Chapter 257: 93 Days I

At 10 the next morning I stood in the same canteen, in front of the same 3 tables, and this time I had brought a different answer with me.

"We are going for 6th," I said.

Gray was the first. He banged his fist on the middle table, bang, then again, and then 20 fists had it, and the mugs were jumping.

"SAT-UR-DAY," somebody started. "TUES-DAY." The whole canteen came in on the last line. "WE'RE TIL-BROOK ALL THE WAY." A slice of toast went on the floor. Quinn sang it with his mouth full.

"About time," Stokes said, to nobody in particular, and went back to his porridge.

Marsh did not sing. He was at the back by the door, and he nodded at me once, the way you nod at a man who has paid you back money he owed.

Vardy got up while they were still banging, put his mug in the hatch, and walked out. 10 minutes later he was on the grass on his own, warming up 20 minutes early.

"Right," Sadler said, when it had died down. "Sit down. Here is what it costs."

"21 games. Twice a week till the end of April. Some of you will want to play on a Saturday and you will not." He looked along the tables. "You will hate it. And anybody who comes knocking on my door about it can sit out the Tuesday as well."

"Who decides who plays, gaffer?" Gray said.

"I do." Sadler looked across the room at me. "With a bit of help I have not agreed to yet."

The help was pinned to the wall of the physio room by 2 o'clock, in 4 colours of felt-tip.

I had rung Dev at 9 the night before, an hour after I put the phone down on Sadler, and asked him for every minute every player had played since August. He had been up half the night with it, and he had gone further than I asked.

The names ran down the left-hand side and the fixtures ran across the top. Every man had a box for every game, and every box was coloured in green, amber or red. The room smelled of tape and the strong coffee Dev drinks out of a flask.

"Vardy, 2,014 minutes since August," Dev said, with his back to me. "Kanté, more than anybody in the building. He would play every minute of every game if we let him, and he asks me every Friday if we will. Marsh is on his own sheet."

"What does green mean?"

"Green, he plays. Amber, he plays, but not 90, and not twice in 4 days. Red, he sits." tap of the felt-tip on the plaster. "Whatever he tells you. Vardy told me he was fine on the 27th of December with a hamstring as tight as a guitar string. I have it written down."

The first time through these years, I watched the big clubs start to do this. They counted every minute a player ran and rested him before his body made them. Within 10 years even the small clubs did it.

"3 rules," I said. "Nobody plays 3 full games in 8 days. Every minute goes on the wall. And a man rests the week before he tells us he is tired, because by the week he tells us, he is already hurt."

Dev had them written on a card before I had finished.

Next door, in the room the builders had left empty for a gym, there were 2 green wheelie bins full of iced water and a fridge full of chocolate milk. hum of the fridge against the wall. Kieran had found the bins somewhere.

Sadler came in at a quarter past 2 and stood in front of the wall with his cap in his hand. I watched him find Vardy's row. I watched him find his own Saturday team in the greens and the ambers, and see where it did not fit.

"I pick on my eyes," he said. "Not on a felt-tip."

"It is on the wall so you can look at it, gaffer," Dev said.

"And when it says Vardy is red, and Vardy tells me he is fine?"

"Then Vardy is red."

Sadler put a finger on a box in the Saturday column. "Pett is red. Pett is never red. Pett has not missed a game since October."

"Every minute since October," Dev said. "Ask him about his groin. He will tell you it is fine."

Sadler turned to me. "Is this you?"

"It is me. It does not pick your team, Craig. It tells you who has a hamstring coming before he does."

He looked at the wall again, and put one finger on the last sheet, the one with a single name across the top.

"And him?"

"Red," Dev said.

"I will look at it every morning," Sadler said, and put his cap back on. "Then I will pick the team."

"That is all I want," Dev said, and uncapped a green pen.

That night I sat at the kitchen table with the black notebook and went through every name I knew.

The house was quiet apart from the boiler. I had my coat on over my jumper and the notebook open under the kitchen light, and a pen I kept clicking until it annoyed me.

The window had shut on the last day of January. What the rules left a club after that was loans: 28 days at the least, 93 at the most, signed by 5 o'clock on the fourth Thursday in March, and no more than 5 of them in a matchday squad.

Most of the names in my head were no use to me. They were 14 years old, or they were in Belgium, or they were already somebody's first choice. The 4 on the summer page were for the summer.

What I needed was a forward. A long spring takes a forward off you first, and I wanted one who could start on a Tuesday after Vardy had started on the Saturday. He had to be free this week, and good enough that Sadler would not want him on the bench.

There was one.

He was 19. He had grown up in Walthamstow and Chingford, less than an hour up the road, and Arsenal had let him go when he was 8 years old for being a bit too slow and a bit too round.

At 17 he scored 5 goals in this division on loan at Leyton Orient. At 18 he went to Millwall for the spring and they made him their young player of the year.

In August Tottenham sent him to Norwich, where he broke a bone in his foot almost at once, came back at Christmas, and did not score. On the 1st of February they had called him home. He would be without a club for 3 weeks.

The first time round, Leicester signed him on the 21st. It was the same club that had tried to buy Vardy off me in the summer. He scored on his home debut there, and then he spent most of the spring on their bench.

Years later the whole country passed round a photograph of that bench, with Vardy on it beside him, because by then they were 2 of the best strikers in England. He went on to captain England. He scored more goals for them than any man before him.

At Leicester he had been a substitute. Here I would make him a starter.

His name was Harry Kane.

I thought about ringing Wilf. It was gone 10, and Wilf is in bed by 10 on a weeknight, and what was he going to tell me about this boy that I did not already know? I put the phone face down on the table and left it there.

At 9 the next morning I rang Tottenham.

The man in their football office was quick and careful, and he made me spell Tilbrook. rustle of paper at his end. "League One," he said. "You are the club that put City out of the Cup."

"We are."

"I will tell you how it is, Mr Mercer. We have a Championship club talking to us about him for next week."

"A week is a long time for a boy who wants to play," I said. "I can have him registered by Tuesday morning, and I can promise him games."

"Promise him games in writing," the man said, "and I will put it to the manager this morning."

Margaret had the rule book open on my desk by 11.

"Emergency loan, 93 days at the most," she said. "The League counts the day you sign as day 1." She ran her pen along a line. "Sign him on Tuesday the 19th and he is ours until Wednesday the 22nd of May."

"And if we had signed him last Tuesday?"

"Then he would have gone back to Tottenham on the 15th of May." She closed the book. "You asked me to check that date specially, Sam. Why?"

"Because I want him for every game we play this season. All of them."

Sadler was by the window with his arms folded. "What is on the 19th?"

"The play-off final," Margaret said.

"We are 12th."

Margaret wrote 22/5 on her pad and drew a circle round it, and did not answer him.

Sadler looked round from the window. "Who is he?"

"A boy from Tottenham. 19. Harry Kane."

"Never heard of him."

"He scored for Orient in this division when he was 17," I said. "9 at Millwall last spring."

"And at Norwich?"

"He broke his foot, and when he came back he did not score."

"So I have 4 forwards," Sadler said. "Vardy, Gray, Gayle and Pete. And you are bringing me another one who could not get a goal in the Premier League."

"He was 19 and in the Premier League. You have 4 forwards and 21 games."

"Gray and Gayle have done nothing wrong."

"They will both play. Every one of them will play. That is what 21 games means."

"Has Wilf seen him?"

"Wilf can see him every day from Tuesday."

"That is not what I asked, Sam."

Maureen had been in the doorway for the last of it with the green ledger against her chest. "And who pays him?"

"We pay most of his wages. Equity, on Monday."

"On top of my Easter money."

"On top of it."

She put it in the ledger in pencil, and she let me see her do it.