My assistant sighed but got her phone out. She opened Instagram and scrolled. "She's at a party hosted by someone called Glendale Logistics." Briggy's eyes devoured some text. "They're teaching her business skills and in return she's getting them drunk."
TJ smiled. "That's how you do a negotiation, Max. Learn from your betrothed."
"Brooke told me if I want to sell a product, a good way to do that is to create scarcity and fear of missing out. So listen up, TJ. I'm not selling Lee to you. He's off the table. I'll sell him to Wigan instead." Wigan were down near the bottom of the table and there was a good chance they would be scrapping for survival along with Crawley. Those would be two good clubs to play off against each other. "Why am I pitching to the monkey? I should talk to the organ grinder. You don't even do Crawley's transfers."
"I thought he was the manager?" said Briggy.
"Right," I said, clapping my hands together and rubbing them hard. "Crash course in why TJ has the shittest job in world football. Heh. There are three main types of football ownership. One is some rich prick. That can be good if he puts his money into the club but it comes with all sorts of drawbacks. For example, he treats the fans like shit. Two is fan ownership. That's good because there's a real connection between players and fans but fans don't have money. Three is some nerds buy loads of Bitcoin, it goes to the moon, and they think that qualifies them to run an English football team."
Briggy's eyebrows twitched. "He's joking, right?"
TJ shook his head.
I continued. "When Bitcoin goes up, they go on a spending spree. The manager wants Lee Contreras? That's only five Bitcoin! When it goes down, they sell the entire squad and find twenty guys from non-league who will work for cheap."
"I don't know what non-league means but the business model doesn't seem to be based on sound principles."
I clapped my hands again and got closer to her. "You know what's crazy? It worked! That team of randos was good! They got promoted! They went crashing down again but still. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. They were going down another level when TJ took over. They only let him have minor input into transfers but he sorted them out and next year they went up instead of Wrexham."
Briggy's interest increased. "I know Wrexham. Ryan Reynolds is the owner."
"Yeah that's one of the craziest things about this whole story," I said, excited. "My story, I mean, not TJ's. I'm on a collision course with Ryan Reynolds. Me! I'm a nobody from Manchester but we'll share co-billing in that drama. No, really! Look at TJ's face. He knows. Nobody nods sagely like my boy TJ. Okay, Ryan Reynolds, right? He's rich and famous but doesn't know anything about the sport. I'm the exact inverse of that. I'm poor and unknown but I'm what's called a floating megabrain. Reynolds took over Wrexham; I took over Chester. We both pretty much stuck pins in the map and that's how we got started. There's about twenty miles between us and the fans are arch-enemies. It's a huge rivalry. Huge. If Chester go up to the second tier, we'll finally face our moneybags neighbours. The big showdown between pure football know-how and cold, hard cash."
TJ had a little smile on him. "Save me a seat, Max." His smile, such as it was, faded. "I'll probably be working that day."
I shook my head. There was some remnant of passion in there, but it was a dying ember. "I'll save you a seat, Timo. I wouldn't worry about working that day. Not as a football manager, anyway."
Briggy's mouth dropped open slightly. She got popcorn eyes. This show kept getting better!
TJ got sour. "Charming, as always. I suppose you've heard things."
One part of the curse was a screen called Job Information. It showed me which managers were at risk of losing their jobs, and which positions were currently vacant. Timo's job was listed as 'slightly insecure'. Unless he could extract more out of his squad, his position would degrade to insecure, very insecure, and then there would be a real-world ping on my phone.
"I don't get sent a lot of gossip, but everyone likes MD and everyone loves Brooke." MD was Mike Dean, the club's managing director and the only person I could really say was my boss. He was certainly the only person who could fire me. Brooke was in charge of growing the club's revenues, which in practice meant she was our Chief Executive. The rule of thumb at Chester FC was that if I wasn't in charge of something, Brooke was.