Chapter 262: Whose Team Is It II

On the touchline Doyle was up off the bench, pointing. "KANTÉ. LEAVE THE 6. LEAVE HIM, PICK UP THE 8."

Kanté did as he was told. The moment he left the 6, the 6 had the ball.

On 38 minutes it went in.

They worked it past Kanté in 3 passes, the third one a flick, and their right-back was free on the overlap. He drove it low across the box, and their centre-forward put it in at the near post with the inside of his foot. pock.shhk of the net. Braithwaite had no chance.

0-1.

The away end went up. 1,000 of them, jumping, scarves going round, singing their manager’s name.

Our end was quiet for a moment. Then it started clapping, quick and flat, to lift them, and the drum came in under it. boom. boom.

Sadler stood on the touchline with his weight on one leg, the way he stands at training, and watched his midfield get passed through.

At half-time I stood at the boardroom window with my tea. Down in the Bovril End somebody was singing on his own.

Sadler changed it at half-time and still left the boy on. He took Gray off and sent Rowe on in the middle, pushed Vardy out to the left, and put the boy through the middle on his own.

It was better for the boy. It was worse for Vardy, who spent the first quarter of an hour of the second half running down the touchline at their full-back with nobody to pass to.

On 63 minutes the chance came.

Mahrez beat his man on the right, for the only time all afternoon, and stood the ball up to the far post. The boy had lost his marker. He was 8 yards out with the whole goal in front of him and the ball dropping at the height of his hip.

The ground came up onto its toes.

He tried to side-foot it across the keeper into the far corner. It came off the side of his boot. scuff. It went a yard wide of the post, into the advertising board behind the goal.

thunk of the ball on the board.

The whole ground groaned at once, except the away end. It came up from the stomach, and it went on longer than any noise all afternoon.

He was on the ground. He got up straight away.

Their keeper took the goal kick quickly, before we were back. Their midfield had it, and they were away, 3 against 2.

The boy turned and ran after it.

He ran 60 yards back toward our goal without looking at the crowd or the bench. He chased their number 8 all the way to the edge of our area and slid in from behind.

hiss of his studs through the wet grass. He took the ball off the man’s toe, clean, and gave it to Kanté.

Our end clapped the tackle. Then it went quiet, and the away end sang over the top of it.

The boy jogged back toward the halfway line with his head down.

Craig had told me on the Friday exactly where the boy was. I had been looking 2 years past him.

On 70 minutes Sadler took him off and put Quinn on, and Vardy went back through the middle. It was near enough the shape he had wanted on the Friday.

The ground clapped the boy off, for the tackle more than anything. Doyle met him at the line with a tracksuit top, and the boy pulled it on and sat at the far end of the bench.

With Quinn back in the hole we kept the ball better. Bournemouth had a goal, and they kept the ball in the corners and took their time over every throw. We did not have a shot on target in the last 20 minutes.

wheeeep. 0-1.

The away end sang. Ours went home. As the main stand emptied below us I heard a man’s voice from about 10 rows down.

"WHAT WAS THAT, SADLER? WHAT WAS THAT?"

A few people round him laughed. Nobody told him to shut up.

Sadler was walking down the touchline toward the tunnel. He must have heard it. He kept walking.

I came down the back stairs as the players were coming out of the dressing room. Alfie went out past me on his dad’s shoulders, still in the shirt.

The boy was at the far end of the corridor with his bag over his shoulder, and Quinn was with him. They had not seen me.

"That was your shirt today," the boy said. "Sorry."

"Not your fault, Harry."

"Felt like it." He hitched the bag up. "See you Monday."

Danny Vine came up the stairs behind me with his phone in his hand and his match report half written on it.

"Did Craig pick that team, Sam?"

"Craig picks the team."

"That is not an answer, and you know it is not." He put the phone away. "Half that dressing room heard you outside the door yesterday. It was round the town by teatime. I had it from 3 different people at half-time, and one of them was a steward."

"What are you going to write?"

"Tonight? The score." He buttoned his coat. "Monday, I do not know yet. I am giving you the weekend to tell me I have got it wrong, Sam. I would like to have got it wrong."

Raj drove me home at half past 5, with his phone propped on the dashboard and the last Bournemouth coach pulling out of the car park in front of us.

"You will want to see this," he said, at the lights. "Or you will not. I will read it."

THE BOVRIL END · Tilbrook Town supporters’ forum Thread: "5 strikers??" · Saturday 9 March 2013 amberpete72: Not having a go at the Spurs lad. Took his goal well v Pools and ran his socks off today. But we have Vardy, Gray, Gayle and Big Pete. Why a 5th? SeawallSue: Every player Mercer has signed has come good. I will give him this one. old_bovril: Sadler looked like a man who had swallowed a wasp at 3 o’clock. That was not his team. Never seen him play 2 up top at home. TillyLad09: bookies on the high st have pushed us out to 66 to 1 amberpete72: still 4 off with 14 to play. Back to the 4-1-4-1 Tuesday please Craig

Raj turned the phone over on the dashboard.

"Is he right?" he said. "That old_bovril?"

The lights went green. He did not move off. Somebody behind us leaned on a horn. paaarp.

"Turn round, Raj."

"What?"

"Take me back to the ground."

The floodlights were off when we got there and the car park had nearly emptied. Along the tunnel side one window was lit: the little room where the bibs and the cones are kept.

Sadler was in there on his own. Down the corridor Stan’s machines were going in the kit room. chug-chug of a drum turning over. Sadler had the subs’ bibs out of the skip in a heap on the table and he was folding them, one at a time, into squares.

The last time I had found him folding bibs in that room, a Championship club had been on the phone to him.

He did not stop when I came in. flap of a bib being shaken out.

"Craig. Danny is printing something on Monday. We need to be saying the same thing."

"Saying what?" He folded the bib. "That I picked it?"

I did not answer that.

"They had 3 in the middle," he said. "We had 2. I told you by that fire door we would have 2. Kanté ran himself into the floor and still could not cover 2 men."

"I know."

"The lad did nothing wrong. He missed a chance. Strikers miss chances. Then he ran half the length of the pitch to put it right, and most of them would not." He put the bib on the pile. "And I sent Quinn home yesterday wondering what he had done."

He took another bib out of the heap.

"You sat in that stand after Bournemouth away and you let me sit on a stool and pick it up. That is why I stayed, when I had a Championship club on the phone."

"I know why you stayed."

"Then yesterday you stood outside that door with 20 lads behind it and told me to start a boy, and picked his partner for him, and dressed the whole thing up as Tottenham’s money."

His hands stopped. "And tonight you have come back to make sure Danny Vine hears one story."

He picked the last bib out of the heap and shook it. flap.

"So I am going to ask you once, and I want you to think before you answer it." He folded it in half, and in half again. "Whose team is it?"

"It is the club’s team, Craig."

He put the bib on top of the pile and squared the pile with both hands.

"That is a chairman’s answer," he said.

He took his coat off the peg and picked his clipboard up off the table. Tuesday’s team sheet was already clipped to it, with nothing written on it yet.

snap of the clip. He took the sheet off and laid it on top of the folded bibs.

He went out into the corridor with the empty clipboard under his arm, and left Tuesday on the table.