Knowledge Is Money

"While we’re selling." I wrote the second name. "Micky Frayne."

Now the room actually laughed, because Micky Frayne is thirty-one, on the best wages at the club from a contract the last chairman handed out like sweets, and he’s played about forty minutes since March.

"Nobody’s buying Micky Frayne," Craig said.

"No. But somebody’ll take him on frees wages if we pay half, and every quid of his we get off the book is a quid I’m allowed to spend on a player who can run." I looked at Margaret. "That’s the cap, isn’t it. Get Frayne’s wages off, and the ceiling lifts."

"To the penny," said Margaret, not looking up from the rulebook. "Move Frayne, and you free eleven hundred a week under the fifty-five per cent. Enough for a good young midfielder. Or half a very good one." She turned a page. Riffle. "The law giveth."

"See, this is why I pay her," I told the room. "She reads me the rules and then she reads me the ways round the rules, and she does the second one with the exact same face."

"I do not have a face," said Margaret, with a face, and Dev nearly went off his chair.

That’s the club. That room laughing. Hold onto it.

Because in a minute I’m going to sell you the cold-blooded stuff, good men shipped out, futures traded off a whiteboard, and every bit of it happens in that same warm room, over Maureen’s tea, with two lads still ribbing Dev about a radiator.

You do the hard part among people you’d buy a pint for. Or you turn into the kind of chairman I spent a lifetime hating.

"Centre-half." I put the marker down. This was the one. "Lenny."

Everyone looked at the doorway. Lenny looked back, level, a proud man who’d had the conversation already and wasn’t going to make anyone else do it soft for him.

"Say it, boss," he said. "I’ve heard it. They can hear it."

"Lenny plays the games his knees have got in them, and he coaches the rest, and he finds me the man who takes his shirt." I met his eye. "And that man, the leader at the back, is the one signing this whole summer actually turns on. Not the striker. Him. And he’s the one I cannot pull off a wet touchline for the price of a van, because you cannot buy what Lenny’s got. You grow it, or you inherit it, or you go without and you go down."

"So how do we get one," said Craig. The manager. Working. Right to the bone of it.

"Two ways, and we’re doing both." I held up a finger.

"One, Lenny and Wilf go looking, together, because between Lenny’s nose for a bottler and Wilf’s eye we’ll know inside ten minutes of watching a lad whether he’ll organise a back four or just stand in it." Lenny gave a small nod at that, and I saw it land on him, that he was being asked to hunt, not retire. "Two, the money from Tommo goes straight into that man’s wages. We don’t spread it. We spend it all on the spine."

"And if we can’t find him by August," Craig said.

"Then we bleed till January, and in January there’s a club going to the wall, and clubs going to the wall sell their best defender for a tenth of what he’s worth to make payroll." I said it plain, and only I in that room knew it wasn’t a hunch. "Keep some powder dry, Craig. The new year’s when the bargains cry out."

I’ve told you my edge and I’ll not dress it up. On the ninth of March a club in this division goes into administration and gets ten points knocked off, and before that, in the January, it starts selling anything that isn’t nailed down.

I know who. I know the lad. I’ll not say his name in a room, not even mine, because a secret you’ve said out loud is just gossip with a head start. But I’ll be there with cash while everyone else is still reading the news.

"Midfield." I moved us on before my own face gave anything away. "Here’s where we’re thin and here’s where I want to be brave. Scotty holds. Bailey’s coming, and Bailey’s going to be special, and that’s all I’ll say about Bailey."

"You never say owt about Bailey," said Wilf.

"And I’m not starting today, because the morning I do, every club in England reads it off my face." That got a murmur. They’ve all clocked that I go careful round the kid, and not one of them’s worked out it’s because I’m right about him, only that I’m never wrong when I go quiet.

"What we haven’t got is a man who takes it off the back four and makes the right pass under a tackle. Craig?"

"The Woking lad." Craig didn’t even look at his pad. "The one we flagged in May. Left-footed, reads it, cheap because he’s small and the big clubs are cowards about small."

"Still there. Still cheap. Twenty grand and his train fare." I paused. "And somebody up the road’s been sniffing round him, so we don’t dawdle."

The room went a shade quieter at somebody up the road. They know who I mean without me spending his name, and I’d sooner keep it that way, because the day I make him the main character in my own club’s meetings is the day he’s already won a yard he hasn’t earned.

"Get him in before the sniffing turns into an offer," I said. "Wilf, that’s yours, Monday."

"Monday," said Wilf. He wrote it on the back of his hand, because Wilf owns a notebook and has never once opened it, and drained the last of a flask that had been three counties and back with him, slurp. Not for the first time I thought how much of what I’d built stood on one knackered man in a bad coat who loved this game harder than it had ever loved him back.

We ran quick through the rest, the lads who are what they are.

Baz Whelan, honest as the day is long, who’ll stand next to Lenny and do exactly what he’s told and never once organise a soul, which is the whole problem. Aled Pryce on the right, quick and daft in equal measure.

Jonjo Reid on the left, nineteen, one of our own, the one lad in that squad I’d told nobody to put a price on, because I’ve an idea where he finishes and it’s a good way north of here.

Craig had a note on every one of them. Ages, minutes, who was limping into July. A manager earning his corn.

[ WHERE WE STRENGTHEN ] 1. Centre-half, a LEADER. The signing the season turns on. Tommo’s fee funds it. 2. Central midfield. The Woking lad, £20k. Move before the rivals do. 3. Goalkeeper, young, by Christmas. Grow one cheap. Incoming already in motion: a 20-year-old striker (this afternoon, if I don’t fluff it).

"Which brings us up top." I wrote the last cluster. "Vardy. And the lad coming at three."