Chapter 836: The Window II
"So?" Jones said.
"So he has counted his season already. 63 matches. He counted them in June and bought the man he will need in October, and it cost him nothing, and not 1 of you thought it was worth a sentence."
Nobody on that desk had an answer.
"Yes," I said.
Out loud. On an aeroplane. To a screen.
Christian Benteke turned his head about 4 inches and looked at me, and I have not been looked at like that since I was 12.
"Sorry."
"No," Benteke said. "Go on."
"That is Thierry Henry."
"I know who it is, gaffer."
"He has just spent 90 seconds on television explaining my third goalkeeper." I could hear myself doing it and I could not stop. "Thierry Henry. Talking about Tim Krul. Because of a thing I did in June."
Benteke looked at me for a while longer.
Then he put the other earphone back in and said, without turning round, "You are worse than my son."
"And now the other thing, because you are all still doing the ones he sold." Henry turned his hand over. "Do the one he did not."
"11 days ago somebody offered 40 million pounds for Aaron Wan-Bissaka. He is 20. He cost nothing. By everything you 3 have just said about this club, that is the transfer. That is the machine working. 40 million pounds for a boy off a Sunday league pitch in Croydon."
"They said no in 25 minutes," Carragher said.
"25 minutes. Not a day. Not a board meeting." Henry sat back. "So it is not a selling model. If it was a selling model that boy is at another club this morning.
"He does not sell assets. He sells men he has decided have finished getting better."
The desk went quiet.
I was crouched on the arm of that seat with Benteke’s spare earphone in, and I watched Gary Neville get there about a second and a half before he said it.
"Oh," Neville said.
"Say it," Jones said.
"No, that is..." He put a hand up and took it down again. "That is a horrible thing to be, that. If you are in that squad this morning and you have not been sold, he has looked at you and decided you have got more coming."
"Yes."
"And if you have been sold, he has looked at you and decided you have not."
"Yes."
"Every man in that dressing room can read a team sheet, Thierry. They can all read a transfer list as well."
"They can," Henry said. "They will have read this one."
I did not turn round.
I did not need to, because I could hear it. Rúben Neves said something to Nya Kirby 2 seats over and Nya Kirby did not answer him. Somebody 4 rows back went "ohhh" under his breath, the way you do at a thing you have just been shown and cannot unsee.
Jarrod Bowen took his headphones off and put them on the tray table and looked out of a window with the blind down.
Christian Benteke, 27 years old, who I have not sold and am not selling, sat still next to me with 1 earphone in and did not look at me once.
I have never said any of that to any of them.
Thierry Henry said it on a television at 20 past 9 on a Tuesday night, to 11 of my players, at 38,000 feet, and I was 2 feet away from 1 of them and could not do a thing about it.
"Right," Jones said, and you could hear him deciding to move it on. "The question, then. Have they won the window?"
"If it shut tonight," Carragher said, "yes, and it is not close, and I have spent a fortnight trying to find a way to say otherwise."
"Gary?"
"Yes. And I will go further. If it shut tonight it is the best window any club in this country has had in my lifetime and I do not say that sort of thing."
"Roy?"
"I do not care about windows."
"You cared 4 minutes ago."
"I cared about the football team, Jamie. I do not care about the window."
"But it does not shut tonight." Neville came forward again. "9 days left, 130 million pounds in the bank, City at Wembley on Sunday and Real Madrid in Tallinn 10 days after that.
"And Jamie has been saying it for a fortnight and Jamie is right about the centre-half."
"Thank you."
"You are not right about much."
Tap.
130M. 9 DAYS.
"So either he is finished," Neville said, "and somebody sits at this desk in February asking why he did not spend it. Or he is not, and it stops being the best window Crystal Palace have had and starts being the best window anybody has had."
Somebody sat down in the seat across the aisle from me.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka. Hood down. Headphones round his neck. He had walked up 6 rows and I had not seen him do it.
He watched about 90 seconds of it without saying anything.
"Boss."
"Aaron."
"Is somebody in for me?"
"Yes."
"Who?"
"I do not know yet. Dougie is telling me at 8 in the morning."
"Right." He looked at the screen a bit longer. Neville was still going. "Do you want to sell me?"
"No."
"Would you?"
"No."
"Everybody says no."
"You have already had one, Aaron."
He turned his head.
"11 days ago. 40 million. Steve said no in 25 minutes and did not tell me about it until 8 that night." I let that go where it was going. "So when I say no, I am telling you what has already happened. Not what I would like to happen."
He sat there for a bit.
"Who is 2nd choice right back if I go?"
"Achraf."
"And centre-half?"
"You are the centre-half, Aaron, that is the whole point of the last 4 days."
"Right," he said again, and got up, and stopped with his hand on the seat back. "That Keane is talking rubbish about Luka, by the way. Luka would tell you that himself."
Then he went back to row 12 and put his hood up.
Hnnn. Chk.
We landed at 10 past midnight into rain.
There were 4 photographers at the barrier and a man from the Croydon Advertiser who had been stood there since 11, and Deano came through with a cup in a holdall and not 1 person asked him what was in it.
Clatter. Clatter.
Wheels on a tiled floor, and I watched 30 footballers walk out of that arrivals hall in twos and threes with their hoods up.
There is a bit of me that still cannot get past the fact that they are mine. Not in a soft way. In the way where you are 14 and you are stood outside a ground with a programme, and 20 years later a man who has played for Belgium tells you that you are worse than his son, and you have to go and be his manager at Wembley on Sunday.
Every one of them had been told, on television, by a man who won a World Cup, exactly what I think of him. And none of them had said a word to me about it, and none of them ever will, and on Sunday I am going to name 11 of them at Wembley and every man who is not in that 11 is going to think about Thierry Henry.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka went past me at the doors with a bag over his shoulder.
"8 o’clock, boss."
"8 o’clock."
"Right." He put his hood up. "Ring me after, yeah. Not the agent. Me."
Shhhh. Doors, and rain on a canopy, and he was gone out into it with the rest of them.
I stood in that car park for a bit and got wet.
Then I got my phone out at 20 to 1 in the morning and rang Dougie Freedman, 7 hours before he had told me to, because I was not going to sleep and he knew I was not going to sleep and that is why he had put a time on it.
Brrr.
He picked up on the first ring. He did not say hello.
"You have not slept."
"Who is it, Dougie?"
There was a pause on that line that I have only heard out of him twice, and both of the other times it was bad.
"Sit down, son," he said.