January Window (43 page)

‘Well, that’s a good start,’ I told Simon. ‘To be fair it was a pretty speculative shot. The Austrian kid was as surprised as we were when it went in.’

Simon’s Yorkshire sensibilities were much less forgiving than my own.

‘I think that minute’s silence sent our back four to sleep. The dozy cunts. I’m surprised their number ten didn’t read them a bedtime story while he was scoring their fucking goal.’

The match restarted and for a while our players kept on troubling the goalkeeper; the only problem was that it wasn’t their goalkeeper we were troubling but our own: a clumsy back heel by Gary Ferguson had Kenny Traynor sprinting across the penalty area to clear the ball with both shins before Kevin Nolan could pounce on it; and Xavier Pepe headed a parabolic West Ham corner that hit his own post and then almost rebounded off Ayrton Taylor’s head into the back of the net. When George McCartney lost West Ham’s ball, Nolan, as tenacious as a fox-terrier, won it back; and he kept on dropping deep, robbing Schuermans and Iñárritu, and sending long balls to Downing on the left. Nolan then combined with Mark Noble and lofted the ball straight up to Cole and Haider, both of whom had good attempts saved by Kenny Traynor. The rest of the time we were chasing our own tails and we could easily have been three goals down within twenty minutes.

Cole looked like a man much younger than his years; it was hard to believe that the player troubling our back four so relentlessly had started his career at Chelsea in 2001. With every minute that passed he seemed to grow in fitness and confidence, running at our defence with increasing purpose. But West Ham’s second goal was an absolute howler. Raphael Spiegel, the Hammers goalkeeper, rolled the ball out to Leo Chambers, who punted it up the pitch in the hope that Cole would run on to it; the ball fell just short of the penalty box in front of Kenny Traynor, who was so far off his line he might have been hiking back to Edinburgh. The ball bounced and probably Traynor expected it to rise to his chest; unfortunately for him and for us the ball kept on rising off the hard ground and when Kenny finally realised it was going to sail over his head like a balloon and started to scuttle back in pursuit it was too late. By the time Kenny caught the ball it was across the line; he already looked like a fool and his hurried retrieval of the ball and quick return to the right side of his goal line only made him look even more ridiculous. Leo Chambers had scored West Ham’s second from at least seventy yards.

‘Does that stupid Scots cunt think nobody noticed it was a fucking goal, or what?’ said Simon.

I groaned and buried my head in the collar of my coat in the hope that I might not hear the laughter of the West Ham fans or the curses of our own.

‘Kenny did everything but try to hide the ball up his fucking jersey,’ said Simon. ‘He must think he’s Paul bloody Daniels.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ I was beginning to detect the sour taste of disaster at the back of my mouth.

Cursing his own stupidity, Traynor booted the ball up the pitch in irritation, and it curled away into the stands.

‘He wasn’t so much off his line as out of his fucking mind,’ said Simon.

I jumped off my seat and walked to the edge of my technical area, intending to shout something at Traynor; but by the time I got there I realised the futility of doing so. I knew he was feeling like a cunt and my endorsement of an opinion now shared by sixty thousand people would hardly have helped the young Scotsman’s confidence. But nor did the referee, who proceeded to give him a yellow card for kicking the ball away; probably he was feeling guilty about the yellow card he’d given to Bruno Haider and was looking for an excuse to even the score. Referees are like that sometimes.

‘What the fuck?’ I yelled. ‘How is that a yellow card, you mad fucking idiot? Goalies are supposed to kick the ball away, you stupid cunt.’

The fourth official marched towards me, arms held wide, as if expecting me to run onto the pitch like some twat of a fan and collar the referee. And seeing this ‘incident’, the referee, Peter ‘Paedo’ Donnelly, came running towards us at a lick. A lay-preacher and former army sergeant, and easily the country’s highest profile referee, Donnelly had been the recent winner of an online poll for the Premier League’s worst referee – in the previous season he’d had the highest average number of yellow cards per game, 5.14. I should have minded my mouth, but I didn’t.

‘How is that a fucking card?’ I yelled again. ‘It can’t be for time-wasting. Look, the West Ham players are still off the pitch down there celebrating. The boy was just irritated with himself and put a bit more welly into the kick up the pitch than was normal. The wind caught it, probably. And if the yellow wasn’t for that then where’s the dissent? The cunt knows it’s a fucking goal. He’s not completely stupid.’

‘If you don’t mind your language, I shall cite you for dissent,’ said Donnelly, ‘and then send you to sit in the stands. Under the special circumstances in which this match is being played I’m being lenient with you, Mr Manson. Next time it’ll be different. Okay?’

I turned away angrily and sat down.

‘I hate that fucking man,’ said Simon. ‘Thinks he’s still in the fucking army, so he does.’

‘Bastard.’

‘From now on you’d better watch your language, boss. He’s got your card marked. Nothing he likes better than to make an example of people who use profanity, which is what he calls swearing. Thinks it’s the curse of the modern game. Or at least that’s what he told Alan Brazil on TalkSPORT the other week. The cunt.’

I wasn’t too worried; not yet. We gave Raphael Spiegel a scare when Ayrton Taylor hit the post from fifteen yards; and Jimmy Ribbans ran through onto a clever chip from Iñárritu, but with only Spiegel to beat he was adjudged offside, when the replay clearly showed this was not the case. Besides, League Cup games are often high-scoring fixtures – who could forget Arsenal’s 6–3 victory over Liverpool in the 2006/2007 quarter finals? – and I figured we could easily overturn a two-goal deficit.

At least I did until just before half time when West Ham scored their third. After a dubious foul and another yellow card, this time given against Iñárritu for a trip on Leo Chambers, Cole rifled a free kick towards a mass of orange bodies around the penalty spot. The ball ricocheted off Ken Okri’s knee straight in front of the foot of Kevin Nolan, who flicked the ball up and then volleyed it over the heads of our so-called defensive wall. Bruno Haider ran onto it and scored with an almost suicidal diving header that was faintly reminiscent of a kamikaze pilot at Pearl Harbor. Kenny Traynor got a hand to the header and was unlucky only to tip the ball into the top corner of his net. Three-nil.

‘It’s not his night,’ observed Simon.

‘It’s not anyone’s fucking night, so far,’ I said, with my hand in front of my mouth. ‘Least of all Zarco’s.’

‘The man must be turning in his grave.’

It didn’t seem worth mentioning that Zarco wasn’t yet in his grave; that he was probably still on a cold slab just a couple of miles north of where we were now, at the East Ham Mortuary; but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d sat up on the slab and shouted a couple of choice swear words in Portuguese:
caralho
or
cona
. I’d often heard Zarco use words like that.

I sat back in my seat, laid my hands on my head and stared up at the black ceiling that was the night sky. Light snow was starting to fall and in the powerful floodlights that ran around the entire circumference of the Silvertown Dock stadium it looked like the myriad pieces of a betting slip torn up and thrown into the air by an angry god who’d made a heavy bet on us winning this game. But not as heavy as my own.

‘That was the most piss-poor forty minutes I’ve ever seen us play,’ said Simon. ‘We were disjointed, uninspired, ragged, lazy; not to mention unlucky. And that’s just our fucking back four. The rest look like they were wishing William Webb Ellis was playing for us; that he would pick up the fucking ball and run off with it and never be seen again. I tell you something, boss, when the whistle blows for half time it’ll seem more like a fucking armistice. As for that cunt of a referee I think he must think he’s playing bridge, the number of fucking cards he’s shown.’

I didn’t answer; the linesman’s flag had gone up and we had a corner. But it was poorly taken by Jimmy Ribbans. The ball could have been made of concrete and swinging on the end of a crane, such was the apparent reluctance of any of our forwards to head it, and Spiegel gathered it safely in his hands as nonchalantly as if he’d been jumping for a nice shiny apple on a tree.

‘What are you going to say in the dressing room?’ asked Simon. ‘What
can
you say to turn it around when you’re 3–0 down at half time?’

‘Liverpool did,’ I said. ‘Against AC Milan in 2005.’ I shrugged. ‘Besides, I think you just told me what to do, Simon. To turn it around. And I don’t think I’m going to say anything at all.’

And then the referee blew for half time. I might have breathed a sigh of relief but for the fact that there were still forty-five minutes to come and our players were walking in with bowed heads to whistles and jeers like they had spent the first half collaborating with the Nazis. The West Ham supporters in the far corner of the dock started to sing ‘Bubbles’ again, and this time you could hear every stupid word, like you were in the Bobby Moore Stand at Upton Park.

I followed the team into the dressing room. A strong smell of liniment, Deep Heat and even deeper shame greeted my flaring nostrils. Through the adjoining wall we could hear the sound of the other team loudly congratulating itself on an excellent first half. I wanted to punch my way through the breeze-blocks and point these players out to my own.

‘Look,’ I wanted to tell them, ‘the Hammers think this game is in the bag. And who could blame them for thinking that after the way you lot have been playing? Not me. The ladies’ team could give West Ham a better game than you’ve done up until now. I’m embarrassed to be the manager of such a worthless bunch of no-hopers. That song they’re singing is about you, the way they’ve sucked you in tonight and blown you out of their fucking arses like so many shitty bubbles.’

Instead I pushed my hands into my trouser pockets and looked at the ceiling as if searching for some inspiration. But none was there. And really, what was there to say? I’d already said everything that could be said before the game; to say anything else now would only look like I’d wasted my breath the first time. Besides, I’d have probably started to swear and chew the carpet like Hitler and that wasn’t going to help anyone; not tonight. They say actions speak louder than words and short of throwing boots and punches and kicking backsides I decided there was really only one thing I could do.

The lads were all looking expectantly at me now, waiting for the full Al Pacino, the
Any Given Sunday
, inch-by-inch, ‘I don’t know what to say’ speech that was going to work a miracle in their thick heads and turn the match around. I was all through with motivation. But I could, perhaps, offer a moment of epiphany, one simple symbolic gesture that would allow a leap of understanding where another thousand words would not.

I walked up to Zarco’s picture and lifted it away from the wall. I stared at the face for a moment, caught the expression in the eyes, and nodded; then I twisted the picture around on its cord and placed it back against the wall, face first, so that the Portuguese would not have to look at the players who, so far, had disgraced his memory. At least that’s what I wanted them all to think. Then I picked up my iPad and left the dressing room.

For a moment I stood outside in the corridor with all the noise of the stadium in my ears, wondering where to go. There were dozens of eyes on me now: policemen, officials, security men, ball-boys, television technicians and stewards. I had to get away from them, too, and as soon as possible.

I remembered I still had the key to the drug-testing station; I went in there and locked the door behind me.

I used the lavatory and drank some water. Then I sat down at the table with the black cloth on it and stared crossly at my iPhone and my iPad. As usual the iPhone wasn’t picking up any texts, or receiving calls, for which I was grateful; but there was a good WiFi signal in there which meant there were some emails on my iPad, including one from Louise Considine expressing concern for my humour and letting me know that it would be perfectly fine by her if I couldn’t face having dinner with her after the match. I realised I’d almost forgotten about lovely Louise sitting upstairs in the director’s box and immediately I emailed her back to say that after the match I was very much looking forward to her company one way or the other: to celebrate with or, more likely, to help me drown my sorrows.

Ignoring an email from Viktor suggesting that it was time we considered some substitutions, I sighed, opened another bottle of water and wished it could have been whisky. Brian Clough once said that players lose you games, not tactics, and while I could obviously have picked a different team I didn’t honestly think I should have done. There’s a lot of bollocks talked in pubs and television studios about tactics, and nearly always by people who haven’t coached and couldn’t manage their own Ocado order. As far as I’m concerned tactics are what fucking generals use to get a lot of decent men under their command killed in as short a period of time as possible. I knew I’d made the right decisions because whatever people say, making them in football is a lot fucking easier than making them in life; that’s why so many people go into football in the first place.

Not that any of it really mattered, as my doubts about Viktor Sokolnikov now seemed so compelling that I could see no real alternative to offering him my resignation immediately after the match was over. Because that’s what you do when you think you’ve been played for a fool by a crook. I couldn’t prove anything, of course; but perhaps, after the match, I might privately share a few of my suspicions with Louise. Given the likely result of the match my resigning would probably suit not just Viktor but the supporters, too. You see, it wasn’t only the players who had been jeered at the end of the first half. I could still hear someone shouting, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Manson,’ when I’d walked off the pitch at half time.