Chapter 947 - 947: Am I Any Good?

I turned the phone back over at Stoke, because Dougie had said Stoke, and opened the document.

It was 2 pages. The first was a letter on Bayern Munich paper, signed by a director whose name I knew from the draw in Monaco in August. The second was a number.

25 million euros for Michael Olise, rising with appearances. A sell-on. A line at the bottom about the player's education that somebody had clearly been told to put in.

I read it twice and rang Dougie.

I told him no. He had told them no at 10 to 11. He had wanted it past my eyes first, because I am the manager, and he said so in about that many words.

Would they come back? In the summer, he said, with more, and by then they would have spoken to somebody near the boy. Somebody always does.

"Tell him before a newspaper does," Dougie said, and a kettle went on at his end.

The coach went on south. Sakho had his forehead on the window. Kovačić was asleep with his mouth open, and Konaté had his headphones on and was nodding at something with his eyes shut.

Michael Olise was not on that coach. He was 17, at home in his own bed, and he had signed his first professional contract 36 hours earlier with his mother's hands folded on the desk beside him.

I told him at 9 on Thursday in Gary Issott's office, with Gary there. Gary has signed every form that boy has ever put his name to.

I put the 2 pages on the desk the right way up and let him read them. He read the number and nothing moved in his face. He read the line about education and frowned at it.

Had they watched him against Burton, he wanted to know. Probably, I said. They watch everything.

He pushed the pages back across the desk with 1 finger.

"Am I playing Saturday?"

I told him he was starting.

"Then can I go," Michael Olise said, "because Nya has the bibs and he never gives me a blue 1."

Gary watched him go down the corridor and kept watching after the door had shut. In 20 years, he said, he had known 3 boys who did not ask how much. 2 of them were still in the game. He put the pages in a drawer and locked it.

Clk.

By 2 o'clock the canteen television had it in yellow letters across the bottom.

SKY SOURCES: BAYERN MUNICH BID FOR CRYSTAL PALACE TEENAGER MICHAEL OLISE REJECTED.

Nathan gave the 3 papers who rang 5 words, the player is not for sale, and nothing else to anybody. Olise was eating when it came up. He looked at it, went back to his pasta, and asked Kirby for the salt.

Marcus had a sheet on the table in Dougie's office at 3, and it was the only piece of paper in the room.

Every player in the building under 23, first team and under 23s together. Minutes this season, every competition. How many of those minutes had been against men. Where each of them stood in the queue for his position, counted from the top.

There were 34 names. Marcus had ruled a line across the sheet 2 thirds of the way down.

Under the 34, in pen, he had added a 35th who was not in the building. Rodrygo, Santos. 2018: 58 matches, 12 goals. Every minute against men. It was the longest row on the page.

"Above the line, they play," he said. "Below it, nothing has happened since August and nothing is going to happen before May. I have not written who should go anywhere. That is not my sheet."

Dougie had the window board behind him. IN still had nothing under it. OUT had 1 line in green: Semenyo, Bristol City, loan, to May.

Michael Cooke had his cap on his knee. Gary Issott had a pen and no paper. Michael Steele stood by the window, because Steele does not sit in meetings. Sarah had the UEFA folder flat on her lap with her hand on it.

I put my finger on the line and asked who was under it that wanted to play.

"All of them," Cooke said.

He went down them without looking at the sheet. A centre half from Thornton Heath, 19, 6 foot 3, who had played every minute of the under 23s season and 0 against men.

A winger from Streatham who could go past anybody in his age group and had never been asked to go past a man of 30 with a mortgage.

A holding midfielder of 20 who had trained at Beckenham every day since August without a mark against his name. He had sat on 4 first team benches and come off none of them.

Clubs had rung him about all 3 since November. Scotland. League Two. The National League South. He had said not yet to every 1 of them, because nobody had told him it was allowed.

I told him it was allowed. He wrote 3 dates on his sheet.

Then Steele, from the window.

"Fletcher."

Ryan Fletcher came through the door at Beckenham at 10 years old and has never left it. He is on the UEFA list as our third goalkeeper, and he has played 0 minutes of senior football in his life. Every afternoon he takes crosses on pitch 3 with Krul and shots from Bray's queue, and every Saturday he watches.

Steele wanted him at Bromley until May. National League, 3 miles up the road, men who would put him on his back from every corner, and Tuesday nights when Steele could be stood behind that goal by 7.

Sarah lifted her hand off the folder.

"Then we have no third goalkeeper for Madrid."

Nobody said anything. She opened the folder.

UEFA want 3 goalkeepers across both lists, she said, and Ryan was the third. If he was at Bromley in February he was not ours to name. From the round of 16 a club can register up to 3 new players, and the deadline is the 1st of February.

I said Wayne's name.

"Wayne goes on List A." She turned a page and looked up. "And List A has 25 names on it, and you picked all 25 in August. Somebody comes off."

Dougie had his notebook open on the desk. Rodrygo is 18 on Wednesday, he said, and left it there. Sarah looked down at her 25 and then up at me, and her pen did not move.

The boy was at Teresópolis with Brazil's under 20s until the 13th, and in Chile for the South American championship after that. After that he was Santos's again, until May. That was what we had all signed in the summer, and I said so.

I told her not today.

"Not today." She shut it. "If you have not done it by the 31st, it will be on your desk with a pen."

Steele had turned round from the window for the first time. Hennessey would want to know, he said. I told him to tell Wayne on Monday himself. He turned back to the window.

That left the 2 I had been putting off since Monday.

Tyrick Mitchell is 19. He started at Huddersfield in September and against Fulham on Sunday, and he has played every round of the Carabao Cup.

On Sunday he went past Cyrus Christie twice in a half and put a ball across the box that Zaha should have had. He is behind Chilwell and Hakimi, who are 22 and 20.

Sarah did not want him going. He was the only other left back in the building if Ben did an ankle in February, and Achraf had already played every minute Rebecca would allow him. She said all of that without raising her voice.

She was right, and so was Marcus's line. Who loses if he stays? Mitchell does, by May, sat behind 2 men who are not going anywhere. Who loses if he goes? I do, if Chilwell twists something on a Saturday in February.

"After the semi-final," I said. "Both legs. He plays the Etihad and he plays Wembley, and then he goes, on the 24th."

Sarah wrote TM 24/1 in the margin and put a box round it. Dougie had the club already. Portsmouth, League One, every Saturday and the Tuesdays.

The last name I said myself, and Michael Cooke put his cap back on.

Connor Blake is 19. He has scored at Huddersfield, at Ashton Gate, against Leicester at Wembley and against Burton, and he has played 7 times in 5 months.

Benteke is first. Pato has scored at Wembley. Ellis Cartwright is on the UEFA list and Blake is not. Every week Blake trains as if Saturday is coming, and most weeks it does not come.

Tony Pulis had rung Dougie on Tuesday. He had watched the boy at the Riverside in October and he wanted him until the end of the season. He would play him every week and he would make him head every ball that came near him.

Dougie read the last bit off his notebook, the 1 from 2016. The boy had taken the 3rd penalty in front of the Boro end with 2 men in his ear, Pulis said, and had not looked at either of them.

After the semi, I said. Same as Tyrick. Cooke asked who was telling him. I said I was.

Before Cooke went I asked him for 1 more thing, and he had already done it. He turned his sheet round. Under every name going out he had written a name from our building, and under that a column of dates.

Every match they play, somebody from here is in the stand.

He had put himself down for most of them.

I told Connor Blake on Friday morning in the analysts' room with the blinds up, because I did not want it to look like a funeral.

He listened to all of it. Then he asked the question he asked me in August.

"Am I any good?"

I told him Pulis thought he was, and was going to play him 20 times.

"I asked you."

So I told him. 7 matches for me in 5 months. 20 at the Riverside in 4, against men of 32 who had never heard of him and would not care. He would come back better or he would come back the same, and either way I would pick from what I saw in May.

He looked at the screen. It was off.

When did he go? After the semi, I said, and he would play in it, and he would start on Saturday.

He got up and pushed the chair back under the desk, square, the way Deano likes them left.

"I am not going to Middlesbrough to come back the same," Connor Blake said, and went to the gym.