Glory Of The Football Manager System-Chapter 348: The Gambles II

He signed the following morning. Six million pounds to Villarreal. A fraction of what China had offered. But it was not about the money. It had never been about the money. It was about the story. And Pato had decided that his story was not over yet.

While I was in Spain, Freedman was at the bet365 Stadium in Stoke. The Bojan deal had been in the works since that same morning in my office, the morning of the Island of Misfit Toys, the morning I had told Marcus about two fallen angels in two different countries, both written off.

Marcus had grinned and said I was building something mad. I had told him there was a difference between mad and brilliant. Now Freedman was closing it. Two million pounds. For a player whose technical ability was still, by any serious measure, elite. Bojan Krkic became a Crystal Palace player before my flight home had even landed.

I landed back in England on the evening of June 24th. I did not go to the training ground. I did not call Freedman to debrief. I did not check the transfer forums or the fan reaction or the press. I went home. To the penthouse. To Emma.

She was there when I opened the door. She was sitting on the sofa with a book in her lap and a glass of wine on the table beside her, and she looked up when I came in with the particular expression she reserved for the moments when I had been away too long and she was not going to say so directly. She looked at me for a moment, taking in the suit, the bag, the look on my face.

"You’ve been in Spain," she said.

"I have," I said.

"Did it work?"

"It worked," I said.

She nodded, as if this was entirely expected. "Good. Sit down. I’ll get you something to eat."

I sat down on the sofa and let the exhaustion of the last three days settle over me like a weight. The flights. The hotels. The conversations. The waiting. The quiet, high-stakes chess of it all. I was tired in a way that went deeper than sleep could fix. But I was also, underneath the tiredness, something that I had not felt in a long time. Light. Genuinely, properly light.

Emma came back from the kitchen with a plate of pasta and another glass of wine and sat down beside me. She did not ask about the signings. She did not ask about the transfer fees or the contract details or what the media were saying. She just sat beside me and let me eat in peace, the television on low in the background, the city lights visible through the penthouse windows.

After a while, she looked at me. "You look different," she said. "Lighter. Like something has been lifted."

"I’ve just done something either very clever or very stupid," I said. "I’m genuinely not sure which yet."

She laughed. A soft, warm, real laugh. "It’s probably both," she said.

"Probably," I agreed.

We sat there for another hour, talking about nothing important. Her work. A book she was reading. A film she wanted to see. Normal things. Human things. Things that had nothing to do with transfer windows or tactical systems or the Europa League qualifying rounds. For a few hours, the football world did not exist. I was not the gaffer. I was not the boy wonder. I was not the reckless one. I was just Danny. And it was enough.

The next morning, June 25th, I drove back up to St. George’s Park for the afternoon session of the course. I sat down in my usual seat. My phone was on the desk, face-down. At five o’clock, the club’s social media team began the announcements.

Navas first. Then Pato. Then Bojan.

Three signings in the space of an hour. Three former world-class players, each at a different stage of their story, each carrying the weight of what they used to be and the question of what they still could be.

The internet did not know what to do with it.

My phone began to vibrate. Once. Twice. Then, continuously, a steady, insistent buzzing against the desk. I turned it face-up and left it there. The notifications were coming in faster than I could read them. Twitter. Instagram. WhatsApp. Missed calls from numbers I did not recognise.

The Navas announcement went up first. The Palace social media team had done it properly. A short video. Navas in a Palace shirt, the badge on his chest, a quiet smile on his face. The caption was simple.

Jesús Navas. Welcome to Crystal Palace. The comments section exploded within thirty seconds. Most of them were variations of the same thing. No way. No way. NO WAY. The Palace fan forums crashed within two minutes of the post going live. The club’s website went down shortly after.

Freedman texted me a single word. Website.

I texted back. I know.

Then the Pato announcement. Another video. Another Palace shirt. Another badge. Alexandre Pato, the Brazilian prodigy, the fallen angel, the man everyone had written off, standing in a Crystal Palace kit and looking like a man who had something to prove.

The reaction was different to the Navas one. The Navas reaction had been pure shock. The Pato reaction was something more complicated. The football world had an opinion about Pato.

Everyone had an opinion about Pato. Half the comments were variations of absolute steal. The other half were variations of this is a joke, right? Gary Lineker tweeted a single question mark.

Jamie Carragher went on Sky Sports News and said, with genuine bewilderment in his voice, that he had no idea what Danny Walsh was building at Crystal Palace but he was starting to think it might be either genius or catastrophe and he genuinely could not tell which.

Then Bojan. And that was when the internet truly lost its mind.

Bojan Krkic.

The boy who was supposed to be the next Messi. The Barcelona prodigy who had never reached the heights everyone had predicted.

The player who had drifted through loan spells and short contracts and quiet disappointments and ended up at Stoke City, of all places, playing Championship football on loan in Spain.

Two million pounds. Crystal Palace had signed Bojan Krkic for two million pounds. The hashtag #WhatIsDannyBuilding hit the trending list within minutes of the announcement going up. It was not just in England.

It was worldwide. Football Twitter, which had been watching the Palace summer with a mixture of amusement and curiosity, had now fully committed to the story. This was not a transfer window anymore. This was a television series.

In the classroom, the afternoon session had long since abandoned any pretence of continuing. The instructor had given up trying to hold the room’s attention around the time the Pato announcement went up.

My course-mates, men in their forties and fifties, former professionals, experienced coaches who had spent their careers in the lower leagues and the academies and the backroom staff of clubs that never made the headlines, were all on their phones.

Every single one of them. Some were reading. Some were watching the announcement videos. Some were just staring at their screens with the particular expression of people who have encountered something they do not have the vocabulary to describe.

A man named Terry, who had played over three hundred games in the Championship and was now coaching at a League Two club, leaned across the aisle and looked at me with wide eyes. "Pato," he said. Just the one word. Like it explained everything and nothing at the same time.

"Pato," I confirmed.

He sat back in his chair. Stared at the ceiling. "Right," he said slowly. "Right."

Another man, a former goalkeeper who had spent fifteen years as a number two at various clubs and had the quiet, philosophical manner of someone who had spent a lot of time standing in the cold watching other people make mistakes, leaned forward from the row behind me.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Go ahead," I said.

"What is the plan?" he said. "Like, genuinely. What is the actual plan?"

"Win football matches," I said.

He looked at me for a long moment. "With Navas, Pato, and Bojan," he said.

"Among others," I said.

He sat back. He looked at the man beside him. The man beside him shrugged. Neither of them said anything else.

Dave had turned around in his seat and was watching me with the expression of a man who had been wrong about something and was trying to work out exactly when and how it had happened.

He had warned me about recklessness two days ago. He had told me the Premier League was unforgiving. He had told me that potential was not enough. All of that was still true. None of it had changed. But something else had changed.

The conversation had shifted. The narrative had shifted. Two days ago, the question was whether Danny Walsh had lost his mind.

Tonight, the question was something more interesting. Something that the whole football world was now asking, from the pundits on Sky Sports to the fans on the forums to the former professionals sitting in a lecture hall at St. George’s Park.

Dave leaned forward. He looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, simply and quietly, "I have absolutely no idea what you are doing."

I smiled. Picked up my coffee. Went back to my notes.

The gambles had been made. The dice had been rolled. And now the whole world was watching to see how they would land.

***

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