The return of Marcus Chen, and the sheer, overwhelming financial power of his new team, had changed everything.
The County League was no longer a level playing field. It was a two-tiered system, a league of the haves and the have-nots. And we were firmly, unequivocally, in the have-nots.
The disparity was everywhere, a constant, galling reminder of the chasm that separated our two clubs. It was in the small things, and it was in the big things.
It was in the equipment. His players trained with brand new, top-of-the-range footballs, with GPS tracking vests, with state-of-the-art cones and hurdles and mannequins.
We trained with a collection of mismatched, semi-inflated footballs that we had to pump up ourselves, with a set of cones that were cracked and faded, and with a training methodology that was based on my own, obsessive, Football Manager-inspired drills.
