Up close, Manning wasn’t quick. His stride was long and economical, more glide than burst, and a strong presence right beside him, with tight marking, could lock him dead for good. This was the exact kind of game where you killed momentum, not chased it. Two-nil up, crowd dead, opposition rattled. This screamed for Ulrich. Put the destroyer on, let him sit in Manning’s shadow, snap at heels, foul if needed. Defend the lead, squeeze the life out of it, go home early.

  I would’ve done it in a heartbeat.

  Mitch didn’t.

  Either he was stubbornly committed to seeing his philosophy through, or he’d decided this was a convenient live-fire exercise to see whether I actually meant all that talk about managing my load. Possibly both.

  Which meant Manning got space. Worse, it wasn’t accidental. Petrovic had clearly been given instructions. He started drifting left, closer to Kowalski, dragging my natural reference point away from the middle and toward the far channel. Man’s avoiding me like I was a rat during the 1300s.

  I wasn’t going to get caught out of position. Not for that bait.

  “Milner!” I barked. “Drop five—no, ten! Screen him!” Milner glanced back, nodded, and did as told, retreating into the pocket just ahead of our centre-backs to try and mark Manning. On the board, it was the right adjustment. In reality, Milner wasn’t a natural defender. He chased space instead of sealing it, pressed bodies instead of lanes.

  Manning took advantage of it almost immediately.

  One touch to set, head up, then a simple slide down the left into Petrovic’s feet. Petrovic tried to pin Kowalski with his body, studs scraping as he looked to roll it inside to their winger, Abram, who was already darting into the box from the blind side.

  I read it early.

  The shot came first time, exactly where they wanted it—across the face, low, hopeful. I got there anyway. The ball slammed into my shin and ricocheted back out into the channel, stinging but clean. Not today.

  Abram threw both hands into the air and let out a groan loud enough to carry past the six-yard box. “Where the hell did they get this guy?”

  I gave him a thumbs up. I’d take the compliment.

  After that, it went quiet again. I was proud to claim that nothing they tried survived contact. Even with Manning floating loose, even with Milner chasing ghosts instead of cutting lanes, they couldn’t turn possession into anything that mattered. Every sequence died when they got to one of the back four players who were now sitting deeper. The only thing they could go for now were long shots, and they weren’t very good at it either.

  I kept stepping in. Intercept, release. Delay, shepherd, reset the line. The distances I’d drilled into them meant Portishead never found a seam. When they tried to force it wide, Palmer and Reeves shut the doors without fuss. It looked easy. That was the point.

  Maybe we looked so good because they were so poor. I didn’t care. Clean sheets didn’t come with asterisks.

  What mattered was that the line stayed tight, the block stayed compact, and nobody panicked when the ball bounced the wrong way. I took full ownership of this shape.

  Minutes bled off the clock, and soon, the hour mark loomed. Their wingers checked for runs that never came. Manning started gesturing, asking for options that just weren’t there.

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Kowalski jogged past me during a stoppage and gave me a sharp clap on the back, just once. “Keep playing like that,” he muttered, “and you won’t be with us much longer.”

  So I kept playing like that.

  Right on seventy, the board went up, exactly when my Stamina reached 42%, squarely in the red. I was cutting it close to making a mistake.

  As I passed Mitch, he clapped once and said, “Good shift,” like he’d just finished a satisfactory experiment. “Why don’t you take care of the defensive shape?”

  Boras was already peeling off his tracksuit.

  And, of course, that was the moment Mitch made the other change.

  Dom came off. Ulrich went on.

  I couldn’t help the look I gave him.

  So that was it, then. Seventy minutes exactly. Right on the line. Long enough to prove a point, short enough to remind me who actually made the decisions. Whether he meant well or was just being petty, I couldn’t tell. With Mitch, those two things often lived uncomfortably close together.

  With Dom gone and Ulrich sitting, the counter lost what little spark it had. No pace out wide, no sharp angles. It became simple, almost primitive. Win it, lump it toward Roberts, and hope the big man could pin the ball long enough for someone else to arrive with ideas. He usually could. That didn’t make it inspiring.

  Maybe that was why Ulrich hadn’t come on earlier. Killing the game also killed the transition.

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  Fine. Not my problem anymore.

  From the bench, I had a different job.

  That was huge. I checked my Formation Understanding of the basic 4-4-2, and it was already at 82% on Level 3. This would get it over the line towards level 4.

  And the understanding wasn’t just for show. I had checked the bonus beforehand.

  This would be great. Say, for example, Kowalski had a positioning stat of 99. At level 4, I could buff it up to 105. That would make a world of difference when the ball was bouncing loose in the box. We unfortunately never played a 4-4-2, but that was a problem for later.

  With Boras on and Ulrich sitting, we settled into a 4-1-4-1 out of possession, compact and unapologetic, the kind of shape that dared you to try something clever and then punished you for it. Portishead were still nominally a 4-3-3, but without width that scared anyone and without the legs to overload the middle, it looked more like a collection of ideas than a plan.

  I stepped to the technical area without thinking about it.

  “Line’s five deeper,” I called. “Don’t chase the winger! Pass him on. Ulrich, you anchor. Nothing through you.”

  Ulrich gave a short nod, already lunging. Good. He didn’t need diagrams.

  “Boras, Reeves—don’t step together. One goes, one holds. Talk.”

  When the winger tucked inside, I told Reeves to hold. When the fullback overlapped, I warned Boras early.

  I waited for the shout to sit down, but it didn’t come.

  Mitch stayed where he was, a step back from the line with hands in his pockets. He wasn’t calling distances or naming marks. He watched Portishead’s bench more than their winger, clocked the warm-ups, the glances toward the fourth official. When their left-sided midfielder started cheating higher, Mitch leaned toward Palmer and tapped his own temple. Second phase. Be ready. He shouted once at Roberts—not about pressing, but about time. “Draw the foul!” he barked, palms out. “Make them walk.” That was pure game management, nothing to do with shape and everything to do with minutes bleeding off the clock.

  This was it; the workflow. I handle the shape, he handles the game. We were clicking now.

  And we stayed that way.

  There were no heart-in-mouth moments where someone lost their runner and the whole thing threatened to unravel. Portishead moved the ball, yes, but it was sterile, pinging passes that padded stats and did nothing else.

  We finished the match with one defensive error, where Boras misjudged the header, and Portishead failed to convert.

  The whistle went at two–nil, and it felt exactly like it looked: comfortable and controlled. A win that never once flirted with being anything else.

  The lads were celebrating amongst themselves, already talking about how they’d tear the dressing room apart later—but that was a story for later.

  For now, there was only one thing on my mind.

  Had it worked?

  My last outing had netted me 72 EXP. Decent, but unremarkable. I wanted to see if all that planning had come to fruition.

  I waited.

  Then the number finally appeared.

  And it was a lot bigger than seventy-two.

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