Crawley's manager had worked out that everything we were doing was flowing through Lee, so he set a player to man-mark him. That's where a player - normally a hard-boiled defensive type - shadows a more creative one, follows him everywhere he goes, tries to stop him impacting the game.
I looked to the left and made eye contact with TJ, who was about fifteen yards away. "Do you mind?" I said.
He snarled and turned away, pumping his arm, trying to gee up his players.
"Rude," I said.
With a sigh, I shuffled Lee Contreras back five yards and the rest of the midfield forward as much as my powers would allow me. I kept Wibbers where he was and made him the playmaker.
Now when we got the ball, Crawley were primed to harass Lee, but we were bypassing his area of the pitch completely. With the extra space my tweaks provided, Wibbers ran amok. He was only 18 but he was powerful. First, he barged past two defenders and unleashed a thumping shot that the goalie batted away. Next Wibbers dribbled wide and pinged a gorgeous cross to Gabby that resulted in a top save. Then Wibbers crashed through a shoulder barge, hurdled a tackle, and when the goalie was expecting a thunderbolt, the talented little shit served up a delicate, spinning chip that sailed about a foot wide of the right-hand post.
Match rating 9 in five minutes of mayhem. Such raw talent was why I would never sell him. Not for less than fifty million.
Movement to my left caught my eye. TJ was bent over, screaming, having hurled a water bottle into the turf. The referee saw it, walked over, and showed him a yellow card. One more outburst like that and he would get sent off. I thought about going over there to be a catalyst for that particular process, but nah. He was a mate.
I watched as TJ undid his previous changes and went back to mere containment. It was all he could realistically do, given the players at his disposal. I gave TJ what I thought was a collegiate nod and thumbs up, but for some reason his temper flared. His assistant held him back until TJ threw his hands up to say he was calm. TJ dropped into the dugout and looked as sick as Sandra.
While pretending to give instructions verbally, I used my mental interface to restore Lee C to the playmaker role, and did what I could to make him pop on the data visualisations. To hammer home the point, when he did anything remotely cool, I turned to the subs behind me and pulled faces. "Wow! Did you see that?"
Lee finished with a match rating of 8 but it must have been a high 8. With that sudden explosion in his passing stats, he had probably blown up a few statistical models. Appeared on more than a few data analyst's radars. In his player profile was a section that detailed which clubs were interested in buying him. It was blank for now but with luck I would be able to get multiple clubs interested in his services and play them off against each other.
The final whistle rang out. Two-nil, a dominant and very professional performance, another small step on our epic journey from the bottom of English football to the top. I gave Lee Contreras a big hug and told him if he kept playing like that his next contract would be even better than mine, which was perfectly plausible. He smiled and said he'd felt great out there. "I haven't been on the ball that much since school! That was fun."
"Top man," I said. "Keep up the good work." I went to Sandra, but not too close. "Did you work it out?"
"Something with Lee," she said, turning over the pages in a notebook. "Making him a pivot or something. I didn't really get it. It was all very tidy but there was no goal threat from it except for when you unleashed Wibbers."
"Tell the media Lee was Player of the Match. He was the glue that bound us, the star that guided us. Get as poetic as you want."
"Oh," she said, because she understood the implication. She looked out onto the pitch, where Lee was hugging a Crawley player who had once been a teammate. "I like Lee. I don't want to see him go."
"No," I agreed. "But I do want to see him need a shovel to collect his wages. Uh, that's terrible. I want to see him sleep on a bed of cash. No, that's creepy."
"He's more of a Bitcoin bro."
"Who? Lee? I didn't know that." Sandra's role as day-to-day coach of the players meant she spent more time with them than I did. I cultivated a healthy distance from my employees, especially when they were infectious. "Oh, but that's perfect! Crawley Town are owned by Bitcoin bros. That's called synergy."
"You can't sell Lee to Crawley, Max. They've only got one good player."
I smiled. "But then they'll have two. That's called squad building and it's great fun. I think I'll go and do some right now."
"In your crevice?"
"In the Manager's Room, yes. Pop by after you do the media, will you?"