Of course. Of course the system thought now was the moment to congratulate me on inventing a formation that had no right to exist. I batted the notifications away before my brain could melt.

  Palmer immediately tried to cut inside, apparently convinced that putting him on the right meant I wanted him doing winger things. He took two touches, met a fullback who had already clocked his lack of pace, and the move died with a sad little sideways pass.

  “Palmer,” I called. “No. Don’t chase the box.”

  He looked back at me, hands out, palms up. Then why am I here?

  “Drop,” I said, pointing. “Deeper. You’re not beating him on the outside. Just set your feet and pour it in.”

  “From there?” he shouted back.

  “Yes,” I said. “Early crosses from this side. Make them turn.”

  Palmer liked tidy ideas. This wasn’t one. This was ugly volume.

  But when the ball came back to him again, he didn’t try to skin the fullback. He took one touch, opened his body, and clipped it in first time.

  Palmer also liked not arguing.

  The lad wasn’t fast, he wasn’t tricky, and he’d probably never been this high up on this side of the pitch in his entire depressing existence as a fullback, but he could pass. He was the best crosser this team had and probably amongst the best in this division.

  The plan was simple in theory and financially ruinous in practice:

  Get the ball. Never lose the ball. Bulldoze through midfield. Score.

  Roberts, all six-foot-something of him, would drift into the half-space and crash the box. Langley was also reasonably tall and could drop and surge in alternating waves, giving us someone who could recycle play back into the left-leaning four-man midfield blob. And every time Plymouth forced us sideways, we’d go back to Palmer who stood at that weird right-wing-but-not-right-wing position to ping the ball in again.

  The moment we lost the ball in midfield, we’d probably lose the game. But with so many attackers and so few midfielders, this was our one golden window to pretend we were Manchester City. Hoard it like a dragon hoards gold. Nobody in their attack beside Schwarzer tracked back anyway.

  FMSim then gave me a quest.

  That was an excellent skill, but . . .

  At Rank I, the system helpfully clarified that ‘boost’ was a generous term. Really, all it did was soften the stupidity of putting someone out of position. A 10% bump barely clawed back half the penalty on a good day. On a bad one, it just meant the poor sod played like a slightly less confused version of themselves rather than a tourist who’d wandered into the wrong sport.

  Lucky for me, my plan didn’t immediately implode.

  The moment Ulrich scythed through Schwarzer and won the ball, we reset. Milner shuffled it wide, and the ball eventually worked its way out to Palmer, stationed in that bizarre right-wing limbo I’d shoved him into, forty yards from goal with a defender jogging lazily toward him.

  He hit an early cross. Roberts charged in, but he didn’t win the header. Plymouth’s centre-back rose higher, met it first, and nodded it straight back into the exact area we wanted.

  A perfect second-ball zone.

  Okafor arrived first, obviously. He cushioned it with his chest and stabbed a pass back into Milner. Milner tapped it sideways to Ulrich. Ulrich took a touch that could reasonably be classified as a war crime, but he kept it then passed it back to Okafor as fast as he could.

  Play a through ball, you! Play a proper through ball!

  He . . . passed back. There were too many defenders to risk it. Palmer swung in the exact same early cross. Roberts crashed in again. Their centre-back won the header again. And the ball dropped—again—right into that perfect second-ball pocket we were gambling our entire existence on.

  We kept the ball, again. And produced absolutely nothing, again.

  Our circulation was neat-ish but about as threatening as a slightly annoyed librarian, all sideways and backwards passes. With Rothschild gone, the entire right side was sterile.

  The more we passed, the more one horrifying truth dug itself. This might be it. This shapeless, lumbering, possession-for-the-sake-of-it blob. This was the whole plan.

  Then the plan changed.

  Mitch suddenly bellowed “SWORDFISH!”, one of those shout-coded commands teams invent in preseason and use twice a year.

  I wasn’t in on that. Whatever it was, everyone else understood it immediately.

  Because the next possession we got, Langley didn’t recycle it. He just hit it low and ugly straight at their packed box.

  At first I thought we’d panicked again. But then Okafor did the same thing. And Milner. And Roberts.

  Ah, I see it now. They weren’t trying to score.

  They were trying to force ricochets. Smash a shot into a shins-and-elbows lottery machine and pray it spat out a set piece. This was Sunday League tactics, but I wasn’t complaining. All else had failed.

  It actually worked once.

  Roberts bulldozed his way across the top of the box, swung his boot, and unleashed a shot so violently mis-hit it became a perfect chaos-generator. It pinged off the first defender, then the second, then rolled out for a corner.

  Okafor whipped it in, flat, vicious, not so much a cross as a guided missile aimed at the nearest cluster of limbs.

  As usual, Plymouth was really not great when it came to managing chaos inside the box.

  Someone headed it. Someone else headed that header. Roberts tried to volley something that wasn’t technically there. The ball pinballed through a forest of shins and complaints and then spat itself out toward the edge of the box, right into the one patch of grass Plymouth had collectively decided was nobody’s responsibility because our midfielders had all dragged them closer to the left.

  Their midfielders were too busy shoving each other, marking shadows near the left channel. Their defenders were glued to Roberts like he was the last life raft on the Titanic. Nobody tracked the edge.

  Nobody tracked Palmer, who had wandered up for the corner. And because the universe sometimes hands out miracles disguised as tactical disasters, the ball rolled to him. He was twenty-something yards out, with more space in front of him than he’d seen all season.

  If he’d been right-footed, he would’ve taken a touch, settled it, and thought about life. Earlier, Dom sucked at finishing at that exact spot because he’d always taken an extra touch.

  But Palmer wasn’t right-footed. He was gloriously, uncompromisingly left-footed on the right side of the pitch.

  “Go for it!” I screamed.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He hit it first time.

  The stadium inhaled all at once. The ball kissed the inside of the far post like it had been magnetized.

  Goal.

  I could only stare at Palmer, who was standing there in mild disbelief, as if he’d just accidentally summoned the moon out of the sky.

  I . . . I didn’t plan that.

  Putting Palmer on the right was supposed to be about early crosses, not long-range first-time left-footed artillery. But you know what they say. You have to be good to get lucky. I’d put Palmer on the right. I’d gladly take credit for that.

  We exploded in the craziest celebration across the pitch, and Plymouth were not happy. Parron’s face was a masterclass in simmering rage. One goal, one assist . . . sure. But he’d had a dozen opportunities he’d binned because he couldn’t resist doing his solo-hero thing. I wanted to mock him and joined in on the celebration, but I knew I had better things to do.

  I knew I’d cost my team a point if I stayed out there. I didn’t have the energy to track Parron and the remaining chaos.

  So I held up two fingers and rotated them in a small circle, the universal sign when you want to be subbed out.

  “Mansfield,” I gasped. “Get him in.”

  Mansfield was already at the chalk, ready. I tapped his hand. His tap back was sharp, aggressive, hungry for action.

  I patted him on the back. “Your time now. Lock Parron up.” Then he sprinted inside like a leopard, but in slo-mo.

  We never let up.

  Four extra minutes were what was given. Even at 90+3, even with legs turning to fog and logic leaking out of our ears, we kept Plymouth pinned in. The ball went wide, came back, went inside, came back again—endless, useless circulation that looked like possession but felt like a slow-motion cry for help.

  Mitch was vibrating on the touchline, red in the face, one hand cupped around his mouth like a foghorn. “REF! WE STILL GOT A MINUTE! DON’T YOU DARE BLOW THE DAMN WHISTLE!” he yelled.

  I sat down on my seat, pulling my hood over me. The lads still pushed forward, but the spark was gone. Roberts was heaving like a malfunctioning industrial fan. Langley’s legs were noodles. Milner and Okafor kept passing to each other like kids passing a bomb they didn’t want exploding in their hands.

  They didn’t want to lose the ball. They didn’t want to risk anything.

  And that microscopic shift in intention—the fear—Plymouth smelled it. Of course they did. They were fourth in the league, fighting for promotion. A draw here might as well have been a funeral dirge for their season.

  So Parron, who had spent eighty-nine previous minutes refusing to track back on religious principle, suddenly came flying in like a man reborn. Schwarzer, too, snarling, dripping with fury, hungry for redemption. They pressed Milner and Okafor in tandem. Okafor tried to pivot out. Schwarzer body-checked him.

  Milner got the ricochet but took one touch too many. Parron was already on him, kicking, clawing. He wrestled it off us clean; no foul given, obviously.

  My hands went to my head. Mitch’s reaction? “Oh NOW you let the game run?!” he screamed. “NINETY-FIVE, REF! WHY ARE WE STILL HERE? WHERE’S THE BLOODY WHISTLE?”

  Parron burst free with the kind of speed I saw in his highlight reels. He shrugged off Milner like baggage fees, knocked Okafor aside with a hip, and suddenly there was nothing but twenty yards of open grass and Mansfield between him and eternal Plymouth hero status.

  There you go, Mansfield. Your moment.

  Mansfield backpedalled. He wasn’t the worst defender, just catastrophically unsuited to this situation. He wasn’t nervous. God, I wished he were. Nervous players hold back a little. Nervous players hesitate, reassess, stay on their feet.

  Mansfield had the opposite problem. He believed in every decision he made, even the terrible ones.

  Parron shaped to cut inside.

  Mansfield lunged.

  I bit down on my thumb so hard it hurt.

  Parron didn’t even need skill; he just hopped over the challenge like he was stepping over a sleeping dog. Now it was just him, clean through, with the whole season swinging on his next touch.

  I clutched my head.

  Yet, Mansfield sprang up and charged.

  Parron looked over his shoulder, surprised to see the same idiot he’d just beaten already back on him.

  Yes. David. Just stop him and I’ll let you play the next match. Prove it to the gaffer.

  Then Mansfield arrived . . . with Shaolin Soccer martial arts.

  He flew in so hard his brain must’ve flown off somewhere, because the instant he came into contact, Parron fucking ricocheted into the air. The movement defied physics. His legs went and done the Morse code. One second he was lining up the shot, the next he was doing a triple-axis corkscrew that would’ve scored at the Olympics if the judges weren’t too busy screaming.

  The crowd booed. The red card came out so fast it left a visible blur trail.

  I clutched my head harder.

  No! I thought the idiot ref left his red at home?

  A straight red! The fucking muppets, both of them! Now Mansfield would be out for three games, and I would have to play in his spot.

  Mansfield trudged off the pitch, shrugging the whole time, as Mitch stared at him like he was going to ascend into the stratosphere.

  And Parron was still rolling. He did another rotation just to make sure.

  Mansfield took the seat next to me and said nothing. The physio jogged onto the pitch, already pulling the magic spray out of his bag, but before he could even kneel, Parron popped upright like he’d been spring-loaded. Parron stretched both hamstrings then did a couple of jaunty knee lifts. Knee lifts. The same knees that had apparently been shattered by Mansfield’s Mortal Kombat fatality thirty seconds ago. To rub it all in, the same crowd who’d booed Mansfield earlier suddenly became a bunch of mutes witnessing that obvious scam.

  The ref placed the ball at the edge of the box. Parron strutted over, bent down, adjusted the ball. Literally everyone was inside the penalty area now. Then he took seven steps back. Classic ‘watch this lads, I’m him’ behavior.

  Everyone crowded into the box, even centre-backs, their left backs, their midfielders. I swear one of the stewards was in there too.

  Which made things extra hellish for Holmes. Poor guy couldn’t see a thing, just a forest of legs and torsos and Kowalski’s enormous forehead blocking the near post.

  I held my breath.

  Next to me, Mansfield had his face buried so deep into his hands he might’ve been trying to tunnel to safety.

  Parron inhaled dramatically. Then he ran up and whipped his foot through the ball.

  The curve was disgusting. It sailed over the one poor sod who jumped too early. It sailed up and across and dipped at the perfect second.

  Holmes wasn’t getting to it.

  The ball kissed the top corner. It smacked the crossbar so hard the whole goalframe shook like it owed someone money.

  The ball bounced sky-high, spun out behind the goal . . .

  . . . and the ref finally blew the whistle.

  My soul left my body.

  Final Result: Plymouth 2 - 2 Hungerford

  “WE DID IT!” Mitch came out of nowhere and shook me so hard my vision rattled.

  “It’s a draw,” I wheezed.

  “WE DID IT!” he repeated, louder.

  Everyone else hugged each other, or at least I thought they were hugging, as my vision was still fisheye-warping like a GoPro strapped to a hyperactive Labrador. The only one who’d really gone crazy was Mitch, which was understandable. As tight as that game was, it was far from the most important game or the season for us.

  Mansfield lifted his head at last. “Did . . . did he miss?”

  “He did,” I said.

  Mansfield let out a noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh and leaned back, whispering a prayer to whatever footballing deity tolerated idiots.

  That was when Parron wandered over.

  Of course he did.

  He stopped in front of us. Up close, he smelled like sweat and self-importance.

  I pushed myself up from the seat and stuck out a hand. “Good game, lad. Hell of a strike. Looking forward to the next one.”

  Parron looked at my hand then laughed. “Celebrating a draw? That’s proper relegation mentality, that.”

  I was about to say something back, but he’d already halfway through turning away.

  “We’ll be in the playoffs at least,” he said. “You won’t. So enjoy this. Enjoy our next fixture too.” He took two steps, then glanced back over his shoulder, smiling like a man delivering a final line in a bad action movie. “Because there won’t be any more after that.”

  And then he walked off, just like that. I stood there for a second, hand still half-extended, then slowly let it drop. “. . . Oh, now he’s being a dramatic little tosser,” I muttered.

  But Parron was right. We didn’t deserve this draw. I knew we’d been immensely lucky: the ref was a proper idiot, two fluke goals, them missing chances after chances. We had so much to fix.

  But fine.

  I tapped Mitch back on the shoulder, and jogged over to hi-five all the lads on the field.

  Right now, we live.