office is a more muted affair. I’ve just got a desk in the corner and a filing cabinet which I’ve never used. It’s full of blank printer paper. Gerry suggested I set up a filing system of transfer targets, scout reports of opposition teams and tactical formations, but I don’t need all that stuff, never have. It’s all up here, committed to memory. At the end of the day, how hard is it to remember 4-4-2? My only decoration is the calendar Ray Stubbs sent me at Christmas. Every month features a different photo of Ray pointing wistfully at a distant mountain range, apart from July, which features a watercolour painting by Ray of former Premier League referee Uriah Rennie. (Listen, the lad’s clearly in a bad place. Good luck to him.)
‘Gillian?’ I said, knocking and walking in. ‘Have you got a sec?’
Gillian is about forty or so – maybe younger. Or maybe older. I’ve never been good at placing people; I remember I once bought Warren Barton a Happy 30th Birthday card and he said, ‘No, I’m actually twenty-nine.’ I’ve never felt so embarrassed! But having said that, Gillian has none of Warren’s flair and she’d be the first to admit that. She was appointed chair of the academy by the Compound Council and soon set about putting her own stamp on things and cutting corners financially. Within weeks she’d axed my weekly trip to Flix, the Compound cinema, where I’d take the lads to unwind after a gruelling thirty-minute training session. Other essentials were quickly trimmed away too: Alfonso, the club baker, was shown the door (no more pre-training eclairs, which makes you wonder why you even bother really), my pot of money for necessities like training cones or a bottle of Brut for the man of the match went out of the window, and my Friday night ‘Kev & Pals’ music extravaganza, in which I and a special musical guest would regale the lads with a performance of a different classic album each month, was actually cancelled mid-show one week when Gillian got up on stage and literally pulled the plug, saying it was ‘an appalling misuse of Compound funds’. You should have seen the look Jimmy Nail gave her. In her year as chair, Gillian had systematically eroded everything that made my football club tick – little wonder it was all now going to seed.
As I came in she looked up from her desk, and although she tried to hide it, I spotted the look of tired disdain in her eyes when she saw that it was me. I’d had that same look on my own face countless times when Graeme Le Saux used to come in to see me to complain yet again about the lack of recycling facilities at England’s training complex.
‘Yes, Kevin,’ she sighed, leaning back in her chair. ‘What’s on your mind?’
I’m not having a pop, that’s not my style, but Gillian simply doesn’t understand football. She doesn’t know a 4-4-2 from a… well, whatever other formations there are. And listen, that’s not a sexist thing – I know plenty of blokes who are just as clueless about the game. Steven Taylor, for one – you’d give him simple instructions and his eyes would just glaze over. Mind you, I’m one to talk. I hadn’t even heard of the offside rule until 1999. At the end of the day, Gillian’s a bureaucrat, a cynical pencil-pusher whose only consideration is about the numbers, the bottom line, the ingoings and outgoings. She doesn’t understand that what really matters at a football club is the graft, the passion, putting the ball in the net, the catering facilities. I knew that prising a few quid out of the coffers for a new striker was going to be a big ask, so I decided to play it cool and blindside her.
‘Nice sunny day outside,’ I said casually.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she agreed.
‘Can I have a new striker?’
‘No,’ she replied wearily. ‘We’ve been through this before, Kevin; we simply can’t afford to spend money on player recruitment right now. The budget is stretched thin as it is, you know that.’
‘We’re getting killed in the league,’ I protested. ‘We’re wallowing in the bottom half of the table.’
‘We’ve only played one match; most other teams haven’t played their opening fixture yet,’ Gillian argued. I rolled my eyes.
‘Yes, but on alphabetical order, Palangonia FC are right down in the doldrums,’ I said. Once again Gillian had displayed her woeful lack of knowledge.
‘Look, I’m sorry, but it’s absolutely out of the question,’ she went on. ‘I was at a meeting of the Compound Council just last night and General Leigh was making a big stink again about how much money is already set aside for this football club. There’s a war on, Kevin – a big one – and it’s not going to end any time soon. You know the L’zuhl are making great advances across the galaxy.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘How can you not know?’ Gillian asked patronisingly. ‘It’s been all over the news – they annihilated the horse-mutants of Teplok in a raid just yesterday. They’re really upping the ante. We have to be prepared for the possibility that they’ll strike Palangonia next. If they find out about our military presence here… It’s no secret that the L’zuhl were furious to discover that some of us managed to escape during the invasion of Earth. It made them look weak and that is one thing they are most certainly not, and if they begin to see our small outpost here as a threat then they will not hesitate. Mankind is high on their list of targets.’
‘And a new striker is high on mine,’ I argued. ‘Anyway, if the bloody L’zuhl come down here and see how half-arsed an operation this football club is, how’s that going to make us look? If we’re going to win this war, we need a team that’s competing for promotion to Galactic League B. That’s basic.’
‘I sometimes wonder what planet you’re on,’ Gillian said quietly, shaking her head.
‘Palangonia,’ I replied defiantly. ‘You know, the one with the football club that has no firepower up top.’
‘You’ve got Rodway,’ Gillian said. ‘He scored hatfuls for us last season. There’s no reason he can’t do the same again.’
‘The kid’s cracked,’ I snapped irritably. ‘Out until all hours, drinking himself silly and then going to seedy clubs. Probably snorting weed too. He’s a liability. I can’t have it affecting the other lads.’
‘I’m sorry, Kevin, that’s my final word,’ she said, putting her glasses on and looking at her computer screen, which was her way of saying that she wanted me to leave. (Also, she then said aloud that she wanted me to leave.)
‘Fine,’ I grumbled. ‘But remember this conversation when we get our arses handed to us on Saturday. You need to wake up, Gillian – the real war is out there, on the pitch, eleven against eleven. Everything else is window dressing.’
‘Oh, and Kevin?’ Gillian said as I stood up to leave. ‘Have you considered switching to three at the back, perhaps utilising Rooker and Nightingale as attacking wing-backs supporting Rodway and Alex Booth up front? Or perhaps even a move to one striker and drop Rodway into the hole as a creative playmaker? Just something to think about, anyway.’
‘Aye, well,’ I shrugged. I didn’t need strategic advice from anyone, thank you very much. (Though I made a mental note to adopt pretty much everything Gillian had just suggested.)
‘Take Barrington12 with you,’ Gillian said as I opened the door. ‘Maintenance have discharged him; they couldn’t see a problem but reckon it may have been a clogged oil filter that caused him to keep saying… what he kept saying.’
I sighed – that was insult to injury. It was bad enough having to marshal a skeleton crew of a squad without having to deal with a walking, talking tin
