I was back to staring at the numbers on my spreadsheet.
The curse turned football into something like chess. Chess with living pieces that had strengths and weaknesses. A manager who put the right piece in the right place and moved them at the right time was going to outperform one who didn't, but although my abilities were incredible, I didn't have as many pieces as my opponents.
My weekly wage budget was £60,000 per week.
Oxford United's budget was £200,000 per week and while they had the deepest pockets in the league, they weren't outliers. Ten clubs had more than double my spending power.
They were buying bishops, knights, and rooks.
I could only afford pawns, and I was desperately pushing them across the chess board so they would turn into high-value pieces. I believed there was a quagmire halfway across the board, though. A swamp. The pawns that were furthest ahead were improving more slowly because we were hitting a training cap. It wasn't a hard cap - players were still getting better. But it was clear that there was a barrier of some sort.
I needed to raise money to put planks over the swamps, tear down the walls, build bridges, whichever metaphor you want to go with.
There was a knock on the door and as it opened, I partially shut the laptop. When I saw it was Sandra, I relaxed.
She looked pretty depressed. "Sorry, Max. I really think I'm coming down with something."
"Babies are little germ factories, aren't they?"
"I hate being sick."
"Would you mind opening the door wider and stepping back a few inches? There we go. Did you do the presser?"
"Yeah," she said. I had promoted her to be my co-manager because she deserved it and she would help power us forward to new heights. She was a brilliant coach, a good tactician, she was daring, and she kept me in check. There were plenty of other benefits. For example, I was optimistic that having a co-manager would help me hack the curse in certain specific ways. The benefit I was most happy about, though, was that I wouldn't have to talk to the media before or after matches ever again.
"Did you say anything cool or funny?"
"No. Just said we battled hard and gave it our all for ninety minutes and Crawley made things tough for us. I hyped Lee. Did you see his passing stats? They were off the charts."
"Did you mention TJ?"
"No."
I smiled. "He's not as bad as you think. Anyway, he likes you. He thinks you're amazing."
"I can't stop him liking me," sniffed Sandra. "It's a free country."
I laughed. TJ was good-looking and liked to invite beautiful women to his house where he would cook for them and play his acoustic guitar and sing Portuguese ballads with his eyes closed. That kind of thing doesn't always go down well in England. "I'm giving you some time off," I said. "Colin and Peter will run training this week and I'll do Barnsley this weekend, okay? You stay in bed and take Lemsip. After that, it's Doncaster in the Vans Trophy and Sutton in the FA Cup. Two lower league teams. If we can't beat those, I'll quit and live up a tree or something. What I'm saying is, there's no hurry to come back. Oh, hey! Good timing on being ill. That's actually very considerate."
"But you hate Sutton. You'll smash them up and I want to see it."
"I don't give a shit about Sutton, Sandra. They're yesterday's villains. We'll beat them and we'll already have forgotten that match on the drive home. No, get yourself tucked into bed, get Aiden to bring you soup - you know what? How many kitchens does this club own now? I'll get them all pumping out soup. Would you prefer one huge vat of your favourite or twenty little sample cups of different flavours? Ah, Brooke's always telling me not to micromanage everything and she's right. My new PA will sort it all out."
Sandra made a surprised face. "You hired a personal assistant? When? We've been telling you for years that you need one."
"I don't need one, Sandra, but I'm the face of Soccer Supremo and BoshCard. I'm courted by superagents and superclubs. I'm kind of a big deal and someone like me should have a personal assistant."
Sandra frowned while her eyes moved slowly from left to right. Her face lit up. "Got it. You found someone incredibly beautiful who's willing to follow you around and laugh at your jokes. Does Emma know about this?"