Chapter 907 - 907: Nobody Follows

Ron finished on Wednesday afternoon.

He did the last two names in forty minutes at the desk in the gatehouse, flask and glasses on the end of his nose, and brought the sheet up to my office at half-past three in a plastic wallet.

Forty names, his handwriting against every one. One word for where each of them was now and one word for whether they wanted anything off us, and the second column had no written in it thirty-one times. Against number 26, the goalkeeper, he had written 11 seconds and nothing else. I didn't ask him.

"That's all of them, gaffer."

"You didn't have to do it."

"I know I didn't have to do it." Ron screwed the lid onto his flask. "I'll do it again in April. Same forty, plus whoever Gary and Michael let go in May tacked on the bottom."

He got to the door and stopped.

"Gary knows about 33."

I looked down at the sheet.

Number 33 was the lad off the Hampton and Richmond Borough teamsheet.

The left-sided forward the academy let go in May 2017 with a note on his file that said he was too slight for men's football, followed by twenty-two goals in the National League South the season after. I had found him on a Tuesday night in August at my kitchen table and kept my mouth shut, just to see where Ron's legs took him when nobody was pointing.

"How does Gary know?"

"I rang the lad on the 10th. He's got eight already this season. I took it down to Gary on Thursday." Ron put his cap on. "You never said I couldn't."

"I didn't."

"Well then," Ron said, and went back to his barrier.

Gary Issott was in my doorway at four. He didn't come in.

"I said March."

"You did."

"I said the day you sign one of these kids back off a non-league club, every paper in the country writes that we let him go in the first place, and I said bring it to me in March." He had a photocopy of Ron's page. "It's the 17th of October, and it's on my desk."

"He isn't one of yours, Gary."

"He's Michael's. I know he's Michael's." Issott leaned against the frame. "Michael doesn't know yet, because Ron came straight to me. You're going to decide whether you tell him or I do. I won't do it behind his back."

"I'll tell him."

"Tonight."

"Tonight."

"Eight goals in thirteen games," Issott said. "There are five Championship clubs with a scout at Hampton on a Saturday already. They found him the exact same way Ron did with their feet."

I told Michael Cooke at six in the Under-23s office. He read the page standing up, turned his cap round in his hands twice, and put it on the desk.

"I wrote not physically ready on that boy," he said. "And I was right in May."

"You were."

"And he got physically ready on his own, twelve miles up the road, and nobody from here went to look." He picked the cap back up. "What are you going to do?"

"I haven't decided."

"Then don't decide it in the papers," Michael Cooke said. "Do it in a room with his mother sitting in it, the way I did the other thing."

James Rodríguez walked into Beckenham at ten past nine on Thursday with a coffee in each hand, and gave one of them to Ron at the barrier.

[JAMES RODRÍGUEZ. CONDITION 61%.]

Rebecca had the same number on her card before he even had his coat off. She held it up so I could read it from across the canteen.

He went to the wall before he went anywhere else. He read the Real Madrid section all the way down the Marca lists and the photograph of Lopetegui.

"Four matches without a goal."

"Four."

"In Madrid, four matches without a goal, the president doesn't sleep." He put his coffee down. Tk. "Julen is a good man. A week on Sunday they play Barcelona, and I think he knows."

Then he walked the rest of the wall, all thirteen sections, and stopped at the Mail at the end.

"This is new."

"Since Monday."

"Scott and Aaron and you." He looked at me over the top of the paper. "In Colombia, when the manager gets sent off, the players are very happy. For twenty minutes nobody is shouting at them."

"Nobody shouted on Monday, James. I stood in a taped box."

"I saw the video," James Rodríguez said. "Everyone in Bogotá saw the video." He picked his coffee back up. "Rebecca says thirty minutes."

"She does."

"Then give me the right thirty," he said, and went to find his boots.

The last ten minutes of Thursday's session were eleven against eleven with Scott Dann on the whistle again, and I stayed in the box for all ten. Twice I got to the front edge of the tape with my toes on it, and both times I heard the whistle go into his mouth and froze.

Nobody spoke to him for the entire ten minutes. Sakho went an entire match without saying a word to a referee for the first time anybody at this club had seen. When Dann blew for full time, Sakho walked across and shook his hand like they'd just played against each other.

"You're a very bad referee, Scotty," Mamadou Sakho said. "Very strict. Horrible."

"Thank you, Mamadou."

"On Sunday I'll be an angel. Just for you." He held the handshake a second longer. "Only on Sunday."

On Friday at half-past one, José Mourinho sat down behind a table at Carrington with a letter from the FA he had to answer by six. The whole of our first team watched him on the canteen television with their plates in front of them.

He took the FA question first and didn't answer it. He took two about his own job and didn't answer those either.

Somebody asked about Scott Dann, and he shrugged.

"Good for me. Last year this team, no red cards. This year two players, and the manager also." He nearly smiled. "I know about the manager part. I have been sent to the stands in many countries."

Then a reporter asked him about Rúben Neves, and he sat back.

"Everybody asks me who I put on the boy." He folded his hands on the table.

"Dortmund put Witsel on him. Chelsea put Kanté. Kanté. The best in the world at that job. And what happens? The boy walks. He walks to the corner flag, and Kanté goes with him, because Kanté is a very good professional and he does what he is told. So for the last twenty minutes Chelsea have eleven men and Palace have ten, and Chelsea cannot find the ball, because their best player is standing by a corner flag with a boy of twenty-one. And all of you write about the substitution at thirty minutes."

Behind the hatch, somebody had left a tap running.

"It is the best coached team in this country. I say it. The best. They have a boy of twenty-one who is happy to be invisible for ninety-four minutes so his team can score, and I have players on a lot of money who are not happy to be invisible for ninety-four seconds."

Grealish put his fork down.

"So I will not put anybody on him."

He waited for the press room at Carrington to write that down.

"Nobody. He can have the ball, all of it. Let us see where he walks when nobody follows."

Then somebody asked him about Paul Pogba, and thirty people in our canteen started talking over the top of him.

Marcus didn't say anything.

He walked to the laptop, printed the transcript, carried it the length of the canteen, and stapled it right under the white tape that said CHELSEA.

Tchk.

Joel Ward was standing six feet away, watching him do it.

"That isn't a Chelsea piece," Marcus said. "I know it isn't. But it's the first one that got it right."

Rúben Neves read it with his hood down this time.

All of it, twice, stood in front of that wall while the whole first team pretended to eat. When he got to the end for the second time, he turned round and found me by the hatch.

"If nobody follows me."

"Then you have the ball."

"All of it."

"All of it."

"And in front of me is a José Mourinho team behind the ball, with nine men, and nobody following, and 75,000 people." He was building it out loud in English, one piece at a time. "Then I'm not taking anybody for a walk."

"No."

"Then I'm just a guy with the ball who has to be better than they are."

"Yes."

Rúben Neves looked back at the wall, at the only piece of paper under the word CHELSEA, and put his hand flat against it.

"Good," he said. "I was getting bored of walking."

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.