Mark (Analyst): CA 62 / PA 75].
The numbers glowed in Michael's vision. t.
"Mark, show them the first-half data," Arthur said.
The screen lit up with heat maps and passing diagrams. A few of the older players grunted. This was the 'fancy stuff' they didn't trust.
"Look at this," Arthur said, pointing to a passing chart."Our pass completion in the first twenty minutes was eighty-eight percent. In the last twenty-five, it was fifty-four percent. Did they get better, or did we get worse?"
"They started kicking us," Dave Bishop muttered from the back, voicing what everyone was thinking.
"Exactly!" Arthur said, a sharp, sudden energy in his voice that made everyone sit up.
"They started kicking us. They're a team of thugs. They know they can't beat us at football, so they're trying to beat us in a fight. And right now," he looked around the room, "they're winning. Not because they're stronger, but because you're letting them get in your heads. You're scared of the tackle, so you're rushing your pass. You're rushing your pass, so it's a bad pass. A bad pass invites a tackle. It's a cycle, and you are fueling it yourselves by playing their game."
He let that sink in. He wasn't blaming them for being weak; he was diagnosing a logical problem.
"But," he continued, a slight smile on his face, "while they've been busy playing rugby, they've made a mistake. A massive one. Mark, show me the heat map for their number two, Thompson."
A new image appeared. It showed the movements of the Rotherham right-back, the one who had steamrolled Jamie for the goal.
The vast majority of his "touches" were a bright, angry red, clustered high up the pitch, deep inside Barnsley's half.
"Look at that," Arthur said, almost admiringly.
"He's practically playing as a winger. He's arrogant. He thinks he can just charge forward all day because we're scared of him."
He then used a marker to circle a vast, empty green area on the pitch map, right behind the red cluster.
"And what does he leave behind him, every single time he charges in?"
A few players leaned forward, seeing it now.
"An ocean," Arthur said, his voice dropping. "An ocean of empty green grass. They are leaving their goalkeeper completely and totally exposed. And in the second half, we are going to sail a ship right through it."
His eyes scanned the room and locked onto the smallest, most defeated-looking player.
"Jamie."
Jamie Weston flinched, his head snapping up, his eyes wide with fear. He expected to be yelled at, to be substituted, to be told he wasn't good enough.
Arthur walked over and stood in front of him. His voice was not angry.
"Your mistake that led to the goal," Arthur said, "was not a mistake of talent. You have more talent in your left foot than that oaf has in his entire body."
Michael saw Jamie's shoulders straighten, just a fraction.
"It was a mistake of timing," Arthur continued.
"You tried to be clever when you should have been simple. You were thinking about beating him. In the second half, I want you to stop thinking. I want you to do one thing, and one thing only."
He pointed to the tactics board, to the vast green ocean he had circled.
"You are to stay high and wide. Forget defending. The moment—the very second—you see that number two start his charge forward, you run. You don't wait for the ball. You don't look for the ball. You just sprint, as fast as you can, straight into that space. Understood?"
Jamie, who had been crushed by the weight of his own failure, suddenly looked alive. This wasn't a complex tactical instruction. It was a simple, primal command. Run. He was good at running. He nodded, a new, fierce light in his eyes. "Run. Got it."
"Good," Arthur said. He then looked at Danny Fletcher. "Danny, when Jamie makes that run, the ball will find him. You make sure of it."
Danny [PA 91] simply nodded, a look of complete understanding on his intelligent face.
"Right," Arthur said, clapping his hands. "They think they've beaten us. They think we're scared. In the second half, we're going to let them think it. And then, we're going to pass them to death. Let's go."
The team that walked out of the tunnel for the second half looked different. The fear was gone, replaced by a cold, focused anger.
Michael was back in his box, his heart hammering so hard he was sure the people next to him could hear it.
The whistle blew.
Rotherham came out exactly as they had before—all elbows and aggression.
They won an early corner, their giant center-back heading it just over the bar. The crowd groaned.
But Barnsley's players didn't panic. They took the tackles, they got up, and they kept trying to pass. They were waiting.
The moment came in the fifty-first minute. It happened exactly as Arthur had drawn it on the board.
Danny Fletcher dropped deep into the midfield to receive a pass. Rotherham's right-back, Thompson, saw his chance. His eyes lit up with predatory glee. He abandoned his position and charged forward, a heat-seeking missile aimed at the "soft" young striker.
The second he moved, Jamie Weston was gone.
He didn't think. He didn't look. He just ran. He exploded from his position on the halfway line, a red blur sprinting into the acres of green grass that Thompson had left behind.
Danny, with the preternatural vision of a future superstar, felt the defender thundering in. He didn't try to fight him. He let the ball run across his body, shielding it for a split second, and in the same fluid motion, without even looking up, he spun and struck a perfect, forty-yard curling pass into the empty space.
The crowd gasped. The ball sailed over the halfway line, over the head of the last defender, and dropped perfectly into the path of the sprinting Jamie Weston. The Rotherham defenders, who had all been watching the ball in midfield, were toast.
Their keeper, who had been casually standing on the edge of his box, suddenly realized his entire defense was gone.
He charged out, his arms spread wide, his face a mask of panic.
Jamie Weston was one-on-one with the goalkeeper. The entire stadium held its breath. Michael was on his feet, his hands gripping the railing, his heart in his throat.