Mitch was, understandably, livid.

  When I came into the dressing room, he was pacing in a tight loop, driving his fist into the tactics board, all that.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he growled. “Every bloody time. Who does that? Who looks at a match like this and thinks, yes, perfect conditions for a school reunion? And if it goes wrong, it’s always me.”

  I cleared my throat.

  He simply turned around and said, “Good. You’re here. We’re playing your new kid.”

  I glanced past him at the board. “Starting?” I asked. “Or bench?”

  Mitch scoffed. “Starting. Of course starting. Because why ease anyone in when you can just chuck them on and hope for the best?” He dragged a magnet from the board. “Boss sees one YouTube clip and suddenly we’re running a youth experiment. Asset this, resale that. Like I give a shit what someone’s worth on a spreadsheet. How much money does he even make from this shit a football tier? Best case we get a development fee and a thank-you card. And we didn’t even develop the new kid.”

  Good. At least he didn’t know it was me.

  Mitch slapped the magnet back onto the board and finally shifted gears. “Right,” he said. “Forget the noise. We keep it simple. We’ve already got a triangle here,” he went on. “That side circulates. I’ve told McAteer where to run to receive the final ball.” Then he moved to the left, tapping the wide magnet once. “New kid stays wide and holds it. That’s his job. If we lose it, we foul high and reset.”

  We didn’t bring in a dribbling demon for him to hold the ball and recycle.

  “Harper’s got pace,” I said. “And he cuts inside well. If you let him drive infield, he links clean with McAteer who likes diagonal runs. Gives us an extra runner instead of a traffic cone.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not letting an eighteen-year-old gamble my ball away trying to be clever. If he wants to actually play football, he’ll show me he can follow instructions first. Touchline. Simple passes. End of story.”

  Fine. Maybe Mitch was right; maybe he was wrong. He wasn’t going to listen to me anyway, and I needed to find another way to help us grind out a result.

  In reality, half my vision was occupied by a translucent pane hovering just off to the right.

  Right. I could check out staff’s stats now. How good was Mitch, actually?

  Mitch Thompson – Head Coach Attributes

  Flexibility was not his thing. Which meant once he’d decided on a plan, that plan was happening whether the match liked it or not. But the attacking numbers weren’t bad. Attacking 77. Mental Coaching 72. Set Pieces 68. Even the tactical score sat around average for this level. I could trust his attacking setup.

  The real standouts were the mental traits.

  Determination 100. Discipline 118.

  Which explained the shouting.

  Mitch wasn’t the kind of coach who invented clever systems. He was the kind who drilled one idea until it worked out of sheer stubbornness.

  What about mine?

  Jamie Harrington – Head Coach Attributes

  My numbers were higher. In some places a lot higher. That was... awkward.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  This, if I was being honest with myself, was not a thought I wanted to have while the man in question was standing ten feet away drawing arrows on a tactics board.

  I closed the comparison before my brain could start doing the stupid thing and turning it into a scoreboard.

  Hierarchy existed for a reason. A spreadsheet didn’t run a dressing room.

  And, more importantly, Mitch was the one who’d given me a shot in the first place.

  Plenty of coaches at this level would’ve looked at my age, my CV, and politely shown me the door. Mitch had let me in, let me talk tactics, even let me argue back sometimes. Besides, comparing numbers like that was a fast track to poison in a staff room. Nothing good came from quietly deciding you were smarter than the guy above you. I was guilty of it; I should adjust my behavior.

  If I wanted to prove anything, it would be by helping us win matches.

  Speaking of winning matches...

  Mitch kept talking.

  “Keeper distribution goes short unless pressed. If they bait the press, we go long into channels, not central. And here—” he jabbed a finger at the midfield zone where Milner occupied “—screen first, tackle second. I don’t care if it looks passive.”

  Got it, I thought, and scrolled.

  The global morale boost sat there, greyed out.

  Out of reach.

  Fine. I’d never liked blunt instruments anyway.

  The list repopulated as I scrolled.

  There were also Form-related boosters, but they were greyed out, probably because I hadn’t unlocked Form yet.

  Mitch was still talking about rest defence. About not getting dragged into early chaos. He might as well have been reading the tooltip out loud.

  Further down—

  Foul Intelligence and Transition Delay were way too expensive, and we were not an attacking enough side to worry about constant counter attacks. There were plenty more attacking and possession-minded boosters below, like these ones:

  Tempting. At this level, half of all turnovers came from balls bouncing a yard too far away. But ten percent wasn’t magic.

  That one made me pause.

  We weren’t a flashy side, but we did build through the thirds. 10 was a good enough edge at this level. It also didn’t contradict Mitch. Unlike the one below.

  What should I go for? Should I simply redeem four morale boosters and call it a day? Error suppression, however, kept mistakes from killing us. Gravity made sure we didn’t create them in the first place. I’d love to get Error Suppression, Opening Phase Discipline, and Possession Gravity, which would make us a super hard team to beat. But I just didn’t have enough XPoints.

  I already knew the answer. I just didn’t like that it was boring. I did the maths again, even though I already had.

  Gravity plus Error Suppression. Five hundred spent, a hundred left to rot.

  Fine. Make us solid. Hopefully we wouldn’t concede early, and Mitch had the right attacking ideas to drill through Yate Town.