When Graham Poll finally blew the whistle at Stamford Bridge, Ethan and Mourinho were reminded once again how little certainty football ever offered.
They had read almost everything correctly.
They had expected Chelsea and Arsenal to approach the match cautiously. They had expected both managers to reinforce midfield, minimise risk and treat every turnover as potentially decisive. They had expected a tense game in which neither side would willingly expose itself.
What they had not anticipated was the final moment.
For most of the evening, both sides played with enormous discipline. Ancelotti and Wenger made sensible adjustments, neither team lost its structure, and the match seemed destined to end level.
Then Arsenal blinked.
Deep into stoppage time, Gaël Clichy, starting at left-back after Ashley Cole had been dropped, came under pressure from Shevchenko and misplaced a pass.
Deco reacted first.
He collected the loose ball almost forty yards from goal, looked up and struck immediately.
The shot travelled with vicious pace.
Lehmann moved late.
Far too late.
The ball flew beyond him.
Chelsea had won.
For Arsenal, it was devastating.
Lehmann had performed well for almost the entire match, but that would be forgotten. Goalkeepers were often judged by their most important mistake, and this one had come at the worst possible moment.
Arsenal had shown resilience. They had defended with determination and fought for every ball. For once, nobody could accuse Wenger's side of lacking character.
None of that mattered when the final whistle came.
One mistake had turned a draw into defeat and perhaps changed the destination of the Premier League title.
Unless the table shifted again over the closing weeks, Arsenal were in danger of finishing just short for a second consecutive season.
There was a certain cruelty to that.
They had spent less than almost every other title contender.
Transfer fees told only part of the story. The real financial burden of an elite football club lay just as much in wages, bonuses, renewals and the constant need to keep successful players satisfied.
New Manchester United understood that.
The club had grown rapidly, revenues had risen and the team's performances had increased the value of almost every important player in the squad.
That meant salaries had to rise as well.
Beckham was already one of the club's highest earners. Kaká, Terry and Drogba occupied similar territory, while new contracts for Ronaldo, Curtis, Vidić, Robben, Evra, Čech and others were steadily moving them towards the same bracket.
Even the younger players, Messi included, were seeing their wages increase in stages.
The club could afford it.
Commercial income had continued to climb, Champions League revenue had exceeded expectations and qualification for next season's competition was already virtually secure.
As long as wages remained within the financial ratios Ethan and the board had established, there was no reason to pretend the market had not changed.
There was another reason too.
If New Manchester United refused to reward players whose performances and reputations had risen dramatically, richer clubs would.
Loyalty mattered.
So did money.
The club had no intention of testing how far one could survive without the other.
Not every renewal was straightforward.
Kolo Touré's representatives, for example, were still negotiating.
Yaya Touré's move to Manchester City had complicated matters. City's wages were extremely generous, and Kolo's agent naturally argued that an established New Manchester United defender should not earn substantially less than his younger brother.
Ethan did not consider that unreasonable in itself.
Negotiations were part of football.
Mourinho valued Kolo highly, particularly because he could play both centre-back and right-back, and the club remained keen to renew him.
Arsenal's problem was that they had much less room to manoeuvre.
Their stadium project demanded financial restraint at exactly the moment their senior players wanted to be paid like the best in England.
Patrick Vieira had been dissatisfied with his salary for years.
Sol Campbell's next contract remained unresolved.
Thierry Henry had continued scoring at an extraordinary rate without receiving a comparable rise.
Ashley Cole had also spent years on terms that no longer reflected his standing.
According to reports, Cole's agent Jonathan Barnett had once shown David Dein a message sent to the defender by Vieira during contract discussions.
The message was brief.
Don't settle for less than £80,000 a week.
That single line said a great deal about the mood inside Arsenal's senior dressing room.
Campbell was believed to be the club's highest earner at around £100,000 a week.
Behind him came Vieira, Henry, Pires and several others.
The French core of Wenger's squad had long been frustrated by a wage structure they believed no longer reflected the market.
The problem had begun years earlier.
Campbell's arrival on a free transfer had forced Arsenal to offer an exceptional salary.
Then came José Antonio Reyes.
To persuade one of Spain's most exciting young attackers to move to London, Arsenal had reportedly offered him around £70,000 a week.
That put a young newcomer in the same financial territory as players such as Henry and Pires.
Unsurprisingly, resentment followed.
Vieira's message to Cole was part of that wider dissatisfaction.
Cole's representatives were asking for something in the region of £70,000 to £80,000 a week.
By the standards of the current Premier League, the demand was hardly extraordinary.
At New Manchester United, several established players already earned at that level or above.
But Arsenal's new stadium changed the calculation.
They could not simply raise everybody.
They could not cut Reyes's contract.
They could not suddenly double the salaries of Vieira, Henry and Pires.
And once every renewal became connected to every other renewal, the wage structure became almost impossible to adjust without triggering another demand elsewhere.
That was how Ashley Cole's situation had deteriorated.
Arsenal were reportedly unwilling to go beyond roughly £60,000 a week.
Cole's camp believed he was worth more.
Chelsea were willing to pay more.
From the moment Wenger publicly froze him out, Ethan had little doubt about where the story was heading.
Ashley Cole would almost certainly become a Chelsea player eventually.
The more intriguing question was what happened next.
If reports were true that Vieira had encouraged Cole to push Arsenal's wage ceiling upwards, would the captain still be there next season?
Chelsea's late victory changed the league table as well.
New Manchester United's 5-0 win at Bolton the previous day had already taken Mourinho's side onto 72 points.
Chelsea's stoppage-time winner moved them to 73.
Arsenal remained on 70.
That left Chelsea top, New Manchester United second by a single point, and Arsenal two points further back.
Only four league matches remained.
Mourinho had wanted a draw.
He had not got one.
Still, the situation was clear enough.
Chelsea's remaining fixtures were Fulham at home, Bolton away, Charlton at home and Newcastle away.
None looked impossible.
Mourinho knew better than to assume they would drop points.
"We can only control our own matches," he told the squad.
"Win them all. Then look at the table."
Whatever happened from there, New Manchester United's recovery deserved recognition.
They had fallen eleven points behind Chelsea during the winter slump.
Now the gap was one.
This was still the youngest squad in the Premier League by average age, yet for the second consecutive season it had maintained an elite level over an entire campaign.
Even if they failed to retain the title, nobody could reasonably accuse the team of collapsing.
If anything, the second half of the season had strengthened the sense that New Manchester United were going to remain near the top for years.
There was no time to dwell on the table.
Round 35 brought an away trip to Portsmouth.
With the Champions League semi-final approaching, Mourinho rotated heavily again.
Young players and reserves filled much of the side.
The result barely changed.
Portsmouth 1-4 New Manchester United.
Chelsea responded by beating Fulham 3-0.
Arsenal, however, stumbled again.
Tottenham held them to a 1-1 draw at Highbury, another damaging result in a title race that was beginning to move away from Wenger.
Manchester United beat Newcastle 1-0.
Newcastle's season had been miserable. They had spent part of the year alarmingly close to the relegation places and now sat fifteenth, safe enough in practice but nowhere near the level expected of them.
Once the domestic round ended, New Manchester United packed for Spain.
Madrid awaited.
La Liga had once again become a two-club contest.
Barcelona were six points clear of Real Madrid, and with the season entering its final stretch, the title appeared increasingly likely to return to Catalonia.
The gap beneath the top two was enormous.
Real Betis, sitting third, trailed Madrid by eighteen points.
That separation revealed the growing imbalance in Spain.
Real Madrid and Barcelona operated on a different financial and sporting scale from almost everyone else.
The lack of pressure below them could also be useful.
Before the Champions League semi-final, Real Madrid had been able to rotate almost their entire side in the league and still win comfortably.
Their senior players arrived at the European tie rested.
New Manchester United did not have that luxury.
Relations between the two clubs remained excellent off the pitch.
Ethan and Florentino were known to be close.
Juninho Paulista, once one of New Manchester United's most important players, was now a central figure at Real Madrid.
The previous year's individual awards had also created an obvious storyline, with Beckham and Juninho both finishing among the leading candidates for the Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year.
It was an easy tie to market.
It was also one neither club could afford to lose.
Real Madrid's domestic title hopes were fading.
The Champions League had therefore become even more important.
In a private conversation with Ethan before the match, Florentino made no attempt to hide the ambition.
Real Madrid wanted to become the first club of the modern Champions League era to retain the European Cup.
Ethan could also sense something else beneath Florentino's words.
Dissatisfaction with Vicente del Bosque had never disappeared completely.
Earlier in the season, Madrid had lost 3-0 to Barcelona at the Camp Nou.
Florentino had been furious.
For several days, the Spanish press had been full of speculation that Del Bosque might be dismissed immediately.
He survived.
Stability won out.
But the tension remained.
Now Real Madrid were six points behind Barcelona domestically.
If they also failed in Europe, Del Bosque's position would inevitably come under renewed scrutiny.
Ethan understood the situation.
He also had no intention of helping.
In his previous life, he had admired Real Madrid.
That meant nothing tonight.
New Manchester United wanted the Champions League just as badly.
Friendship ended at the touchline.
Florentino would receive no favours.
Real Madrid's problems were not particularly mysterious anyway.
The core of the team was ageing.
Zidane, Figo, Ronaldo Nazário and several other senior players were still capable of extraordinary football, but maintaining the same level of intensity throughout an entire season had become harder.
Generational change was unavoidable.
And generational change always came with instability.
Florentino understood football well enough to know that.
His weakness was that he sometimes placed too much emotional weight on individual marquee matches.
The defeat to Barcelona had been a good example.
Madrid had still been leading the league at the time.
Yet the humiliation of losing the Clásico triggered weeks of political and managerial uncertainty.
The dressing room suffered.
Confidence fell.
Barcelona eventually passed them.
Ethan saw the pattern clearly.
He kept it to himself.
Florentino was a friend, but he was also the opposing president.
This was not the evening for advice.
Mourinho needed none.
He had spent weeks studying Real Madrid's weaknesses.
He knew where their ageing legs could be tested.
He knew where their midfield could be stretched.
He knew which players were less comfortable when forced to defend repeatedly at high tempo.
And for the first leg at the Bernabéu, Mourinho had prepared something unexpected.
More specifically, someone unexpected.
(To be continued.)