Chapter 261: Whose Team Is It I

"Why is the Harry lad on the bench, Mr Mercer?"

The man asking was in the row in front of me at Colchester on the Tuesday night. He had a KANE shirt on over his jumper, and he turned round to ask it with 15 minutes left and the score 2-2.

"Ask the gaffer."

"I am asking you," he said, friendly enough. "It is your club."

4 minutes later Craig sent the boy on, the way he had told me he would on the Saturday night. He touched the ball 5 times. He won a free kick on the edge of their box, and Mahrez put it into the wall. thud.

"ESSEX IS AMBER," our end sang at theirs. 1,500 of us had gone up on 2 coaches and in a line of cars from the Bovril End car park.

"ONE TEAM IN ESSEX," theirs sang back, louder, because there were more of them.

It finished 2-2. Gayle had scored early and Mahrez just after half-time, and they had come back both times. 43 points, 4 off 6th.

Maureen had the green ledger open on her desk when I came in on the Wednesday. She turned it round to face me and put her finger on a column.

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR FC, LOAN FEE, 5,000.

It was written 4 times, one under the other, in her small square hand. 19 February. 23 February. 2 March. 5 March.

"20,000," she said. "In a fortnight. For a boy who has started once."

"I know what it says, Maureen."

"Does Craig know what it says?"

"Not yet."

She shut the book. thump of the cover. "Margaret knows. I know. Stan probably knows, the way he hears everything. The only man in this building who does not know is the man picking the team."

"I will tell him."

"You will tell him this week, Sam, or I will put it in the board minutes and he can read it there with everybody else." She picked up her pen. "He will find out. I would sooner it came from you."

Priya put her head in behind me before I could answer. "The 50 K’s came. And Saturday has sold out."

"Sold out?"

"Every seat, every bit of terrace. Bournemouth have taken their full allocation and asked for more." She was grinning. "And we have done 23 shirts with KANE on the back. I put one in the window next to the Tottenham page."

"Good."

Maureen went back to her figures. She did not look up again while I was in the room.

On the Friday morning a lorry backed into the training ground car park at 8. beep. beep. beep. Dev was out of the building before it had stopped.

There were 2 of them on the back, strapped down: big white plastic tubs, each as long as a man, with a pump and a dial on the side.

"10 degrees," Dev said, reading off the delivery note. "Holds it all day. Timer on the wall. 8 minutes a man, no more." He read the dial twice. "No more ice from the garage."

Kieran had come over from the shed with a mug in his hand.

"What do I do with me bins, then?"

"Grass cuttings," Dev said.

"I washed them bins out every morning for 3 weeks."

"Then they are the cleanest grass bins in the county, Kieran."

The driver and 2 of the young pros walked the tubs into the new building, to the room where the wheelie bins had stood. scrape of plastic on the doorframe. Dev went in after them.

The rota had been my idea, and Dev’s wall, and now the tubs. Every one of them had worked.

I found Sadler in the corridor outside the dressing room, with the team sheet for Saturday on his clipboard and a pen in his teeth. Through the door I could hear the squad changing. Music, boots on the tiles, Gray laughing at something.

I read the sheet over his shoulder. Braithwaite. Pett, Maguire, Stokes, Rudd. Kanté. Mahrez, Murphy, Quinn, Gray. Vardy.

The boy was on the bench again.

"Start him," I said, louder than I meant to.

The music stopped behind the door.

Sadler took the pen out of his mouth. He looked at the door, and then at me, and then he walked away down the corridor, past the boot room, as far as the fire door, and leaned on it. clunk of the bar. I went after him.

"Not there," he said. "Not with 20 of them listening. Now say it again."

"Start the boy tomorrow."

"Against Bournemouth." He held the clipboard against his chest. "They put 4 past us in the autumn. They have just lost 4 on the bounce, and they will come here to take it out on somebody. And you want a lad who has had 1 start."

"He scored when he started."

"Against Hartlepool. I see him every day, Sam. He finishes like a dream on a Monday morning with Sid in goal, and he has not found a Saturday yet. At 19 that is allowed. It is where he is."

"Give him a run and he will find it."

"A run in what? In my team?"

"There is a clause in his loan," I said. "Every time he is fit for a league game and we leave him out of the 11, Tottenham charge us 5,000 pounds. That is 20,000 already."

He did not say anything for a moment. Back up the corridor the music came on again.

"Shrewsbury," he said. "The day he came. I sat him in the stand."

"Yes."

"That was 5,000."

"Yes."

"And Swindon. I had him warming up for 40 minutes and never put him on." He turned the pen over in his fingers. "Who else knows?"

"Margaret. Maureen."

"So the woman who does the books knows, and the woman who does the rules knows, and the man who picks the team finds out by a fire door."

"Nobody is picking your team, Craig."

"Does the lad know about this clause?"

"No."

"Good. Keep it that way. He has enough on." He looked down at the sheet. "I know what 20,000 pounds is to you, Sam. I was in this building the week you turned down 5 million for Mahrez. So do not stand there and tell me this is about the money."

"It is the money, Craig."

I had carried that reason down the corridor because he could not argue with it.

The coin had gone up by more since the Wednesday it went through 32 than Tottenham could charge me between now and the end of April.

What I had in my head was a man of 21, at White Hart Lane, finishing a season with 21 league goals. I had watched him do it. I was not asking Sadler to pick a boy of 19 in March. I was asking him to pick that man, 2 years early.

"You have never once asked me for a name," Sadler said. "Not for any player. If you are asking me now, you are asking me as the chairman."

"I am asking."

"Then he starts." click of his pen. "Where?"

"Up front with Vardy. They were good together at Oldham."

"For 21 minutes at Oldham. If I play 2 up top, I lose a man in the middle, against a side that plays 3 there." He waited. "Gray out wide, Vardy and the lad up top, and that is Quinn out of the hole. Is that what you want?"

"That is what I want."

He put a line through Quinn’s name and wrote the boy’s under Vardy’s, slowly, in capitals.

"Then that is 2 you have picked, Sam. The lad and the shape."

He walked back up the corridor and went through the door into the dressing room, and the music went off.

"Kane. You start tomorrow. Up top with Jamie."

"Yes, gaffer."

"Quinn. You are on the bench."

There was a pause. Then Quinn’s voice. "Have I done something, gaffer?"

"No, son," Sadler said. "You have done nothing wrong at all."

At 2 o’clock on the Saturday there was still a queue at the ticket office window, people hoping for a return.

"SOLD OUT," said the board on the window, in Priya’s capitals. Maureen had the safety officer in her office going through the count for the third time. The Bournemouth coaches had come in at 1. chunk of the turnstiles going round in the away corner, steady, for an hour.

Upstairs, Bournemouth’s directors were in the boardroom, and Priya had put the good cups out. One of their men, a tall one with a poppy-red tie, found me by the window with a cup of tea.

"Craig has gone 2 up front, I see," he said. "Brave, against our lot."

"He has."

"Our manager came back to us in October with us near the bottom," he said. "A month ago we were top. Then we lost 4 in a row." He raised his cup. "Somebody is going to get it."

whine of feedback from the speakers below us, and then the teams. When the announcer got to the boy’s name, the Bovril End sang it back at him. "HAR-RY KANE. HAR-RY KANE."

On my way down to the box I passed the tunnel. The teams were lined up in it, 2 rows, studs clacking on the concrete. clack. clack.

The mascots stood in front of them. One was a boy of about 7 called Alfie, whose dad had won the draw in the programme.

He was holding Kane’s hand, in a brand-new home shirt with KANE on the back in letters that still had the shine on them, and he had turned half round to show him the name.

"My mum done it with the iron," he was saying. "But the shop did the K."

"It is a very good K," Kane said, and bent down to look at it properly.

wheep of the whistle, a minute after 3.

I could see what was wrong inside 5 minutes. I have never been a coach, and I could see it.

Bournemouth played 3 in the middle of the pitch, and the 3 of them never let it go further than 10 yards. tik. tik. tik. We had Kanté in front of our back 4 and Murphy beside him, and Kanté was chasing 2 men at once.

With Quinn on the bench there was nobody to give the ball to between their lines. Mahrez came inside with his arms out for it and found a Bournemouth shirt in the gap every time.

"3 IN THE MIDDLE, CRAIG," a man shouted from the main stand below us. "THEY HAVE GOT 3. WE HAVE GOT 2."

Up front the 2 of them wanted the same yard of grass. Twice the boy dropped short into the space Quinn would have filled, and Vardy dropped with him, and our long ball went over both their heads to nobody.