I approached Mitch after the session while the cones were still in my hand. I waited, letting him catch a breath, then tapped his shoulder.

  “Got a minute?” I asked.

  He looked over, hands on hips, surveying the empty pitch. “Alright, shoot. What’ve you got?”

  I set the cones down carefully. “Portishead are bottom of the table and sloppy defensively, especially wide. Their center-backs aren’t in sync; one steps too soon and the other’s drifting. You cross early, you can force turnovers or open space in the box.”

  Mitch nodded, gesturing vaguely at the pitch as if to say, “Keep going, but keep it brief.”

  “Our problem,” I continued, “is speed. Our forwards aren’t exactly lightning. But we can use surprise runs. McAteer’s the paciest striker. If he times his runs off the back, early crosses could exploit the gaps before their defenders settle. Disorganization is their strongest weakness.”

  Mitch tapped his chin, thoughtful. “And the rest?”

  “Midfield needs to keep the tempo high,” I said. “Push the ball early and force decisions before they’re set. Palmer or even Reeves should ping one in if they see the gap. If we overthink it or slow down, their chaos evaporates. But if we act fast, we can create multiple overloads. Think fast balls and early delivery, McAteer splitting them before they realize what’s happening.”

  I’d even managed to do some live assessment of the players from watching the blurry clips of them getting battered by Weymouth (currently ranked 2nd) and Taunton Town (currently ranked 8th). Their central pair, McConnaugh and Pinout, didn’t seem to have good Teamwork, hovering at about 50 (plus and minus 30, of course), and Pinout just looked super sluggish like he had glue underneath his feet (his Pace was 40 ± 30). I wanted to scan their decision-making too using my already unlocked attribute reader, but it turned out (and I’d only found out about it on Tuesday) that I couldn’t actually read a player’s attribute through video clips of them. I found that weird, but maybe FMSim was just looking for more excuses to rob me of my hard-earned XPoints. So live assessment was my next best bet, of course. Also around 60 for McConnaugh and 70 for Pinout. Better, but very, very far from infallible.

  Mitch gave a curt nod. “Sounds . . . manageable. You’ve got this sketched out properly?”

  I pulled out the tablet and swiped to the video section I’d carefully cropped out with a scuffed online tool, highlighting their defensive misalignments from the last three matches. “Here. See how the right-back drifts late? Here, the CBs lose each other on overlapping runs. If we time it, McAteer can exploit these exact pockets. Just need the rest to commit early, cross early, and catch them off-guard.”

  Mitch watched the clip once more, then again, slower this time. He didn’t hand the tablet back just yet, but lingered a few seconds more.

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying I’m not binning what we’ve been building for it,” he said eventually.

  I frowned. “McAteer’s pace—”

  “—is useful,” Mitch cut in, “when everyone else knows where the second ball’s going.” He finally looked up at me. “Last game, every time we went early, we had no one underneath it. Ball goes in, flick-on happens, and then it’s their midfielder picking it up, not ours.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  He tapped the screen with one finger. “That’s why Okafor and Milner are higher now.” He said it like it was his idea, not mine. “Long ball, fight for it, recycle, then we play. We’ve spent two weeks drilling the return-to-midfield pattern. Two. Weeks.”

  I didn’t argue. We’d already talked about changes.

  Then Mitch handed me my tablet back before making a concession. “Second half, when their legs go, when their shape starts cheating. That’s when McAteer hurts them.”

  That was good enough, for now.

  “Alright,” I said finally. “We play our football first.”

  Mitch nodded, already half-turned away. “Exactly. Let them prove they can do it. Then, if we need to break glass—” He glanced back with a diplomatic grin. “—we’ve got your chaos merchant ready.”

  I watched him walk off, knowing there was no convincing him. That’s what separates a tactician from a coach, he said.

  Adaptation would come later.

  First, we’d see if our football was actually good enough.

  Thursday came faster than it had any right to.

  Southgate House rose out of the street like it had no intention of acknowledging me. All glass and pale stone, sharp lines and soft lighting, the kind of building that didn’t creak or apologise for itself. It just stood there, certain.

  I stopped at the bottom of the steps and checked my reflection in the glass.

  I was wearing the best jacket I owned, clean shoes, and had my shirt ironed twice because the first pass hadn’t, well, passed. Business casual, as instructed.

  Still, the fit felt borrowed.

  People were filtering in around me, moving like the building had been designed with their gait in mind. I adjusted my collar once, then forced my hands to drop back to my sides.

  I had to skip the youth session for this, and I didn’t know if Mitch had been upset because he didn’t really show any emotion when I’d told him. It better be worth it.

  So I took a breath, stepped forward, and walked into Southgate House—

  “Jamie.”

  I knew the voice well enough that my brain tried to reject it before my body reacted. So I stopped and turned to see, Maisie stood a few steps back from the entrance, wrapping a hand around a paper coffee cup. She was wearing a long checkered dress that somehow landed on the right side of professional, structured enough for glass and stone and intentional enough to look like a choice rather than a compromise. Her hair was cut shorter, thicker at the front, curled at the end, and her bangs fell just low enough to soften her eyes further than they already were. It made her look younger somehow, or maybe just less guarded. It suited her rounder face in a way I hadn’t realized anything ever could.

  “Oh,” I said. “You’re—”

  “Here. Yes. Surprise.”

  “I didn’t realize you would be. I mean, your text—”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t be. I said where it was and what not to wear.” She took a sip of her coffee, watching me over the rim like she was deciding whether to make things easy or interesting. “I’m on the panel,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Marketing and fan engagement. Commercial alignment, technically.” She rolled her eyes a little at that last part. “I translate football into something sponsors can put their logo on.”

  That tracked. Maisie had always been good at taking messy things and making them legible without killing them entirely, or the other way around. I hadn’t pegged her for the talking and mingling type, though. She used to avoid that whenever possible. Whatever made dough, I guess.

  She nodded toward the doors. “Come on. We’ll be late if we keep loitering.”

  As we walked, my brain finally caught up to itself. If she’d wanted distance, she could’ve just gone quiet. Unless, of course, this was some elaborate, slow-burn act of revenge.

  This could go well, I thought. And I really needed this to go well: it was two foundational nodes. This would offer me greater progress than anything that had happened on the pitch so far.

  This could go well. Or this could go really, really badly.

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