[FM15] Raising Cain

[jdoyle9293]

Bubbling away nicely here, smashing writing as usual. I have a good feeling about the Wrexham job, then maybe Stacy might stay..

[tenthreeleader]

Thank you very kindly. I wanted to try to write a few grittier characters than I've been recently doing and my thought is that a job search might be the best way to do that.

___

When Kyle got back, Stacy was gone.

Sometimes calling someone’s bluff produces exactly the result which will bring the most pressure, and that’s just what happened in this case.

Jenna was quiet about her parents’ estrangement, and after a week had passed, she wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Stacy return home.

“Kyle, let’s talk,” she had said, and had been unnerved to see her husband sitting, silent, through an entire conversation.

He had a different look about him. He sat with his face set, staring straight ahead as she talked. He wouldn’t even look at her, and when she was done, he finally turned to face her.

“Thank you for your honesty, Stacy,” he said. “You said what was on your mind and that’s good for you.”

“That’s it?” she asked. “After twenty years, all I get is ‘thank you for your bloody honesty’?”

“After twenty years, all I got was ‘I don’t know why I’m married to you’,” he said. Then he smiled, which really unnerved his estranged wife.

“You see, you gave me the courage to do what I really needed to do if I’m ever going to be happy in life or in a job,” he said. “I have to be me instead of trying to be what everyone else says I should be. You’re back in this house right now for yourself. I know that, you know that. You’re probably out of money, which is why you came back here.”

She said nothing.

“I know that you don’t get on with Jenna because she gets on better with me than she does with you,” he said. “And I know that right now, even as bad as things are going for me, you know that without me, you’re on the street. Your horrid, unemployable husband. Without me, you’re nothing, until you find someone else who will put up with you.”

She looked down at the floor.

Kyle really hadn’t thought twisting the knife would be this easy. He wasn’t sure whether he really liked himself for doing it, but watching Stacy squirm after all she had said … well, that felt nice.

“This is what I should have said to you years ago, Stacy,” Kyle said, warming to his task. “I’ve let you walk all over me – well, that’s over. I got down on my knees and apologised for what I did back in the day. You know that. And you hold it over my head like I’m some sort of dog that needs extra training. Well, I don’t. I’ve worked damned hard to support this family. Jenna sees it and evidently you do not.”

“Do you love me, Kyle?” she asked. It seemed like a 180-degree change of direction in the conversation and it took Kyle by surprise.

“Of course I do. I wouldn’t have let you in the house if I had thought otherwise.”

“That’s good, because the reason I came back here isn’t because I’m out of money. I came back here to tell you I’m pregnant.”

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

That was shocking news. Kyle had been wrong on more than one front and he had to decide how to deal with it.

Stacy left that evening once again, and wouldn’t tell Kyle where she was going. So while he continued his job search, he had some extra thinking to do.

He had said he loved Stacy, and he meant it. He also knew that Stacy had access to the couple’s bank account, which was why she hadn’t run out of money.

So the thought of her on her own while carrying their second child was unnerving to Kyle as a man. The sixteen years of separation between Jenna and the unborn child was another issue for him to consider.

He had been very sure of himself. And he had misjudged, again. He felt like he was back at Torquay, where he made a hash out of trying to make good judgments.

Wrexham turned him down, hiring Andy Cale, instead. He didn’t wonder – if he was capable of that kind of misjudgment on a personal level, it wasn’t surprising that they didn’t want to hire him either.

He wondered if Stacy had really been right all along – if someone as capable of errors in personal judgment and professional judgment was really in the wrong business.

His desire for revenge on the people he saw as wronging him was stronger than ever, but as for what to do about it and how to go about it … well, those were different matters completely.

All he knew was that whatever made him feel good personally was wrong either for himself or for someone else. And the Wrexham job didn’t work out either. That went to Andy Cale.

It was to the point where he was about ready to give up.

St. Alban’s City was next, but his interview there was almost half-hearted by comparison. Word had gotten around about Kyle and his seemingly perpetual search for employment. Well, it was perpetual. What it was, was perpetually unsuccessful.

That was a position Kyle thought he could have walked, but that job went to John Beck instead.

It had now been almost five months since he had worked at Torquay and he felt it was pretty plain that nobody wanted him. He thought about coaching, but his interviews in that area didn’t seem to be gaining any traction for him either.

He started to turn toward other things. He started to read more, and found a second part-time job so that things were a bit easier for he and Jenna around the house.

Stacy stayed away. She kept drawing from the bank account when she needed money and Kyle really didn’t mind that. After all, she was pregnant with his baby and it would have taken a crueler man than Kyle to turn away someone under those circumstances.

It also kept her, and her persistently negative attitude, out of the house.

He had dinner with Jenna one evening and it suddenly dawned on him that since Stacy had left, his daughter had not asked, even once, about her mother’s well-being.

He asked her about it.

“Dad, it’s always about Mom and it always has been about Mom,” she said, picking at her food. “You know that. And you always knew that. I know you did some bad things, but I forgave you for them. She never did. I just don’t see how she can live her life that way.”

“I don’t either, sweetheart,” Kyle said. “I really don’t see how either.”

# # #

[jdoyle9293]

At the end of the penultimate update, I could really hear the EastEnders climatic music play over the last line, great work for a cliffhanger. I'm sure if you keep cracking away at the job search it'll come together, liking the dynamic here between father-daughter-mother.

[tenthreeleader]

It's a good dynamic, I think. Right now I am feeling my way along certain elements of character work and I do believe it will come good eventually. But I'm really starting to like Kyle Cain as a character and that bodes well.

___

Bradford Park Avenue was next up for Kyle, but his heart wasn’t in the interview.

He was actually thinking about Stacy. That seemed odd to him.

She had told him, “oh, by the way, we’re pregnant” and then marched right back out of the house. What kind of person did something like that?

And the fact of the matter was that, obviously, Stacy being pregnant was a pretty significant surprise.

Kyle and Stacy were both forty, having been married quite young. Jenna had been planned – and so had brothers and sisters who, for reasons unknown, had never arrived. But Kyle had become a father at the tender age of twenty-four and it had grown him up a bit.

And now, Stacy was pregnant again.

These things were on his mind as he sat with Avenue chairman John Dean at the Horsfall Stadium. The club was semi-professional but had still reached the Conference North – and for some reason, Dean’s ambition had outstripped his bank book.

Kyle could see it – anyone could – Avenue were overextended. He couldn’t get assurances regarding being able to change out portions of the playing staff, and also couldn’t get assurances regarding contract status for certain key players. There just wasn’t a fit.

But there was something else.

Kyle was afraid to fail again.

He could see all the signs – a club which didn’t seem to have the ability to match its ambitions, setting up someone to fail. Perhaps the reality was different, but Kyle’s mind was racing, and all he could see was a club that seemed destined to have difficulty.

So the inevitable rejection e-mail, when it came, wasn’t surprising.

This time, though, Kyle didn’t seem to mind the feeling he had. Usually when he was rejected he wallowed in self-pity. Now, he seemed to simply accept failure as it came to him, in the same way a combat soldier, knowing he’s doomed in a given engagement, seems to take death stoically, simply as a ‘cost of doing business’.

Jenna was now taking on additional hours as a waitress and as such wasn’t with her father most evenings, as she tried her best to help her father make ends meet.

It was sad. He was lonely, in his way.

And he felt like a going-nowhere, complete failure.

The word burned itself into his mind.

F-A-I-L-U-R-E.

# # #

[jdoyle9293]

Good job on nailing the depression in the last update, I was in a similar place last year and it sucks. Would've loved you to have got the Park Ave job though as it's a club just up the road from me! Compelling stuff.

[tenthreeleader]

Some days, it almost literally didn’t pay to get out of bed.

When Kyle wasn’t working his ‘diddy job’, as he called it, some days he’d just lay in bed all day. That wasn’t good. He was entering a black phase, Winston Churchill’s “black dog” of depression, and the episodes were as sad as they were cyclical.

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. He’d feel like a failure and then sit in bed all day and worry about what a failure he was becoming. It was a vicious cycle.

On the second day of November, Kyle was having ‘one of those days’. He lay in bed watching Netflix, the only creature comfort he really could afford. The internet was necessary to look for work, but today was a day where he was feeling hopeless, so job hunting just wasn’t on.

Stacy had been in touch that day, removing more money from the bank to take care of her needs. He didn’t even know where she was from one moment to the next, and from time to time that alarmed him.

What kind of person would make an announcement like that? Then Kyle got to thinking. What kind of person wouldn’t care about an announcement like that?

A person just like him, that’s who wouldn’t care.

“Dammit,” he said aloud, “that is my child inside that woman. Why don’t you give a damn?”

As if to convince himself.

He also wondered why Stacy kept the child. That didn’t seem to make any sense to him. After all, with the two estranged, there was really no reason for them to have another child they couldn’t afford, right?

Right?

He lay there thinking about where his life had gone, and how things had come to this end. Not for the first time, tears rolled down his cheeks as he realized that he really was on the verge of losing everything.

He hated the feeling. But somehow it felt comfortable to him, as failure was the one thing he could really count on from one day to the next.

The revenge-minded Kyle had lasted a few days, until Stacy’s announcement had knocked the wheels out from under his cart. He was very upset over how she had treated him, but when it came right down to things, it was hard to surrender twenty years of living for the simple pleasure of revenge.

Surprisingly hard, in fact.

As he lay there, Jenna returned from a shift at The Coach and Horses, on High Road less than two blocks from the Matchroom Stadium and within sight of home. She could walk there and back. It saved money. When she wasn’t in school or studying, she was working. Very hard, in fact.

“Dad,” she said, sitting at the edge of the bed. “Look at yourself.”

“I can’t see my forehead,” Kyle said, attempting a joke.

“It’s not funny,” she said. “You know that I’m doing everything I can do to help you, yeah?”

“Of course, sweetie,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“And you know I love you more than anything in the world, yeah?”

He lowered his head. “Yeah.” He couldn’t look at her. He knew what she was going to say.

“You can’t go on like this,” she said. “I have to get you to believe in yourself. What is that going to take? I’m working hard but I need you active and present.”

He felt very small. He looked past the television set where a streaming version of Foyle’s War was playing, and stared at the far wall of the master bedroom.

Kyle loved the character of Chris Foyle, played so ably by actor Michael Kitchen. Calm, cool, collected, and biting when the need arose. He thought Chief Superintendent Foyle would make a fine football manager.

Better than he was, at any rate.

“I have to,” he said. “What choice do you think I have?”

“You have the choice of remembering what it was that gave you all that time with Orient, what made you a football player and what made you successful when you had success,” she said. “It hurts me to look at you like this.”

He hadn’t considered that. Frankly, there were a lot of home truths in life that Kyle Cain had never considered, and now some of them were coming home to roost all at the same time.

He reached beside his bed and grabbed a half-consumed bottle of Redchurch, brewed in East London and which, for the moment, was damn tasty. He raised the bottle to his lips.

“Laying in bed and drinking,” she said. “Honestly, Dad, who in their right minds would make you a football manager right now?”

He stopped in his tracks, the bottle still an inch short of helping slake his thirst. He looked at her, and returned the bottle to its prior spot on the side table, the ring of water at its bottom in the same spot as the corresponding ring on the table which he hadn’t bothered to cover with a coaster.

“Jenna,” he said, quietly, “nobody wants me.”

“Dad, that’s s**t,” she replied, just as quietly but with more force. “My dad never quit when he played. Look at you. You’ve quit on yourself.”

He felt his hackles rising, which was extremely rare with his only child. He loved her more than his own life at times … and right now, this seemed to be one of those times. But he was angry.

“Tell one of these clubs that they want me,” he said. “Go on, Jenna. Do it.”

“It’s no wonder they don’t,” she said. “I say it again, Dad. You need to fix you before someone else can help.”

They were profound words for a sixteen-year old, but then Jenna saw people in different situations every day now when she worked.

Ah, work. What a concept.

Kyle leaned back against his pillow and considered his daughter’s words. If there was one person in the world who could get away with speaking to Kyle Cain like that, it was Jenna Cain.

He thought back to his playing days, when, as the Yanks say, he ‘took no s**t from nobody’.” That person seemed to be dead and buried. Now, he took s**t from everybody, sometimes in sandwich form, and he hated it.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

“You turned down an interview?”

Jenna and Stacy sat across a table from Kyle at The Coach and Horses and looked at him, gobsmacked.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “I did.”

Stacy’s eyes were cold on him.

“Why on earth did you do that.” It wasn’t a question. It was a declaration, a sentence as complete as the one her look suggested she’d give him in prison.

“Because it wasn’t the right position for me,” he said.

“Any position is the right position for you,” Stacy said.

“Says you,” Kyle replied.

“Yes, says me,” she answered. “What’s next, ‘I’m gonna tell the bloody teacher’?”

“Tell you what,” he answered. “File the papers and you can have things your own way.”

She looked at him, wide-eyed and angry.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“You heard me,” Kyle answered.

Jenna’s facial expression hadn’t changed a whit since the conversation began.

She was angry with both of them, and had suggested a meeting at the restaurant to try to get her parents back together. So far, her well-intentioned efforts had been a disaster, and it looked like there was still some room beyond that definition to reach. Like, say, ‘nuclear holocaust’.

“Where was this interview that you turned down?”

“Morton,” he said. “You didn’t want to live in the West Midlands. Why the hell would I think you’d want to live in Scotland?”

She looked at him with a level expression.

“They asked you, you clot,” she said. “And you turned them down.”

Greenock Morton had sagged to eighth place in Scotland’s League One by virtue of a winless month and only two wins from the last nine. It had perhaps been a bit of a quick hook by chairman for Douglas Rae to let Jim Duffy go, but the potential of life in League Two appealed to him even less than the idea of keeping his manager.

And Kyle Cain, the man nobody wanted, had turned down a request for an interview.

Stacy could hardly believe her ears.

“I don’t understand you,” she finally said. “If you are going to support this family …”

“… if I’m going to support this family, this family is going to be together,” he shot back. “God only knows where the hell you are, taking money whenever you need it so Jenna and I have to scrape …”

Now the young lady spoke.

“Stop it, both of you,” she finally said. “Mum, Dad’s right. You’re trying to run his life and my life without being around. And Dad, Mum’s right. If you want to be a manager, you need to interview. But I’ll tell you something right now, if there’s any more talk of filing papers I’m getting out. I’ll find a flatmate and I’ll get out. Are we clear on that?”

Kyle and Stacy looked at each other. Jenna had just personally defined the word détente for both of them.

“I’m not the one who left,” Kyle said.

“I’m not the one who talked about filing papers,” Stacy answered.

They were getting nowhere.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Stacy Cain spent a lot of time on her own these days.

She had found a job – very quietly, so that nobody would know, especially Kyle – working at the East London Branch Library. It provided the money she needed to scrape out a living.

She had found a small flat a few blocks from the library. It was an efficiency flat, with two rooms – a sitting room/kitchen and a master bedroom with a small attached bath. While money was extremely tight, she could eat and she could take care of herself.

And she could take care of the baby, which she knew was the key to everything,

She felt like she had fallen out of love with Kyle about ten years before, when his indiscretion at the Leyton Orient team Christmas party had revealed a relationship with a supporter. Everyone who knew about the relationship had somehow managed to keep it quiet, but when his inebriated paramour had walked up and kissed him in front of God and everybody – and Stacy – it was rather impossible to hide it further.

It had nearly cost them everything. Jenna was six at the time, and could hardly understand why the father she had loved so much had done such a thing to her mother.

Kyle had been very plain, which was both good and bad. He had said he felt keenly underappreciated at home, like that was an excuse. But when he was gone all the time, what was a wife to do? Sit there and wait for him?

He had been penitent. Nauseatingly so, in fact, but he had been penitent, and she had taken him back. She needed him.

For his part, Kyle took stick from home and away fans alike for the next few years, until the whole issue faded into painful memory. Her name had been Charlotte, and her web had well and truly caught him, along with other womanly attributes that even Stacy had to admit presented special challenges for a weak-willed man like her husband.

It had been a very long journey for Kyle to repair his relationship with Jenna, but, once done, the two were closer than ever. Stacy ... well, that was another matter.

They had never returned to their former closeness. Her outburst of sudden affection after her first return home – which had led to her pregnancy – had surprised them both. It surprised Kyle with its power, and it surprised Stacy because it happened at all.

And now, they had come to this. She felt badly that she was pregnant, and that was not a good situation for a mother to find herself in. Yet, there she was.

Upon further reflection, though, it occurred to Stacy that it wasn’t the pregnancy that bothered her so much as the baby’s father.

His challenge for her to file divorce papers had stung her – not so much because of the thought, which she frankly didn’t mind in the slightest, but because for the time being she still needed him.

The lout. The loser. The failure.

She didn’t like that feeling, either. She considered herself kind at heart, and as such she didn’t like to mistreat anyone, even someone who deserved it like her husband.

She was anxious to get off her feet after a hard day’s work, and as such sitting in a secondhand chair and turning on the telly was a good way to unwind.

She had some issues with morning sickness that she didn’t care for, but she was also concerned about being forty years old and having a second child. There were plenty of things that could go wrong for both mother and child at that age.

After a few minutes, she again got up to pop a frozen dinner into her microwave. The kitchen space in the flat was pathetically small but that was all right since she wasn’t much good in the kitchen. Perhaps a bit oddly, it was Kyle that was the talent in that area. Footballers aren’t generally known as foodies, but he had been. When there was money, and when he had time, they ate well.

The microwave beeped and Stacy took a tray containing assortment of mixed vegetables, chicken and cheese sauce out of the oven, removing the plastic cover to let it cool.

As she did, a knock came at her door.

Smiling to herself, she headed over to open it. Her expression brightened still further when a man stepped inside.

“Hello, love,” he said, his voice low. His accent was North London, which to some in her part of the city seemed like a foreign language.

“Boyd,” she smiled, moving aside to allow him entrance. “I was just sitting down to eat.”

“Sorry to interrupt you,” he said, “but I thought I’d stop to see how you’re getting on.”

“Better now,” she said.

“That’s my girl,” he replied. Boyd Stokes was Stacy’s library supervisor, a bookish-looking man of forty-five years who looked as much at home wearing a bow tie as he did wearing a traditional suit. He could make clothes look good.

He wore his short, prematurely gray hair parted over his left eye, swept over the top in a stylish but thick mass. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and his impeccable suit always – always – contained a pocket square. He looked like a dandy to those who didn’t know him, but Boyd had money and he liked to look the part.

“It’s kind of you to come,” she said. “Won’t you sit down?”

“No, I’m afraid I can’t,” he said. “Library board meeting this evening and I have to give a report. I just wanted to check in on you and see how you’re getting on.”

“Well, I’m glad you did,” Stacy answered. “You’ve certainly brightened this place up a bit.”

“It’s sad you have to live like this, if you don’t mind my saying,” Stokes answered.

“That’s life when you’re separated and your husband isn’t trying too hard to find work.”

“I see,” he said turning to leave. “Well, perhaps things will change for you at least one front. Good night, Stacy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He left, closing the door behind him. Stacy turned back to her dinner and picked up the plastic tray, its heat stinging her fingers until she could put the contents on a plate.

“Maybe things will change,” she said. “Perhaps in a different order than is traditional.”

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

This time, he looked different.

Kyle had combed his hair just so, even if its sandy blonde color and rather pronounced wave didn’t make it look like it was especially well-kept.

It was that wavy blonde hair which had made him popular with the ladies – that and scoring twenty goals a season for Orient. That hadn’t hurt, either.

The hair went with the interview suit, a beige outfit which came with a vest Kyle wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. It had been his best touchline suit at Torquay, and he figured that after the way things had ended there, all the bad luck had been drained out of it.

He looked pretty good, all things considered – five-foot-ten with that hair Jenna had just fixed again for him, and a physical strength which belied his comparatively slight, lean build. He had taken care of himself when he played and he was still quite fit for having been out of the game for two years.

For herself, Jenna’s ire had died down a bit after the latest argument between her parents, and before long was more or less her cheery self around her dad – provided, of course, that he didn’t laze around the flat. He had learned to watch Netflix in the sitting room.

Now, though, he was dressed to the nines for a job he wanted. The competition was stiff and it didn’t look good. As usual.

Michael Appleton had got the sack at Oxford United, a League Two club which should have been doing better than it was. Winless in the league since September, the U’s let their manager go after sinking to 22^nd in the table. It was getting ugly, the support was irate, and the thought of another return to non-League football wasn’t pleasant for chairman Daryl Eales.

Oxford trailed 21^st placed Southend by four points in the race for safety, and led 23^rd placed Dag and Red by three points and tail-end Cheltenham by only four with the halfway point distressingly close. The latter two clubs held the relegation places.

The Oxford job had attracted some real interest from within the business, including former Norwich and Blackpool boss Nigel Worthington, former Cheltenham manager Mark Yates – whose old job Kyle had applied, naturally unsuccessfully, to take – and veteran coach John McMahon.

Yet this was the position Kyle wanted more than Greenock Morton, and so he was a bit surprised when he was called west for an interview. Usually, things Kyle wanted were things he couldn’t have.

Jenna had been a bit more proud of her father, especially since she happened to be on hand at the flat to watch him leave.

“That’s my dad,” she had said, making sure his lapels were straight and his tie knotted correctly before shooing him off to the car. She had hugged him tight and that meant a lot. There really was nothing Kyle wouldn’t do for his daughter and as he drove, he reflected on how much she really had grown up over the last few months.

She had stood in the gap. He loved her all the more for it.

“If only I can pull my weight for a change,” he muttered to himself as he reached the outskirts of the beautiful old city. The Kassam Stadium is located south of the ring of roads which encircles the city center, and as Kyle pulled into the car park he wondered why he was really there.

For his part, Eales was pleasant enough. But the club, which had had significant financial difficulties like so many in the lower parts of the league structure, had some special issues, and they came up in the interview.

Kyle expected to hear the usual items about transfer budgets and the wage budget being maxed. Fine. But Eales also asked if he wouldn’t mind retaining all the existing staff – and, if hired, if he was willing to commit to staying.

There were reasons for that, of course. Given the club’s precarious recent financial history, buying out staff and hiring new staff wasn’t feasible. And even in the case of the new manager, hiring them by the handful wasn’t good for the bottom line.

Oxford had had four managers in the preceding eleven months. Chris Wilder, a favorite of management but not necessarily of the fans after narrowly missing the playoffs due to a late-season collapse, had left for Northampton in January after six years in charge.

He was replaced by caretaker Mickey Lewis and then by Gary Waddock, who lost seven of eight matches before being himself sacked in July. That led to Appleton, who had steered the club to the Second Round of the FA Cup but also to a 2-5-10 league record.

Their morale, like Kyle’s, was abysmal. He wasn’t sure if he had handled things right.

Given his recent history, he was sure he hadn’t.

# # #

[STFCDP1990]

I'm really enjoying this story so far! Keep up the good work!

[tenthreeleader]

Glad to have you along ... and glad you are enjoying!

___

Monday, November 17, 2014

Oxford Raise Cain

Press Association

League Two strugglers Oxford United have hired former Torquay United boss Kyle Cain on a two-year deal.

Cain, who was unable to save Torquay from relegation to the Vanarama Conference last season, enters his second foray into management on Saturday as the Us meet AFC Wimbledon at the Kassam Stadium in a battle of tail-enders.

Michael Appleton was sacked after Oxford’s 3-0 loss at York last Saturday. Appleton had led Oxford to a 3-0 FA Cup win at home to Harrowgate Town just nine days ago, but the club has been winless in League Two since a 2-0 win at Southend on the 6^th September, a span of over nine weeks.

The club also have not won a league match at home since 30^th August, a span of six matches, and have taken just one of the last eighteen points on offer on their home ground.

# # #

[mark wilson27]

Good luck with Oxford sir, its going to be tough but I've got every faith in you

[jdoyle9293]

I was so happy to read that Kyle Cain got the Oxford United job--a testament to your writing ability and this story, smashing work.

[Gricehead]

Great story. I mean, we should be banning you from writing anything until Ratpack is finished, but nonetheless, great story!

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks, fellows. It's good to have Kyle back in the game again. We will see if he learned anything from Torquay.

___

“I knew you could do it!”

Jenna hugged her father joyously, as he finally – finally – had some good news to relate.

But then it hit her.

She would have to move.

“I’m not staying with Mum, that’s for sure,” she said, as Kyle sat in his chair. He was making a list of things he wanted to bring to his new place in Oxford, which was being paid for by the club for the first sixty days of his tenure, until he was again on his feet financially. He was already packing, but writing down missing or needed items as he did.

“Are you going to tell her?” Jenna asked.

Kyle smiled thinly.

“She hasn’t told me where she’s gone, so I thought I wouldn’t,” he answered. “But then, what I did made the papers so she’ll probably see it on her own.”

“Dad, that’s cruel.” Jenna frowned, crossing past her father to sit in what used to be her mother’s favorite chair.

“So is leaving,” he replied. “She needs to understand that she can’t behave like that and expect there to be no consequences.”

“So that’s it, is it?” she asked. “This is a game for you?”

“Didn’t you just say you weren’t staying with her?” Kyle asked. “What does it matter?”

“I may not agree with her but she is still my mother,” Jenna answered. She smoothed a long lock of dishwater blonde hair out of her eyes as she spoke. The color was a mixture of Kyle’s blonde hair and Stacy’s brunette color.

“And she is still my wife,” Kyle answered. “There’s really no reason for her to be gone. And now that I’m employed again I suppose she can come back whenever she’s ready.”

“Do you think that’s all you are to her, a paycheck?” she asked. Her eyes grew wide as she spoke.

Kyle laughed, a sarcastic snort which was louder than he perhaps intended for it to be. But still, when you’re loud, its better to be right, and Kyle definitely felt he was in the right.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I am to her. After twenty years, too. That hurts more than I can describe to you.”

And with that, they packed to leave for Oxford in silence.

# # #

[salkster2102]

Might notice you've posted the same thing twice matey A good start to your new story which i'm enjoying. Interesting choice of personality compared to your other two stories.

[tenthreeleader]

I'm not really sure how this happened. I double-posted the first post somehow and when I went to delete one of the posts, the board software hard deleted both of the double-posts. So here it is again.

And thank you, Salk. I like writing Kyle Cain. He could be one of my favorites before all is said and done.

___

Kyle met Daryl Eales in the lobby of the club offices the next morning. He and Jenna had risen early to make the drive, their things in a small rented trailer a club employee had driven behind them from East London.

Most of the staff was on hand – some were preparing for training later that morning – and Kyle thought it was a nice touch.

“Welcome,” the chairman said. “I’m glad to see you here early and ready to go.”

“I have something to prove,” Kyle said simply. He introduced his daughter to the general delight of the assembled and headed to his new office, which had been picked nearly to the bone by staff to remove Appleton’s things from it.

The place, as a result, was furnished in a rather Spartan way, with blue, white and gold décor. Kyle entered for the first time and couldn’t help but smile. He was employed again after five long months and he was over the moon.

Handing in his notice in London had been a real pleasure as well – and this time he was determined not to waste the opportunity he had been given by insisting on a two-year contract. He wanted some security for a change. And, while this hadn’t quite fit the bill completely, it was a great start.

He sat behind a hardwood desk which was directly opposite the door, which occupied the middle of the far wall as he looked at it. To his left, along the wall, rested a couch. Two chairs and a small table occupied the right side of the room, below a good-sized television set suspended from the ceiling. Behind him, planning boards were attached to the wall with a bookcase and drinks cooler to his left along the back wall. Carpeting containing the club crest adorned the floor.

It suited him just fine. Jenna flopped down on the couch and immediately started looking for the television remote. That suited Kyle just fine too – he had to figure out her school arrangement that afternoon too, and until he did, she was stuck with him.

And he had training to run as well. It was going to be a busy day.

As he collected his thoughts, an older gentleman knocked at the door and allowed himself to enter. Kyle recognized him immediately as Derek Fazackerley, the assistant manager who had spent nineteen years as an active player, the overwhelming majority of them with Blackburn in their pre-Premiership days.

“Kyle, good to see you,” Fazackerley said, with the self-assuredness of a man who knows he is staying in his job. Kyle had never really had that sense of security at Torquay.

“Derek, it’s nice to be here,” Kyle said, rising to shake hands with his new number two. As assistants at League Two level go, it was hard to find better than Derek, and so Kyle said nothing about the easy way with which he had been greeted. Anyhow, it wouldn’t have done any good.

The two exchanged pleasantries and before long the rest of the senior coaching staff – goalkeeping coach Wayne Brown, fitness coach Alasdair Lane, first team coach Mickey Lewis, head physio Andy Lord and chief scout Craig Dean – were all assembled.

Kyle gave a short talk.

“Gentlemen, my brief on the one hand is obvious, to get this team out of relegation trouble,” he said. “But on the other, my brief is to get Oxford United mid-table or better by the end of the season. Now, if you look at the table you’ll see twelfth place is twelve points ahead of us. That means we’ve got a long, hard slog ahead of us. But my primary goal is to see that this club starts playing the right way again. I want good decisions, smart decisions made by people who are strong on the ball and strong off the ball. If we do those things, the rest will come. I’ve learned a lot since the end of last season and with your help, we’ll get this job done right.”

He looked at his watch, which showed 9:30 a.m.

“Right then, to your duties, gentlemen. I’ll meet you on the training pitch in half an hour.”

He motioned for Fazackerley to stay behind.

“Derek, I’ll want you to take the first training session but I’ll be on the touchline,” he said. “I want to talk with the senior squad members, individually if possible, as soon as it can be arranged. I’ve got a few days to look at the players and make a few early judgments and being at home this weekend helps.”

Kyle’s deputy gave that ready smile once again and looked at Kyle with a pensive expression. Kyle motioned for him to speak freely.

“Kyle, these players need some belief,” he said. “I tried to tell Michael that but I think he was feeling the pressure too much at the end, and he was hard on some of the lads. I’m sure you’ll hear about it, but if you want my advice – and maybe you don’t – I’d say go easy on them but remember that most of what these players are complaining about happened for a reason.”

That was a surprising thing to hear. Fazackerley, as a member of the prior regime, could be expected to defend his former boss, but here he was both defending Appleton and burying him with faint praise at the same time.

Kyle frowned, but then his face returned to a more serene expression.

“All right, Derek, that’s fine. I’ll take that under advisement when I meet with the players. Now, let’s get ready for training.”

# # #

[jdoyle9293]

Fantastic work as is expected, 10-3. Loving the character and wishing him good luck for the future but secretly hoping for more explosions, too.

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks very much! Also as of today I've renamed this story. I didn't much care for the original title and the obvious one was right under my nose from the beginning.

And now, let's meet the Us...

___

Kyle stood on the touchline and watched as Fazackerley put his players through their paces. There weren’t many of them, but from what he was seeing, there were strengths even in a squad of that size.

There would be a battle for the number one shirt. Jamie Ashdown, 33, who had played for Portsmouth in their Premiership days but had spent the last two seasons not playing a minute of senior football for Leeds before being picked up on a free, had seen the most time. He was challenged by 32-year old Ryan Clarke, an ever-present for the team last season and a veteran of six years in a United shirt. From the looks of things, he wasn’t handling Ashdown’s challenge very well.

The defense had numbers, anyway, and looked fairly versatile. From right to left, 21-year Matt Bevans, a former Watford trainee, had seen most of the playing time, with help from 21-year old Cheyenne Dunkley, acquired from Kidderminster in the close season just past. 29-year old Johnny Mullins, in his second full season with the club, was also in the mix and could also play the center of defense.

In the middle, 30-year old Andy Whing was in his fourth season with the club but was also in contention as a holding midfielder. 28-year old Jake Wright, the club captain, was in his fifth year with the Us after washing out at Brighton in 2009.

On the left side, 25-year old Joe Skarz was the club’s highest valued player at £425,000 after Rotherham rather inexplicably let him go on a free. He and 22-year old Jonathan Meades were the only options there but Skarz was the clear choice.

Midfield was the club’s strongest area numerically, and from what Kyle had read, this was a good thing since a lot of them could play multiple positions.

24-year old Scotsman Alex MacDonald, a onetime Burnley trainee, had seen about a dozen games’ time on the right side of midfield. Twenty-year old Frenchman Jérémy Balmy was his main competition for playing time. On the left side, nineteen-year old whiz kid Callum O’Dowda, a home-grown talent, was the best on offer. Danny Rose, a 26-year old former Manchester United trainee who had never earned a contract higher than Conference level prior to joining the Us, was on the fringe of the first team as was twenty-one-year old Josh Ruffels, a free transfer from Coventry in his second year with the Us.

In the middle, there were some decent players. Unfortunately, the best of them, eighteen-year old James Maddison, was on loan from Coventry and only in his second professional season. From everything Kyle had been told, though, he made Oxford go.

Eighteen-year old prospect Josh Ashby was in from the city’s “other” team, Oxford City, and had made one appearance for the senior team. He had good talent, but was still a ways away from the first team. Twenty-eight-year old Irishman Michael Collins was also in the mix for playing time, but was presently recovering from a partially torn hamstring which would see him shelved for 3-6 more weeks.

There were also a few attacking midfielders who could double as strikers, and that was good because two of the team’s five hitmen were on the shelf with injury. Twenty-eight-year old Will Hoskins, one of two Us with Premiership experience through nine matches with Watford in 2006, was out for a month with a sprained ankle and 26-year old Josh Campbell, who had torn up the Northern League with West Auckland and Jarrow, was out for three weeks with the same injury.

That left three men: seventeen-year old youth striker George Jeacock, 25-year old Danny Hylton, who was a free transfer from AFC Wimbledon, and 23-year old free transfer Patrick Hoban, fresh from Dundalk of the Irish Premier, as the strike options. The Irishman was the club’s leading goalscorer, with five, which was better than none but not by much.

The club had only scored fifteen goals in seventeen matches, which placed them third bottom in the league – but had made up for it by conceding 33 goals, which was also third bottom in the league.

Not surprisingly, their position was also third bottom in the league. The symmetry seemed appropriate.

# # #

[dllu]

Thanks very much! Also as of today I've renamed this story. I didn't much care for the original title and the obvious one was right under my nose from the beginning.

Too bad John Lithgow is too old to play him in the movie version...

[gavrenwick]

As opposed to Cain and able? Haha. Bad pun. Prefer the new title.

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks for the positives, gents. Greatly appreciated. And yes, Gav, Cain did kill Abel in the Bible so maybe Kyle will live up to his namesake.

___

Kyle found a school for Jenna the next day, and then set to work devouring videos of his new club.

Stacy, for her part, didn’t communicate with him. He wondered where she was in East London, but couldn’t be bothered to suss it out. He was too busy with his job, and he figured that if he knew his wife right, she’d be along shortly.

Only it wasn’t that easy.

Stacy was doing relatively well from her new job, and once she figured out that there was more money in the bank account, her occasional withdrawals had gotten bigger as well.

She knew what was happening. Kyle didn’t need to tell her.

But things were getting better from the first day between father and daughter.

Jenna was enrolled in school the day after Kyle took over the team, and the next two days she spent trying to adjust to her new surroundings. She missed her East London friends, and Kyle promised to try to get her back home as often as he could.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “But this came up and I had to try.”

“I know,” she replied. “And I read what you told the press.”

His introductory news conference, such as it was, had gone as well as could be expected. For him, the highlight came when the reporter from the Oxford Mail had asked why he was coming back into the League Two management game.

“I’m here because I have the chance to get it right, with a club that has been in the Premiership. I have lost sleep at night over what happened at Torquay and I’ve been desperate for a chance to get another shot at it. I interviewed at a lot of clubs who didn’t think I was the right person to do that but this club did. I am determined to repay the faith that Mr. Eales and the board have shown in me. I won’t rest until we succeed.”

The second highlight came when he was asked whether he felt a failure for what happened last season.

“The record might say so but I have to prove it to myself. I learned a lot from what happened at Torquay and I am grateful for the chance they gave me. We all worked hard but results didn’t go our way. So if you want to call that failure, then the record would bear you out. But I am driven, and I do mean driven, to make sure I never have that feeling again.”

It sounded good. Turning words into reality would be much more difficult.

[size=3]League Two Table
17 November 2014


| Pos | Team          | Pld   | Won   | Drn   | Lst   | For   | Ag    | G.D.  | Pts   | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 1st | Portsmouth    | 17    | 13    | 3     | 1     | 38    | 15    | 23    | 42    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 2nd | Northampton   | 17    | 11    | 4     | 2     | 33    | 14    | 19    | 37    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 3rd | Plymouth      | 17    | 11    | 3     | 3     | 36    | 22    | 14    | 36    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 4th | Tranmere      | 17    | 10    | 4     | 3     | 31    | 21    | 10    | 34    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 5th | Wycombe       | 17    | 10    | 2     | 5     | 29    | 22    | 7     | 32    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 6th | Stevenage     | 17    | 9     | 4     | 4     | 30    | 21    | 9     | 31    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 7th | Shrewsbury    | 17    | 9     | 4     | 4     | 23    | 16    | 7     | 31    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 8th | Luton         | 17    | 10    | 1     | 6     | 25    | 20    | 5     | 31    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 9th | Newport Co    | 17    | 7     | 5     | 5     | 24    | 22    | 2     | 26    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 10th| Morecambe     | 17    | 8     | 2     | 7     | 19    | 19    | 0     | 26    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 11th| Accrington    | 17    | 8     | 1     | 8     | 18    | 17    | 1     | 25    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 12th| Cambridge     | 17    | 6     | 6     | 5     | 31    | 24    | 7     | 24    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 13th| Mansfield     | 17    | 7     | 3     | 7     | 25    | 24    | 1     | 24    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 14th| Bury          | 17    | 7     | 2     | 8     | 17    | 18    | -1    | 23    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 15th| Burton        | 17    | 7     | 1     | 9     | 24    | 29    | -5    | 22    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 16th| York          | 17    | 4     | 6     | 7     | 21    | 23    | -2    | 18    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 17th| Hartlepool    | 17    | 5     | 3     | 9     | 18    | 25    | -7    | 18    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 18th| Carlisle      | 17    | 5     | 2     | 10    | 19    | 25    | -6    | 17    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 19th| AFC Wimbledon | 17    | 4     | 5     | 8     | 17    | 23    | -6    | 17    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 20th| Exeter        | 17    | 4     | 4     | 9     | 22    | 33    | -11   | 16    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 21st| Southend      | 17    | 3     | 6     | 8     | 15    | 23    | -8    | 15    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 22nd| OXFORD        | 17    | 2     | 5     | 10    | 15    | 33    | -18   | 11    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 23rd| Dag & Red     | 17    | 2     | 2     | 13    | 7     | 26    | -19   | 8     | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 24th| Cheltenham    | 17    | 1     | 4     | 12    | 11    | 33    | -22   | 7     | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|[/size]

# # #

[Gricehead]

Oxford have never been in the Premiership

They were in Division One in the 1980s (a.k.a. the time before football began)

[tenthreeleader]

You have hit on an element of Cain's character that I wasn't sure anyone would catch. Simply put, he's not always right. So what you've done, really, is to foreshadow something I was about to write.

__

Kyle’s meetings with individual players revealed some of the rot that had set in.

No fewer than five players came to Kyle with complains about their training that first day. Reserve player Sam Long was joined by Balmy, Ashby, O’Dowda and Maddison to complain about how Appleton had treated them in training. They weren’t happy and Kyle understood that it translated into how they were playing.

Kyle understood. He felt how players who were upset weren’t happy within their very souls. They wanted to play and they didn’t feel they were getting the right instruction.

Well, he was the manager and he knew that feeling perfectly well. He knew what it was like to feel like things weren’t right, like a man felt who was being short-shrifted.

It was hard. In a position of authority, he was able to help individual situations while helping the club. He did the best he could, while checking with Fazackerley about how to best help the players in question. If there was anything Kyle Cain understood, it was the need to help someone who was hurting.

They had complaints about the heavy level of their training. As it looked, Appleby had used training as a measure of punishment rather than as a measure of instruction for some players. Kyle couldn’t prove it, but from the reaction of the players, it appeared to be accurate.

Perhaps it was sour grapes. But too many of the players were grousing pretty loudly about being worked too hard, and if that many players were upset there was probably something to it.

The problem was that Kyle needed to show he was in charge, and granting a blanket amnesty on training offenses might not be the best way to show that the inmates really weren’t running the asylum.

Yet, to preserve squad morale, Kyle decided to bend. However, he told each player that however onerous their prior training restrictions had been, he reserved the right to reinstate them – and perhaps more – if they abused his good faith.

Or, as he put it, “I’ll put you all on the rack if you cross me on this.”

That seemed to get his message across pretty well. He had to get this right, and he was determined to get it right.

That said, Kyle was prepared to give the players a fairly long leash, especially Maddison, who he really needed to perform at his peak. The young man appeared to make Oxford go from everything he had seen.

The other key item in those first days in charge was to take care of some business. He also had to answer to the Mail, who said, in essence, “thanks for your generosity, but we’ve never been in the Premiership.”

That was a faux pas, and some fans saw it as the words of someone unfamiliar with the club’s, or the game’s, traditions. For a man who needed the fans to be onside right away, it was a silly, silly mistake and he kicked himself for it all the next day.

Kyle didn’t take well to failure, perceived or otherwise. He wanted to try to put things right and he knew that wins – and a little closer attention to detail – were the fastest way to get to that point.

All that said, Kyle saw that a thin squad with only one loanee was susceptible in ways it ought not to be. That wasn’t immediately fixable due to the loan transfer window being nearly closed and most of the worthwhile loan talent already long gone to other clubs. A parent club was the answer.

For his part, Eales had done the math before Kyle met with the club’s board to make the request, but the shocking thing was that someone hadn’t already thought of it.

It was no wonder Oxford United, in the First Division (not the Premiership, thank you) as recently as 1988 and the Second Division as recently as 1999, was in the shape it was in. At least, it seemed obvious to Kyle, even if he didn’t get the nomenclature quite right.

The club didn’t own its ground, instead leasing the Kassam Stadium. Eales, a businessman who had taken over the chairmanship in July, wanted a freehold ground as a matter of club policy, but the money just wasn’t there. It would have to come from somewhere, and that ‘somewhere’ was finding success.

Or in finding someone who could help them find success. That seemed to be a shortcut.

That should have been an obvious fact to Eales, who had made his money during eleven years as Chief Executive Officer of LDC, the private equity part of Lloyds Banking Group, and who had an eye for how to make a quid.

Kyle sized up the board the day after he was hired. At the head of the table sat the boss, Eales, his close-dropped hair freshly cut short and roughly, if unevenly, swept over from a part over his left eye. His characteristic wide-bowed glasses framed a face that was at once wide at the cheeks but healthy, with an easy smile when he was happy and a rather menacing frown when he was not.

It was Kyle’s job to make sure on-pitch results made him smile.

Eales’ Chief Executive Officer, Mark Ashton, sat to his right. Both men wore their characteristic yellow ties with blue pin stripes over dress shirts. They were all business.

Ashton’s narrow-set eyes and close brows made him look formidable when he wasn’t happy and his squarish face and strong jaw both showed an intensity of character which meant Kyle would need to be on his toes when talking with him. So he made his pitch as clearly and succinctly as he could, his East London accent sounding a bit out of place in Oxfordshire.

Yet the board’s answer, as Kyle knew it would be, was positive. Filling the coffers and finding a pipeline for loan players accomplished two goals at the same time.

But more important tests were ahead in the short term. The first was a home match against AFC Wimbledon on the 22^nd November.

After meeting with the board and the players, he had three days to prepare for it. And with his known fear and dislike of failure, getting off on the right foot wasn’t just a good idea.

It was essential.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

22 Nov 2014 – Oxford United (2-5-10, 22^nd place) v AFC Wimbledon (4-5-8, 19^th place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #18 – Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Kyle didn’t sleep a wink the night before the match. His nerves had gotten the better of him.

His return to management was enough to make sure of that, but the fact that defeat and a victory by Dagenham and Redbridge would put Oxford into the relegation places only made things worse.

It was Torquay all over again. He couldn’t help that, because he hadn’t anything to do with the club’s position prior to today, but it still ate at his mind.

He would do anything to help his new club avoid defeat. It was just that simple.

Finally, he tried to convince himself that the right mindset was essential, which is what he should have been doing from the beginning.

At about 2:30 in the morning, Kyle finally found some exhausted sleep, with cold sweat making him stick to the sheets. He woke up feeling clammy, which was surprising on a cold November morning.

The shower felt good, and so did finally packing Jenna into the car and driving to the ground. It was time to get things started.

# # #

Fazackerley, for his part, looked like he did this sort of thing every day.

He was waiting in Kyle’s office when the manager arrived, ready for the match in his Oxford track suit. His all-weather windbreaker was slung over one of the office chairs beside Kyle’s desk as the boss arrived to fill out his first official team sheet.

“Going to be a cold one today, Kyle,” Fazackerley said.

“Aye,” Kyle answered. “Not a day for the faint of heart.”

For his part, he was going to wear a touchline suit, which was a marked departure from how he had worked at Torquay. You only get one chance to make a first impression, he had thought, so he wore what the directors wore – a navy suitcoat with a white shirt, yellow and blue tie and dark pants.

He fished around the center desk drawer to see if there was a club lapel pin in there someplace, and happily, there was. Now he could feel “official”, and as he sat behind the desk he realized that while the center drawer contained a lapel pin, it didn’t contain anything he could use to fill out the team sheet.

He was caught out, but Fazackerley came to the resue, reaching inside his track suit to pull out a ball-point men.

“Here, Kyle, use mine,” he laughed. “There are bunch of pens at the front desk. I’ll grab you a few.”

He began to write his first-ever Oxford XI, and as he wrote, a smile broke onto his face. Kyle Cain was back.

GK – Ashdown

DR – Mullins

DC – Whing

DC – Wright (captain)

DL – Skarz

MR – Meades

MC – O’ Dowda

MC – Maddison

ML – McDonald

ST – Hylton

ST – Hoban

Substitutes: Clarke, Dunkley, Bevans, Ruffels, Long, Balmy, Rose.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

The 12,000-seat Kassam Stadium, known as The United Stadium by some members of the Supporters’ Trust and finished on only three of its four sides, was about one-third full for the match. Even that was a bit of a surprise given the performance of the club in recent weeks, but the playing of The Spinners’ Workin’ My Way Back to You during warm-ups was a nice message about intent nevertheless.

Kyle had played in the match that saw the Kassam Stadium’s record crowd – a 3-2 win for Leyton Orient before 12,343 on the last day of the 2005-06 season. That result saw Oxford relegated out of the Football League for the first time in nearly thirty years.

And now, one of those responsible for Oxford’s relegation was on the touchline about to manage the home team for the very first time. Funny game, football.

There were some in the crowd who remembered Kyle as a player for a competing club, and that meant a lukewarm reception from some parts of the assembled. That wasn’t optimal – Kyle wanted his players to get a good reception as part of its attempted, mid-season rebirth, and it wouldn’t hurt to have that good reception extended to the manager – but what he really wanted was a complete, well-played match.

That was his team-talk before kickoff.

“Don’t worry yourselves with talk of relegation and of negativity. This is the first day of the rest of your season. A new broom sweeps clean, as they say, and I’m the new broom. You are responsible for doing the sweeping. When you clean your house, the good things will come. One step at a time, gentlemen. That will get this job done.”

Oxford attacked the undeveloped West End of the stadium in the first half, electing to work toward the Oxford Mail stand in the second.

It took two minutes for the first bad thing to happen to Kyle’s new team, as Meades crumpled under a rugged challenge from Calum Kennedy, holding his shin and rocking from side to side. He could continue, but he was gimpy for a few moments while he found his feet again.

Oxford got a pair of corners just after the ten-minute mark. Both chances went begging but the team’s third corner, in sixteen minutes, generated the first good chance of the match. Maddison teed up Meades beautifully but the crocked midfielder blazed over from just outside the box, forcing the first emotional reaction of any kind from Kyle since the match had started.

That seemed to wake up the visitors, and Jake Reeves earned them a corner on twenty minutes. Things were finally beginning to hot up, as the Us tried to settle into their new manager’s preferred style.

The crowd might not have liked the idea of Kyle Cain as their manager, but they seemed to like the way his team was playing. The faithful started to warm up nicely, right along with the play, and gave a loud roar of approval at Mullins’ crunching but entirely legal tackle on Dons’ Jake Mills, which perhaps removed a bit of the sting from Meades’ earlier crocking.

The match appeared poised, as they say, and after the half hour a breakthrough came. Mullins played a ball forward that was overcooked but fortunately, defender Jack Smith turned the header into a total hash, the ball bouncing for O’Dowda down the wing.

He was onto the ball in a flash and his cross for Danny Hylton found first the support striker’s forehead and then the back of the Wimbledon goal for the club’s first goal under Kyle’s charge.

That ignited the crowd nicely and the remainder of the half saw a resurgent Wimbledon trying to find an equalizer only to be denied by Ashdown’s fine work in goal.

Oxford got to halftime ahead at the break in the league for the first time since 20^th September and leading a league match at all for only the second time in that same span.

So it wasn’t surprising to see the players in a really good mood – which Kyle wasn’t about to do anything to change. Even this was progress, when the club had gone so long without a league win.

He looked around the changing room and saw players laughing and smiling. He hadn’t seen much of that over the last two months of the season at Torquay and it gave him a lift as well.

Fazackerley gave the halftime talk after Kyle’s general comments about how pleased the new man on the block was, and Kyle’s hope was that the good feeling would last long enough to get a point – or more – out of the afternoon’s exertions.

As the second half started, the club attacked the Oxford Mail Stand, which housed the most vocal home supporters. That was a good thing from the point of view of keeping the players’ heads in the match.

But as the highs came, the lows came too. Meades stretched too far for a lead ball in 52 minutes and you could hear him groan from the bench as his right groin muscle stretched, the player sliding to the ground in a heap.

That forced Kyle to his bench, with Sam Long replacing Meades, but as the low passed, another high arrived. One minute later, O’Dowda latched onto a very fine ball from Maddison, cut to the inside and finished powerfully past Wimbledon’s Iraqi keeper, Shwan Jalal, to put the Us ahead by two goals – for the second time all season in the league.

That got Kyle up and off the bench, yelling and shaking his fists. He was surprised at his emotion. He hadn’t been like that at Torquay, mainly because the results hadn’t really warranted it, but now he was jumping around like he himself had scored the goal.

Most of Kyle’s original eleven stayed the course in this one – as Wimbledon flailed away with increasing helplessness, he went to his bench not to strengthen the team but simply to allow fresh legs to take part in the match.

Soon it was over. And Oxford had won, snapping an eleven-match winless streak in the league.

This time, as the players left the pitch a happy bunch for the first time in far too long, the old music on the tannoy was a bit different. Kool and the Gang’s classic Celebration sent the players to the changing room very happy indeed.

Oxford United 2 (Hylton 32, O’Dowda 53)

AFC Wimbledon 0

H/T: 1-0

A – 4,153, Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Man of the Match: James Maddison, Oxford (MR 8.8)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

It had been a nearly perfect debut day.

Exeter City, the club two spots above Oxford in the table, crashed and burned at home, falling 3-0 to ten-man, and fourth-placed, Shrewsbury. That gained back three of the five points Oxford was in arrears to the club in 20^th place. To Kyle, there was nothing like making up most of the ground at the first time of asking.

The club directly ahead of the Us, 21^st-placed Southend, had coughed up a late lead in the 79^th minute and settled for a 1-1 draw at Tranmere in a match they probably deserved to win.

Below them, 23^rd placed Dag and Red had survived going down to ten men to earn a 1-1 draw with Carlisle and tail end Cheltenham, the team’s next opponent in the league, had rallied to earn the same 1-1 draw at home to Wycombe.

Four of the bottom five clubs in the league had all played at home, and Kyle Cain’s Oxford was the only one that had managed to win.

But it wasn’t all positive. The word from the physios was that Meades was going to miss a month, and that made at least one loan signing more or less imperative.

Youth striker George Jeacock was up from the u-21s to sit on the bench for Wimbledon and that wouldn’t do either. The squad’s versatility meant that a small squad size wasn't necessarily devastating since many in the group could perform more than one task. However, they were now spread too thin. Bodies were needed.

One of those bodies was 23-year old striker Matt Godden, who was contracted to Ebbsfleet Town. In the Vanarama Conference South – two leagues below the Us. But it was an example of how picked through the bigger clubs were that Godden was listed by the scouts as the best player available for loan.

Godden had been loaned out seven times in the last five seasons – and Kyle made it eight right before the loan deadline. Despite scoring ten goals in 23 starts for Scunthorpe, Dartford and Tamworth the season before, Jamie Day saw him as surplus to requirements and let him go to Kyle for three months for a comparative song.

At fifty percent of a £9,000 wage contribution, even the cash-strapped Us could afford him. The book on the striker was that he had a fine nose for goal. He just couldn’t always find the goal, or remember the offside law when he got close to it.

Kyle’s idea was to have Godden be the substitute striker until Hoskins and Campbell were ready to return from injury, and at that financial contribution it wouldn’t be a huge loss to the club if he didn’t work out.

But the best reaction of all on that first day had come from Jenna.

Having watched the contest from the directors’ box as Eales’ personal guest, she waited patiently in the lounge area underneath the South Stand for her father to arrive from the changing room.

He had told the Oxford Mail that, in the main, he couldn’t ask for better from players in their first effort:

“It was a dream start. Wimbledon are not a bad side and they did pose a threat to us for large parts of the match. But my lads kept their bottle today and with a new manager in front of them, they rose to the occasion. I think all United fans can be happy with the effort these players put out today. Looking at them after the match, it’s hard to see the club that went two months without a victory in this league. Further efforts like this will see more points earned and an easing of the relegation worries of the club.”

As he left the changing room to pick up his daughter, Kyle was buried in a happy hug from the young lady.

Kyle smiled at her, and Jenna’s joy at finally seeing her father smiling was really a sight to behold.

“I told you that you could do this,” she said. “Dad, didn’t I tell you that you could do this?”

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

In a way, the next day was almost like a dream.

Kyle had just informed Ashdown, Maddison, Mullins and O’Dowda that among them, they made up 4/11ths of the League Two Team of the Week, but he had bigger fish to fry.

He was on the phone with Kristin Fox, a young publicist.

She worked for Manchester United Football Club, and she wanted a quote from Kyle about the special arrangement about to be announced between the clubs.

“Mr. Cain, if you’d be so kind, please tell us what it means to have Manchester United as a parent club for Oxford United,” she said, and for Kyle’s money – or the Glazers’, for that matter – it sounded great.

He tried to sound non-plussed, and he failed.

“Manchester United is arguably the biggest club in the world. I can’t imagine a footballing circumstance where partnership with them would not be in the interests of the vast majority of clubs in England. We hope to help United with blooding young players for their future even as we attempt to improve our own club in the process. Today is a very good day for Oxford United Football Club.”

He said a few other things that he didn’t quite recall as well, but he was over the moon at the thought of having any sort of access to United’s never-ending pipeline of young talent – especially with United picking up the salary tab.

The announcement later that day was a joint one, but United controlled distribution, as was fitting for a club of their size. Louis van Gaal couldn’t be bothered for comment, of course, but there were numerous functionaries who were willing to be quoted for the record, including Ed Woodward, which everyone at Oxford thought was great. Of course, Eales had his say too, in the natural order of things.

Unfortunately for Kyle, though, the loan deadline has passed and as such he couldn’t take advantage of his good fortune until January – or more likely, the close season since most of the players who could have really helped were already out on loan.

But still, access to United’s youth setup, an annual contribution from the Red Devils of £80k and hosting a friendly between the clubs and keeping the proceeds – well, that was a hat trick of an entirely different type.

To put it in perspective, the £80,000 annual fee would cover about seven percent of the club’s wage bill for the entire season. The financial gulf between the Premier League and League Two was so large as to make the comparison really worth noting.

Oxford would be United’s fifth affiliated club, joining Royal Antwerp, Desportivo Brazil, Fluminense and FC Twente, and of course it was the only one in England, which frankly shocked Kyle to learn.

But the money was good, the loan players would hopefully be good, and the rest would be history in time, which would, as always, tell all.

# # #

[jdoyle9293]

Great news getting hold of United as a parent club, should boost any push for mid-table or possibly even promotion next season. Great work here, 10-3.

[tenthreeleader]

Let's put it this way ... when the list of potential parent clubs came up, the decision was pretty simple.

___

29 November 2014 – Cheltenham (1-5-12, 24^th place) v Oxford United (3-5-10, 22^nd place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #19 -- Whaddon Road, Cheltenham

The first away test for Kyle Cain’s Oxford came the next weekend and as far as tests went, on paper it couldn’t have been easier.

Only Dag and Red and Cheltenham had fewer league victories than Oxford’s three, so if they had to head out on their travels under their new boss, the Robins’ Whaddon Road was the ideal League Two destination point. Nick Barmby’s new club had a solitary win to its credit – over Dag and Red – to show for 18 matches played.

Kyle wanted to see a few different players in this match – starting in goal, where Clarke needed a chance to prove himself. An ever-present for the last five seasons, he had fallen behind Ashdown in the pecking order under Appleby. And though he might wind up second choice again, he deserved the chance to impress the new boss.

At the back, Dunkley replaced Whing in the center of the back line but that was the only change from the Wimbledon match. That was because Whing had moved to midfield to replace the injured Meades, while the new loanee, Godden, made the substitutes’ bench.

Those were the only changes, as Kyle never really believed in the idea of making mass changes to a winning eleven and his squad wasn’t big enough to ring in the changes in any event.

Oxford United – Clarke: Mullins, Dunkley, Wright (captain), Skarz, Whing, McDonald, Maddison, O’Dowda, Hylton, Hoban. Subs: Ashdown, Bevans, Ashby, Ruffels, Rose, Balmy, Godden.

It took less than two minutes for Kyle to be off the bench in elation, as Hoban finished powerfully from a lovely little cross by Mullins, who had gotten almost to the byline before unleashing a tremendous ball to the middle.

Unfortunately, the assistant on that side had, correctly, flagged Hoban for offside. That put a damper on things, but at least notice had been served of malicious intent on the part of the visitors.

The start of the match showed an Oxford side that was clearly for it, and a Cheltenham side which clearly was not.

It showed from the beginning, even though Hoban was offside. He ghosted easily between central defenders Troy Brown and Matt Taylor but had been denied by the flag.

Seven minutes later, though, he wasn’t denied by anyone. The play started innocently enough as Dunkley’s long ball toward the right was cut out by defender John Nutter on the left.

Looking for distribution options, Nutter turned to his left looking for a midfielder, and couldn’t find one. He looked to his right, looking for Taylor, and saw Hoban had ghosted between them. He looked for keeper Harry Reynolds, but by then it was too late.

Hoban caught Nutter in possession and stole the ball inside the Cheltenham area. Instantly, the ball was by Reynolds to his short side, the keeper’s left, and Oxford led away from home.

The gasps of horror from the home fans at two ridiculous defensive errors committed within ten minutes were music to Kyle’s ears.

Hoban liked them too, because six minutes later the Robins made an error every bit as bad. Skarz had a throw deep in the Cheltenham end and found the unmarked Whing after a short throw. The midfielder turned and found an unmarked O’Dowda inside the Robins area. While the defense rushed to O’Dowda, Hoban made another run into space and got the ball right next to the penalty spot with Taylor desperately trying to close.

It was too easy. It was also 2-0 within sixteen minutes.

Obviously, Kyle loved the start. How could he not? His team was dominating possession and chances and already had two goals in the bank.

Hoban was supercharged. Eight minutes later, he was making trouble again.

It was the simplest of chances. Maddison started this one, flicking the ball up the middle for the run of Hylton as he was closed by a defender. Hylton held up the ball neatly and then slipped a backheel pass to his right for Hoban, who had made a great diagonal run to leave the unfortunate Taylor for dead.

For the third time in a glorious fourteen-minute span, Hoban beat Reynolds to his near post, which drove Barmby to distraction and which put Kyle over the moon. Three goals to the good within half an hour!

The Us on the park were pretty satisfied with themselves too – and that was what Kyle had to guard against.

Right away, he was up and off the bench when he saw signs of complacency. Oxford were a world apart from their hosts in quality and the first half hour had showed it.

It was odd; the Robins being down three goals and for all practical purposes, being doomed, brought out better play from them. Oxford’s dominance faded and now it was the home team carving out decent chances, but Clarke in goal and a misfiring home strike force kept the score three-nil to United at the break.

Kyle saw a very happy group of players, but a group that needed to be reined in.

Yet he also saw a group that needed confidence, and which had equaled its season high goal tally already. He had a choice to make; put their feet on the ground and ruin the moment, or praise them and spend the second half on the touchline due to the inevitable self-satisfaction which would follow from his players.

This was a decision he never seemed to get right at Torquay, and as he stood to give his team talk, he thought it through one last time. Then he finally spoke.

“That was bloody marvelous,” he told them. “More of the same, please.”

It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that more of the same didn’t come. That said, Oxford had things well in hand and the momentary disappointment of not hanging more goals on their tail-end opposition was more than balanced by a tight defense and a very good idea of how to hold the home team down.

Mullins, who had taken a hard knock late in the first half, came off at the break in favor of Bevans, and it was thirteen minutes from time before Kyle moved again. This was a double substitution, with Whing coming off for Ashby and Godden making his debut for Hylton.

But with the match winding down, a disappointing moment opened Kyle’s eyes right as the assistant signaled for two minutes of added time.

Taylor, who had had an awful time in the first half, cleared Cheltenham’s lines with an anywhere-will-do clearance with his right foot – but which wound up going sixty yards and finding the run of substitute Eliot Richards deep in the Us defensive third. His first touch was useful, a cross right into the six-yard box – where Dunkley got caught ball-watching.

Another substitute, striker Mathieu Manset, ran onto the cross behind the statuesque Dunkley and volleyed past a startled Clarke, who hadn’t thought to come out to collect the cross. It was a consolation goal for a soundly-beaten home team, but it gave Kyle something to chew on as the team finished the match and prepared for an FA Cup date the following weekend.

Match Summary: Clarke: Mullins (Bevans 45), Dunkley, Wright (captain), Skarz, Whing (Ashby 77), McDonald, Maddison, O’Dowda, Hylton (Godden 77), Hoban. Unused subs: Ashdown, Ruffels, Rose, Balmy.

Cheltenham 1 (Mathieu Manset 90)

Oxford United 3 (Patrick Hoban 10, 16, 24)

H/T: 0-3

A – 4,073, Wheddon Road, Cheltenham

Man of the Match: Patrick Hoban, Oxford (MR 9.5)

# # #

[jdoyle9293]

Well, Manchester United are the biggest club in the world (biasedly coming from a former season ticket holder), great result again. Kyle Cain one of my favourite characters on the board at the minute.

[tenthreeleader]

There was more good news, as Exeter City had fallen 3-1 at Accrington, moving the Us up a spot in the table to 21^st place.

League Two
29 November 2014


| Pos | Team          | Pld   | Won   | Drn   | Lst   | For   | Ag    | G.D.  | Pts   | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 1st | Portsmouth    | 19    | 14    | 4     | 1     | 39    | 15    | 24    | 46    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 2nd | Plymouth      | 19    | 13    | 3     | 3     | 39    | 22    | 17    | 42    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 3rd | Northampton   | 19    | 11    | 4     | 4     | 33    | 17    | 16    | 37    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 4th | Shrewsbury    | 19    | 11    | 4     | 4     | 28    | 17    | 11    | 37    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 5th | Wycombe       | 19    | 11    | 3     | 5     | 35    | 24    | 11    | 36    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 6th | Tranmere      | 19    | 10    | 5     | 4     | 32    | 23    | 9     | 35    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 7th | Stevenage     | 19    | 10    | 4     | 5     | 32    | 23    | 9     | 34    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 8th | Luton         | 19    | 11    | 1     | 7     | 28    | 23    | 5     | 34    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 9th | Accrington    | 19    | 10    | 1     | 8     | 22    | 18    | 4     | 31    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 10th| Morecambe     | 19    | 9     | 3     | 7     | 21    | 20    | 1     | 30    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 11th| Mansfield     | 19    | 8     | 3     | 8     | 27    | 26    | 1     | 27    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 12th| Newport Co    | 19    | 7     | 6     | 6     | 25    | 24    | 1     | 27    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 13th| Bury          | 19    | 8     | 3     | 8     | 20    | 20    | 0     | 27    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 14th| Cambridge     | 19    | 6     | 7     | 6     | 33    | 27    | 6     | 25    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 15th| Burton        | 19    | 7     | 1     | 11    | 26    | 33    | -7    | 22    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 16th| Hartlepool    | 19    | 6     | 3     | 10    | 21    | 30    | -9    | 21    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 17th| Carlisle      | 19    | 5     | 4     | 10    | 21    | 27    | -6    | 19    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 18th| Southend      | 19    | 4     | 7     | 8     | 18    | 24    | -6    | 19    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 19th| York          | 19    | 4     | 6     | 9     | 21    | 27    | -6    | 18    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 20th| AFC Wimbledon | 19    | 4     | 6     | 9     | 19    | 27    | -8    | 18    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| [color=#ff0000]21st| Oxford        | 19    | 4     | 5     | 10    | 20    | 34    | -14   | 17 [/color]   | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 22nd| Exeter        | 19    | 4     | 4     | 11    | 23    | 39    | -16   | 16    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 23rd| Dag & Red     | 19    | 2     | 4     | 13    | 10    | 29    | -19   | 10    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 24th| Cheltenham    | 19    | 1     | 5     | 13    | 13    | 37    | -24   |  8    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 

There was no hope of making up enough ground to entertain promotion hopes or any such nonsense, but consecutive victories had opened up a seven-point gap over Dag and Red in the relegation fight – and judging by the expression on Eales’ face at training the following Monday, the points were most welcome.

Now, though, there was a much more difficult challenge. Fourth-placed Shrewsbury awaited in a Second Round FA Cup tie at Greenhous Meadow with a coveted spot in the Third Round – and a potentially lucrative tie against Premiership opposition – waiting in the wings.

This was an important match but as importantly, it would give Kyle a chance to see just how far his team had come in the preceding two matches.

Shrewsbury were on a three-match win streak with victories over Accrington, Exeter and Burton to credit their highly credible playoff challenge. That said, their win skein still placed them nine points behind Portsmouth, with Pompey four points clear of second-placed Plymouth Argyle.

There would be a difficult test ahead, without question. But Kyle wanted to see how his players would react.

The reaction would be even more testing when Kyle learned that Maddison would be unable to play given the terms of his loan from Coventry. That opened a giant hole in the center of midfield which he hoped Danny Rose would be able to fill.

As December 1 arrived, it was a unique day for Wycombe Wanderers, the form team in League Two. Gareth Ainsworth’s men had won six of their last eight in the league to climb to fifth place, and were richly rewarded for that form.

Ainsworth won the manager’s award; teammates Marcus Bean, Peter Murphy and Shamir Fenelon finished 1-2-3 in the Player of the Month voting; Fenelon, Aaron Pierre and Alfie Mawson finished 1-2-3 in Young Player of the Month voting; and Murphy’s strike against Hartlepool on the 29^th won the Goal of the Month. Not a bad month to be a Chairboy.

It was also a rough day to be a manager outside of London. Swansea’s Garry Monk, Southampton’s Ronald Koeman and Coventry’s Stephen Pressley all got their P45s on the same day. Kyle wondered if any of them were as devastated as he had been.

But with two wins on the spin to start his Oxford career and the board’s goal for the competition already reached, he felt he could make a few changes to see what his lads were really made of.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Stacy was getting into a good groove at her office.

Now a full-fledged librarian after a quick promotion, she felt she was beginning to thrive. She really enjoyed people and she was starting to really enjoy her work.

She wore her curly brunette hair in a pony tail slung over her right shoulder. It was perhaps not the traditional ‘librarian’ look, but Boyd had commented positively on it the first time she had worn it that way and she wanted to see what he’d say when he saw it again.

She looked calm, confident and self-assured. And as she helped patrons at the desk she felt self-reliant. It had been a long time since she had felt that way.

Kyle, for his part, had done his best. It was just not very good. He had never advanced past his boyhood club in the game and had been dire in his first try at club management. Stacy was ready to show that she could shine in a way her husband had never done.

Her clothes, while arguably a bit on the dated side, flattered her shape and even hid the slight baby bump that was beginning to show along her abdomen. Her daily bouts with morning sickness were starting to become a thing of the past and were it not for the fact that the baby was Kyle’s she might have otherwise enjoyed more about being a mother by surprise.

She hadn’t thought much about him in recent days. So he was at Oxford and had managed a couple of wins. She really couldn’t hold that against him – success in football, after all, meant more than success at home to him – so in that regard she was happy. He was getting what he really wanted, which was three points each weekend instead of a happy wife and family.

Stacy helped a patron check out a fairly decent-sized stack of books, working the checkout computer with increasing skill. That pleased her as well. She had been out of work for much of Kyle’s playing career because she hadn’t needed to work, and now that she was back on the job, she felt free.

She felt happy.

As the patron left, Boyd stepped out of his office and smiled at her.

“I like your hair, Stacy,” he said as he crossed behind her to his mailbox, which was stuffed full of memos, correspondence and other items he hadn’t quite had the time to get to during his day.

“Why, thank you, Boyd,” Stacy said, turning to face him. As she did, her blouse pulled open in just the right way, and her boss tried and failed to keep his eyes high.

“Well … yes … you’re welcome,” he said, trying not to make it obvious he’d been staring.

He knew if he said or did the wrong thing, he could face some serious issues. He didn’t want serious issues.

But when it came to Stacy Cain, Boyd Stokes thought a bit of fun might not be the worst thing in the world. As long as it wasn’t ‘serious’.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

“So what’s this I’m supposed to do about the team holiday party?”

Kyle read a memorandum from Fazackerley about plans for an event at the Spice Lounge, on the north end of the city. It was about as far from the club offices as you could get and still have both locations be in Oxford, located near the northern end of the bypass road which ringed the old city.

Yet, it was supposed to have great Indian food, and it was hoped that by the time Christmas rolled around, Kyle Cain’s management would make the festive period a lot more festive in actuality.

“You’re supposed to run that party, Kyle,” Fazackerley finally said with a smile.

“The hell you say.”

“It’s traditional,” the man listed on the club website as Assistant Head Coach said. “There’s nothing to it, really. Have a couple of players do the heavy lifting as far as making arrangements. Then you run the show, there are a few gag awards, and then everyone takes a cab home.”

As Kyle well knew, holiday parties could be trouble. Big trouble, in fact. He had a flashback that he didn’t like.

Charlotte Weber. What a girl. What a problem.

She had followed Kyle’s Orient team on the road for over a year, and whenever there was time, they would find a way to be together. At first it seemed friendly enough but Kyle knew full well he was violating both team policy and another type of policy as well.

And it was at a holiday party where Charlotte had exposed their relationship.

Her good-night tonsillectomy, delivered with Stacy standing to Kyle’s immediate right, had left little doubt as to what was going on. He had been very stupid. He knew it. He didn’t even know how she had gotten into the families-only event in the first place – which was the other reason he had been so surprised that night – and as a result, everything was out in the open.

And that had changed everything.

Things with Stacy hadn’t gone well for some time prior to that, but Kyle couldn’t put it down to Charlotte’s presence. Stacy said it had to do with Kyle being too absorbed with his football.

The problem was, he couldn’t deny it. She had been right. At that point, staying in the game meant everything to him. Only Jenna had a chance of getting close to him, until Charlotte appealed to his machismo as a player. Stacy hadn’t done that since he was a schoolboy who had just agreed terms with his boyhood club. She seemed to love him quite a bit back then.

Yet, Kyle had been wrong. Flat-out, straight-up wrong. He had grievously hurt people he cared about, and was suspended for violating team rules in the process – which meant he nearly lost his football as well.

And now, in a position of responsibility, here he was being asked to relive it all again. He had never attended another holiday party while an active player and if he weren’t manager of Oxford United, he wouldn’t have attended this one either.

But in this ethos, he had to run the show. He couldn’t imagine any idea more painful. He didn’t know where his estranged wife lived, had no particular desire to find out, and a reminder of the single biggest reason for their estrangement now stared Kyle straight in the face. Happy Christmas, Kyle Cain.

“I’ve got issues with traditions like these,” he finally said, moving the memo to the bottom of his mail pile. “I want as little as possible to do with them.”

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

6 December 2014 – Shrewsbury Town (4^th place League Two) v Oxford United (21^st place League Two)

FA Cup Second Round – Greenhous Meadow, Shrewsbury

So this was what a challenge looked like.

Nobody fancied Kyle’s side to claim victory against such higher-placed opposition, but as the phrase went, “you never know until you try”.

Kyle’s words to the team before the match were perfunctory and honest. He said what everyone felt – that despite momentum being on their side, they weren’t going to be favored to advance. So they might as well make the best of it.

Rose got the start in place of Maddison in the engine room part of the midfield, and Kyle was curious to see how that would come off. He also gave loanee Godden his first start for Oxford in place of Hylton alongside Hoban, who would hopefully keep his form.

As expected, from the beginning of the match the home team took charge. Bobby Grant had the ball past Ashdown three minutes into the match but was whistled for offside, and that helped get the team’s feet back on the ground.

But nothing could stop David Norris a few minutes later. The Shrewsbury midfielder picked up a bounding loose ball a full five yards outside the Oxford area and hit a tremendous drive into the top left corner of Ashdown’s goal. It was unstoppable, it was magnificent and it drove Shrewsbury into a lead that was richly deserved.

As the smallish home crowd celebrated, Kyle sat back on the bench. There was no point in getting upset. Sometimes the other guy just makes a great play.

But if Shrewsbury had the early going all to themselves, Kyle was thrilled at how his team responded.

Five minutes after the opener, Oxford earned a corner to the right of the Shrewsbury goal. Mullins’ effort was short, and O’Dowda gained possession inside the area. He squared, and the ball seemed to disappear into a mob of players in front of the goal.

Moments later, it was central defender Andy Whing, forward to try to disrupt the defense on the set piece, who came out with the ball at his feet, moving to his left. He had an open side to shoot at and he didn’t miss, equalizing the match at 1-1.

Oxford really took off after that, winning a free kick twenty-five yards out from goal a minute after Whing’s goal. Alex MacDonald took it, and blasted a perfectly-taken free kick over the wall and beyond the reach of the diving Jayson Leutwiler to put United ahead 2-1.

That spurred general celebration on the bench. Though against the general run of play, Oxford still led away, and Kyle was very impressed with the spirit his team was showing.

Expecting the inevitable Shrewsbury counterattack, Kyle tried to settle his team down, and it worked. That is, until first half injury time, when Connor Goldson shook loose from a group of players that included the unfortunate MacDonald, who had attempted to cut out a cross from David Norris and failed. Goldson toe-poked past Ashdown to make the score 2-2 right as the half rolled into added time.

As upset as Kyle was over conceding in the last minute, he couldn’t be too upset with the half his men had played. They were missing key players and were still more than in the match.

He changed his tack to his players during the halftime team talk. “This is poised for you, men,” he said, his blood up and pacing back and forth excitedly across the front of the changing room. “You can do this. If you get the next one I like us to win this bloody thing. Who wants to be the one to get it?”

With that, he sent his players back onto the pitch and tried to think through his tactical options – which were few and far between.

He had five players out injured, Maddison ineligible and two seventeen-year-olds – Jeacock and defender Cian McCormack – up from the u-21s to give him a full bench. He wanted to play 4-2-3-1 but as he looked down the bench he saw he only had one player he could trust to play as a holding midfielder, and he was already out there.

That left Kyle’s Us as rigid as a tent pole tactically. He was going to have to watch his team sort things out in the form of Mullins.

But now things slowed down a bit as the teams probed more carefully for an opening after the hell-for-leather first half. Ashdown settled down a bit in goal and as the match ticked past the hour, Kyle started thinking about the possibility of having to play added time with such a small squad. It wasn’t appetizing.

On 65 minutes, Oxford’s defense worked the offside trap perfectly, catching Shrewsbury’s Bobby Grant unaware when defender Nathanial Knight-Percival’s punt upfield caught him a full three yards offside. Yet he kept going, to Ashdown’s screams of offside, and though the keeper stopped Grant, he couldn’t hold the rebound, which James Collins poked home.

And the damn flag stayed down.

Like a jack-in-the-box, Kyle was up off the bench and screaming at the fourth official. There was no doubt. Grant had been absolutely, unquestionably, blind-man-could-see-it offside and yet Shrewsbury led.

While Kyle’s defenders protested, Shrewsbury stole the ball after the kickoff and moved down the right. Cameron Gayle got to the byline and crossed and again, Collins finished, heading home for a devastating double-strike that had the home team ahead 4-2.

If the first goal had made the Us angry, the second made them incensed. It made Kyle especially angry, as the officials were his worry, not his players’. They hadn’t gotten Collins marked and the result was a two-goal deficit away from home.

Angrily, Kyle turned to his substitutes in their warm-ups, grabbing Hylton by the shirt collar with one hand and Josh Ashby by the shirt collar with the other.

Not only had they conceded twice in 90 seconds, Mullins had managed to get himself crocked in the process and had to come off. Now Oxford had a more attacking shape, with Ashby replacing Mullins and Hylton replacing Godden, who had reminded the world why he was a Conference striker on loan at a club two leagues up.

Kyle threw his players forward in an effort to get back into the match. Chances flowed freely – corners, set pieces, buildups – but everything died in the application, either wide of the goal or safely into the arms of keeper Leutwiler. The Third Round dream was dying quickly.

The referee signaled for two minutes of added time – and then Rose, on a set piece deep in the Shrewsbury end, found an unmarked Ashby right on the top of the eighteen-yard box, and his screamer beat Leutwiler to his left to give Oxford a ray of hope.

Ashby grabbed the ball he had used to score his first goal for the club and sprinted back to the center circle for the kickoff. And the Us got the ball back, slashing back deep into the Shrewsbury half, with Skarz’s cross headed behind for a corner as the match moved into its 92^nd and final minute.

Moving quickly, Bevans went to take it and whipped a perfect ball deep into the box. Right there was a gloriously unmarked and loudly screaming Hoban.

He headed over. That was it.

Kyle stood up, hands interlaced over the top of his head in shock. He went to shake hands with Micky Mellon, who looked like he had just swallowed a whole grapefruit, and looked out to see his players remonstrating with referee Jeremy Simpson and his assistants to no avail.

He headed onto the pitch and shooed his players away.

“Now, now,” he said, pushing first Dunkley and then Whing away from the officials. “These three old blind guys will have a hard time finding the tunnel if you stand in their way. Let’s go home.”

Oxford United: Ashdown: Bevans, Whing, Wright (captain, Dunkley 81), Skarz, MacDonald, Mullins (Ashby 66), Rose, O’Dowda, Godden (Hylton 66), Hoban. Unused subs: Clarke, McCormack, Balmy, Jeacock.

Shrewsbury Town 4 (David Norris 16, Connor Goldson 45, James Collins 64, 65)

Oxford United 3 (Andy Whing 21, Alex MacDonald 22, Josh Ashby 90+1)

H/T: 2-2

A – 3,515, Greenhous Meadow, Shrewsbury

Man of the Match – James Collins, Shrewsbury (MR 8.8)

# # #

[STFCDP1990]

Glad to see Shrewsbury doing well! Just a quick thing, it's Nathaniel Knight Percival, not Daniel. Great story as always though!

[tenthreeleader]

Kyle’s words to the Mail were clear and concise.

“On their third goal, Grant was unquestionably offside. I’m damned if I know how professional officials miss that call. And since it was the third goal of a match we lost 4-3, I happen to think that mistake played a pretty significant part in the outcome. I know nobody expected us to win today but I’m gutted for my lads and I’m damn proud of them for what they did. They deserved a better fate. I’ll be looking forward to the day when these calls even out, as they say.”

Referee Simpson had spent the majority of his last ten matches taking charge of u-18 sides. That said, Kyle couldn’t begrudge Shrewsbury two of their goals. The fourth one had come while his side was asleep at the switch and that was something he could, and would have to, deal with.

What also bothered him was losing. That had obviously happened too often at Torquay, and Kyle wanted the scalp of a club above his in the table.

Perhaps a bit too much. He took the loss hard, though he tried not to show it in front of the players.

It was that whole “failure” thing. He was good at feeling the emotion and not so good at avoiding it.

That said, the gratifying lack of correspondence from the FA the day after his published comments showed that his complaint about Mr. Simpson (who was already being referred to as ‘Homer’ by the lads at training) wasn’t groundless.

What was a real concern, though, was the pending visit of Bury, with the Shakers looking for a new manager. After the weekend, they had sacked David Flitcroft and named assistant manager Alan Knight as caretaker. Kyle knew full well that clubs who have just sacked their manager often start stronger in the interim – as evidenced by Torquay running third in the Vanarama Conference after having sacked him – and he was going to be careful.

Dover (Chris Kinnear) and Bristol Rovers (Darrell Clarke) also sacked their bosses on the FA Cup weekend, which is a good time for clubs not in the competition to make moves since they have the week off.

Kyle hoped he wouldn’t be next when the Third Round was played, but knew full well that victory over Bury would nearly double the club’s point total for the season in just the three matches since he took over.

Provided they won, of course.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Kyle was ready for some good news during the runup to the Bury match. Head Physio Andy Lord nearly gave it to him.

Meades, who had missed time with a groin strain, was due back during the week and Kyle was seriously considering putting him straight back on the bench due to the other injuries still affecting the senior squad.

Striker Will Hoskins, desperately missed with a sprained ankle, was nearly ready to return to training but would need another week. Midfielder Michael Collins still needed two weeks to fully recover from a partial hamstring tear. Ruffels still needed a few days for his gashed leg to allow him to start running again and reserve forward John Campbell was two weeks away from returning after his ankle ligament strain.

Getting those players back would be like getting half a team for free, Kyle knew. At the moment he had very little flexibility in the senior squad and that made his team predictable. There was also very little competition for places, something else which hurt the team. If a player didn’t necessarily have to train well to earn a place, that wasn’t good.

The other key issue of the week was convincing Coventry to extend Maddison’s loan until the end of the season.

One thing Appleby had done well was build a team around players contracted to Oxford United. He had also been smart enough to loan Maddison, who Kyle already saw changed the team in midfield. Although only seventeen, the boy had a good head on his shoulders. He didn’t necessarily like to train, and had actually complained to Fazackerley about it, but dislike of hard training wasn’t unusual among teenagers.

And Oxford was a completely different team when he was pulling the strings, so Kyle wanted to keep him around. Rose wasn’t a horrible player, but he was a definite second choice to the Sky Blue loanee.

So as Kyle looked toward January and the possibility of reinforcement, he saw a club well-suited to the addition of loan players. He was thinking of adding a holding midfielder, another defender and another midfielder – and once the injured strikers returned to the fold, he felt Oxford would be in good shape for the stretch run.

Kyle was bound and determined to get the club to forty points and the relative guarantee of safety as part of that stretch run.

That would require twenty-three points from twenty-seven matches. With no cup competitions to worry about, and the club sitting on seventeen points in the table, Kyle thought that much was doable.

Of course, the board wanted more, such as a mid-table finish. The season before, 12^th place needed 59 points and goal difference to attain.

Earning forty-two points from twenty-seven matches would be a whole different kettle of fish. And if that was what his job depended on, well, he could already feel the pressure building.

Yet, Kyle hoped he would handle the inevitable failures differently this time. As he sat at his desk, arranging knickknacks and placing a picture of him with Jenna at a far corner, he looked over to the television set mounted on the wall to his right. On the wall next to the screen, he had placed a poster. It read:

“Whatever doesn’t kill me had better start running.”

# # #

[chesterfan2]

Enjoying this story very much, and I'm very much looking forward to how this season progresses. Carry on the good work, 10-3.

[tenthreeleader]

cf, thank you. Part of me thinks this particular piece may turn out to be my best work on the forum. It shows some of the signs to me but you guys will be the judge of that, not me.

___

13^th December 2014 - Oxford United (4-5-10, 21^st place) v Bury (8-3-8, 13^th place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #20 – The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

There was a definite chill in the air. It was a good day not to have to travel.

A fast-moving weather system had brought freezing rain and gusty winds to southeast England that morning and it was pretty clear it wasn’t going to be a day for the faint-hearted.

Both teams needed points. Kyle’s needed them more than caretaker Alan Knights’ Shakers, but the reason Knight was in his club’s big chair even on a temporary basis was because they were underperforming.

It did appear from the state of the team, though, that Kyle had a first-choice Oxford XI pretty well picked out. There was a gulf of quality in certain areas of the team and that was one reason why it was entering the day 21^st in the table.

And for some reason, Meades had his knickers in a twist when he arrived at the stadium. Freshly back from his injury suffered in the opening match of Kyle’s tenure, he sat brooding in his locker stall even though Kyle had put him on the bench sight unseen and match-fitness yet to be truly attained.

That was the state of Oxford’s squad players – an injured player could go right back into the eighteen without even a warmup match because he was so much better rusty than some of the reserves were when they were match-fit.

Kyle tried to figure out what was bothering his winger, but when the match started he found he had other things to worry about.

Unfortunately, one of those things to worry about was his keeper, Ashdown. The former Portsmouth man put his team behind singlehandedly – or rather, doublehandedly – when he allowed an easy thirty-yard strike by Bury’s Pablo Mills to go right through his hands and into the goal twenty minutes into the game.

It was a howler of the first order, and the keeper reacted as you might have expected – by throwing his head back in frustration and mouthing something that looked like the word “hack” if you could read lips, which Kyle couldn’t.

The Shakers led away, and that was cause for some of the more jaded home supporters in the South Stand to open fire on the hapless Us.

“No wonder you couldn’t play for Leeds,” one fan yelled at Ashdown as he punted the ball back toward the center circle for the kickoff.

Kyle frowned, but dared not turn his head lest he spark something more sinister. He wanted fans to back the players and Ashdown was human, for crying out loud. That said, mistakes like that were ones the team couldn’t afford and everyone knew it.

“Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss,” the same man yelled as the team prepared to put the ball back into play. As far as Kyle could tell, the man was in the minority, but as the first half hour dragged on, the murmurs and whistles of the crowd, such as it was, started to get louder.

Kyle poked his head out of the dugout and walked to the touchline as the crowd buzzed. It appeared as though he was still on a trial of sorts, as a couple of results against lower clubs did not a successful team make. The whistles from the crowd were evidence enough of that.

But now Kyle’s men were starting to climb back into the match. Hoban came close in twenty-five minutes to make people note that there were in fact two teams entitled to contest for the ball, and then Mullins blazed over on a bouncing setup from Maddison, who had teed him up just a bit too firmly.

Then, Bury made a defensive error as bad as Ashdown’s. Maddison had the ball a full forty yards from goal on the left side and laid a ball ahead for the run of Skarz down the left touchline. His ball in headed straight for defender Adam El-Abd.

The Egyptian saw the ball coming, raised his leg to intercept and clear his lines – and missed the ball. It bounded right onto the foot of the onrushing Hylton, who beat keeper Rob Lainton easily from five yards to level the match at 1-1 in 33 minutes.

Now level, the players returned to action with a spring in their step.

Two minutes later, they were dragging again, as schoolboy defending from both central defenders allowed Ryan Lowe to find bags of space between Whing and Wright to take Adam Drury’s cheeky little lob with time to spare. Ashdown had no chance this time, and the visitors again led the match.

The match got to half still at 2-1 for Bury and despite a half where his team had had much the better of the play, both of Bury’s shots on target in the first half had found the net.

“I’m not really sure what I just saw out there,” he told his players. “But I’d better see something better in the second half. The team that battled Shrewsbury so hard must have gone to the pub today.”

He made little attempt to hide his disdain. Being too nice was something he had been accused of doing at Torquay and he had taken that lesson to heart.

Besides, that loudmouth in the stand had started flapping his gums again before the break and it was starting to get annoying.

Kyle let Fazackerley play the ‘good cop’ in the team talk while he made his expectations abundantly clear just before sending the team out for the second half. And immediately, Oxford’s play began to brighten.

Everywhere except in front of goal, that is.

Hoban was the first to waste a gilt-edged chance, firing wide from less than ten yards as he hit the ball with the outside of his boot from a scramble in front of Lainton’s goal.

Then it was MacDonald, the set-piece hero of the Shrewsbury match, putting the ball deep into the mass of parked cars beyond the west fence.

And to make matters worse, there was Wright, the club captain, limping off bleeding after a heavy challenge on Tom Soares. He had won the ball but had gotten the worst of the exchange, replaced by Dunkley on the hour.

They looked the better team, Oxford did, but were unable to find a way through. Maddison took a corner which bounced around like a live grenade in the Bury six-yard box in 65 minutes, but the ball found its way into the grateful arms of the diving Lainton in the end. They were snakebit.

Just after seventy minutes, MacDonald proved it again by taking a free kick from thirty yards out that curved delightfully around the wall, past the despairing dive of Lainton – and squarely off the inside of the keeper’s right post.

Then, Whing changed everything by hustling to be first to the rebound, hitting the open goal in 71 minutes to get the match level again at 2-2.

“Never a dull moment with these lads,” Kyle told Fazackerley as the faithful who hadn’t yet started for home showed their full approval.

Being level again obviously agreed with the Us, who pressed forward over the next few minutes with a series of sharp crosses from both flanks, but the Shakers defense held firm. They tried the middle, with Maddison finding Hylton at the top of the penalty area with his back to goal.

He was felled by a challenge from behind by Ellis Plummer right on the line. Kyle looked at referee Stephen Martin.

The man in black wasted no time in pointing to the spot, while the Bury bench and visiting support went completely crazy. While they were arguing, Kyle noticed with a bit of alarm that Whing had grabbed the ball, which seemed odd on a club with at least two better penalty options in both of the strikers.

Yet the defender wanted the ball and the strikers let him have it. Whing whipped a perfectly taken penalty into Lainton’s top left corner to put Oxford ahead for the first time in the match.

It was at that time that Mullins waved to come off, having taken a kick to the calf in the buildup leading to the penalty. Kyle turned to the disaffected Meades, who did not look best pleased.

“Get in there and lock down that right side, you can do it,” Kyle said, and the player looked at him like he had two heads. His reaction was one of anger at being called upon to play.

Kyle frowned. He hated the raw petulance the player was showing him. But there was no one else on the bench Kyle could trust. So he changed his tack from Mr. Nice Guy to Mr. ‘Start Running’.

“Get in there before I change my mind and bust your arse to the reserves,” he snapped, signaling to the fourth official that a change was at hand.

Meades was pedestrian. Evidently he thought he was still not fully recovered, or he didn’t want to be out there, or some such thing.

Kyle brought on Rose for the knackered O’Dowda two minutes from time, but it was just to waste time. Bury had no fight left.

And in the end, the man behind the home bench was gone by the final whistle anyway. Kyle thought he had missed quite a fightback, but might well have been having a good time down the pub.

Oh, well. Sometimes life allows you to stick a thumb in someone’s eye. Those are among life’s best moments.

Oxford United: Ashdown: Bevans, Whing, Wright (captain, inj, Dunkley 60), Skarz, Mullins (inj, Meades 82), MacDonald, Maddison, O’Dowda (Rose 88), Hylton, Hoban. Unused subs: Clarke, Ashby, Balmy, Godden.

Oxford United 3 (Danny Hylton 33; Andy Whing 71, pen 82)

Bury 2 (Pablo Mills 20, Ryan Lowe 35)

H/T: 1-2

A – 4,106, The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Man of the Match: Andy Whing, Oxford (MR 9.1)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

While finding plenty of praise for the team for its second-half fightback, Kyle had quiet words with Meades after the match.

“You know, that shirt you’re wearing might not mean much to you today, but it means something to me. If I get any more pushback from you when I put you into a match someone else will wear that shirt. Don’t make me give you a warning. Now, get.”

He had neither the time nor the patience for such things and the fact that the word was issued quietly was a favor to the player.

His words to the press, though, were considerably more contrite.

“I did say last week I was looking forward to the officials’ decisions evening out. I guess I hadn’t thought they would even out quite so soon. I’ve learnt a lesson here.”

Knight, for his part, met the press in a decidedly bad mood. As the caretaker manager, he was obviously interested in claiming the top role for himself and to have a “******* in the black” take a point away from him on his debut, well, that just wasn’t on.

Kyle watched Knight do the duty he had done just last week and didn’t envy him. He knew he’d be back in the chair complaining, perhaps even as early as next week if he was especially unlucky, and he also knew that such individual stitches held together the tapestry of the beautiful game.

Behind him, happy Oxford players headed to the car park to their vehicles and the start of their ‘victory evenings’. Whing led the parade, the central defender now having tallied three times in his last two matches – already marking a career high for the 30-year old backliner.

He had given everything that day, had dramatically improved his performance in the second half, and was off to dinner with his family a happy man.

Behind him trailed Meades, who gave Kyle a wide berth as he passed, shoulders slumped, chin drooped, and deep in thought.

“Good,” Kyle thought to himself. “There’s a lad who needs to sort things out.”

Finally, he was ready to leave for home himself. Jenna had been most patient, and sat in his office texting friends from London while he relived certain parts of the match again on video.

One of the things he looked at was the penalty – it was pretty clear to him that the foul had come outside the box and as such Mr. Martin had indeed evened things up in the officiating department from Kyle’s point of view.

And that stupid memo had now worked its way back to the top of Kyle’s ‘to-do’ pile. A holiday party. How could things get worse?

“Oh, well,” he thought, rising slowly from behind his desk with three more points safely in the bag. “Don’t invite trouble.”

Jenna stood and moved to hug her father and as they left the room, Kyle turned out the light. They took a left turn and walked toward the club offices and the outer door which led to the car park.

When they arrived, they passed one of the club’s non-executive directors, Frank Waterhouse, who had a lady in tow. There was something familiar about her but Kyle couldn’t quite place the face.

Waterhouse, who doubled as the club’s Chief Financial Officer, did it for him.

He stopped them by a quick wave of his hand to get Kyle’s attention and as he did, the lady stepped forward. Kyle’s eyes met hers and they both reacted with shock as they finally recognized each other.

“Kyle, this is our new director of promotions and sports marketing, Diana Moore. She comes to us from Hemel Hempstead, which is …”

“…no need, Mr. Waterhouse,” Kyle interjected. “I know exactly where Hemel Hempstead is. It’s about an hour east, and two leagues south, of here.” His tone was cutting.

She couldn’t look him in the eyes. And evidently she had forgotten one of the rules of job seeking, which is never to place yourself near the control of someone you once screwed right through the floor.

Kyle continued.

“Mr. Waterhouse, Ms. Moore and I are already acquainted. Let me simply say that if she wants my co-operation, she will have it, but only on my terms.”

# # #

| Pos | Team          | Pld   | Won   | Drn   | Lst   | For   | Ag    | G.D.  | Pts   | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 1st | Portsmouth    | 20    | 15    | 4     | 1     | 42    | 16    | 26    | 49    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 2nd | Plymouth      | 20    | 14    | 3     | 3     | 41    | 22    | 19    | 45    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 3rd | Shrewsbury    | 20    | 12    | 4     | 4     | 29    | 17    | 12    | 40    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 4th | Wycombe       | 20    | 12    | 3     | 5     | 37    | 25    | 12    | 39    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 5th | Tranmere      | 20    | 11    | 5     | 4     | 35    | 25    | 10    | 38    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 6th | Northampton   | 20    | 11    | 4     | 5     | 33    | 19    | 14    | 37    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 7th | Luton         | 20    | 12    | 1     | 7     | 31    | 24    | 7     | 37    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 8th | Stevenage     | 20    | 10    | 5     | 5     | 33    | 24    | 9     | 35    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 9th | Accrington    | 20    | 10    | 1     | 9     | 23    | 21    | 2     | 31    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 10th| Morecambe     | 20    | 9     | 3     | 8     | 22    | 23    | -1    | 30    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 11th| Mansfield     | 20    | 8     | 4     | 8     | 28    | 27    | 1     | 28    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 12th| Newport Co    | 20    | 7     | 7     | 6     | 26    | 25    | 1     | 28    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 13th| Bury          | 20    | 8     | 3     | 9     | 22    | 23    | -1    | 27    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 14th| Cambridge     | 20    | 6     | 7     | 7     | 33    | 28    | 5     | 25    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 15th| Burton        | 20    | 7     | 2     | 11    | 26    | 33    | -7    | 23    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 16th| Hartlepool    | 20    | 6     | 4     | 10    | 21    | 30    | -9    | 22    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 17th| York          | 20    | 5     | 6     | 9     | 23    | 28    | -5    | 21    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 18th| Carlisle      | 20    | 5     | 5     | 10    | 22    | 28    | -6    | 20    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
[color=#ff0000]| 19th| Oxford        | 20    | 5     | 5     | 10    | 23    | 36    | -13   | 20    | [/color]
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 20th| Southend      | 20    | 4     | 7     | 9     | 19    | 26    | -7    | 19    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 21st| AFC Wimbledon | 20    | 4     | 6     | 10    | 20    | 29    | -9    | 18    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 22nd| Exeter        | 20    | 4     | 5     | 11    | 24    | 40    | -16   | 17    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| 23rd| Dag & Red     | 20    | 2     | 4     | 14    | 12    | 32    | -20   | 10    | 
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 

[jdoyle9293]

Man, 2014 isn't even out of the way and i've been hooked more times than I care to mention. Great work as always, 10-3.

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks very much ... I will say this much, this story is immense fun to write.

___

Waterhouse had been quite stunned at Kyle’s behavior.

Whatever it was about Diana Moore, it had set Oxford’s manager off like a moon rocket. Waterhouse had been so startled, in fact, that he had failed to ask why Ms. Moore had generated the reaction she had. He was certainly entitled to that answer as a director.

But Kyle had not forgotten how Diana Moore had treated him. He wasn’t in the business of forgiving slights – goodness knew that people he had wronged were still making him pay – but the fact of the matter was now that she was on his team.

That didn’t mean he had to like it.

And when Kyle told Jenna that night about his new co-worker, the look of disgust on his teenage daughter’s face told him that, at least in his own house, he was on good ground.

Now, he wasn’t even the shortest-tenured manager in League Two.

After the weekend’s games, 15^th placed Burton Albion sacked former Chelsea man and Dutch international Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, and Kyle’s first managerial opponent, AFC Wimbedon’s Neil Ardley, also got his walking papers.

Neil Cox was the new caretaker for the Dons and nobody knew what Burton was going to do.

Better news came when Coventry – and Maddison – quite happily agreed to extend the midfielder’s loan until the end of the season. The reason? Under Appleton, he wasn’t playing. Under Kyle, he was. That made things pretty simple.

The team headed to the Northeast and Hartlepool a pretty happy bunch. The Teessiders were in the middle of an ambivalent run of form, with their ten draws in twenty matches putting them just south of mid-table.

Kyle’s Oxford also had ten draws – but three straight wins in the league, which meant they were hopefully heading in an entirely different direction.

Stopping the Monkey Hangers would be a tough task, as they were a free-scoring bunch. And it had already been established that one of the reasons for Oxford’s travails before Kyle’s arrival was that they weren’t very good in their own defensive third.

Kyle thought he had a potential answer for that – Ashdown wasn’t going to keep his place for Hartlepool.

This was too bad – Kyle had quietly started negotiations with the keeper he already knew was the team’s immediate future on a new contract – but his howler against Bury meant he couldn’t stay between the sticks for the next match.

The atmosphere Kyle wanted to create was one where competition for places was key, and serious mistakes could result in a fear of loss of playing time. However, as thin as the squad was, most of the squad was well aware they’d be in or around the eighteen regardless of how they played.

Ashdown needed to learn that, though he was valued, he needed to play better. The contract offer helped with the first part. Ryan Clarke would help with the second.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Stacy looked across the table at Boyd Stokes.

They sat at dinner – at The Coach and Horses, no less – and she was trying to keep her eyes on her meal rather than on her dinner date.

For his part, Boyd was being his usual gallant self. And he was dressed well – he always dressed well. Stacy appreciated how he made her feel.

Today, though, Boyd was very interested in how Stacy looked.

They enjoyed a quiet dinner. She had had a difficult day at work with some patrons who could have been charitably described as … well, patronizing. Her mood wasn’t good, but she knew that Boyd could lift her spirits.

Ordinarily, her husband would have done that, but she knew he was on his way to someplace far away and that seemed to be all that mattered to him.

So, she was enjoying an evening with Boyd.

“You had a rough day,” he said sympathetically. He took a bite from his burger, on a brioche bun – he liked to think of himself as a meat-and-potatoes guy – and couldn’t help but smile at her.

For her part, Stacy’s tastes were a bit more refined – she preferred the Spatchcock wood pigeon, pearl barley and char-grilled radicchio – especially since her morning sickness had subsided a bit and she was able to keep more food in her stomach where it was supposed to be.

She wore her hair back in a simple pony tail. The seeming severity of the pullback of her hair from her temples actually accentuated her eyes, which Boyd liked quite a bit.

Her eyes were brown, and when she concentrated just so, they seemed to get bigger. Kyle had enjoyed gazing into them back in the day but now, that light seemed to have long since been extinguished.

Stacy felt sorry for herself in a way. She was separated, by her own choice, pregnant and far from her other child, whom she naturally loved.

But, as Kyle would have said, “you didn’t have to leave”, and if there was anything she didn’t want to think about now, it was about what Kyle Cain would have said.

“Penny for your thoughts.” Boyd looked at her quizzically from across the table.

“Oh, nothing,” she said after a short pause to swallow a particularly good bite of radicchio. “Just thinking about the baby, actually.”

“Any worries?”

“The OB says no,” she answered. “But when you get to be my age and you haven’t been through something like this in fifteen years or so, you start to worry about certain things.”

“Such as?”

“Well, they say women around forty who have children have an increased risk of bearing a child with Down’s Syndrome.”

Boyd knew that, but he wanted Stacy to be the one to say it.

“Do you ever worry about it?”

“Not really,” she said. In that regard, she spoke the truth. “What I worry about more is my child growing up with a father.”

Boyd then tested the waters.

“Your child has a father,” he said, taking a sip from his glass of ale.

“In name only,” she responded.

“You could fix that.”

“He needs to fix that.” Her eyes narrowed, instead of growing wider as he liked, and this disturbed him.

“You’ve told me he slept around on you.”

“Yes. You know all that happened.”

In point of fact, she had enjoyed telling him the details because she was trying to read his reaction. What she found had been most pleasing. His hazel eyes had flashed with just a tiny bit of righteous indignation and she liked that he felt that way.

Kyle had started it. And really, he had been right when he told her to file papers if she didn’t like how things were going. Because she didn’t.

Yet, something inside her wasn’t quite ready to do that yet.

She had something else in mind.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

“What I would like to do is talk with you about your plans for the club so I can begin appropriate marketing.”

Diane Moore sat at the far side of the manager’s desk at the Kassam Stadium. Kyle sat on the other side, the piece of mahogany serving as a demilitarized zone between them.

The desk had seen better days. So had Kyle, who woke up tired from a long night of video after the Bury match. Hartlepool was next, and there was an opportunity to directly leapfrog a match opponent in the table for the first time in his tenure if the team could win a fourth consecutive league match.

So Kyle had stayed up most of the night watching video and making notes. The festive period was coming up, so part of that video session had included watching, yet again, the FA Cup loss to Shrewsbury as well as video of Plymouth Argyle, the two opponents upcoming within a 72-hour span after Christmas.

So he was tired, and looked it.

“My plan is to win football matches,” he said plainly. “I am not beholden to any particular player, style or philosophy. Whatever helps this club win is what we will do.”

“That’s not exactly helpful,” Moore said, making a doodle on her note pad with a pencil as she spoke.

“Part of my job lies in not divulging my plans,” he answered.

“What, do you think I’ll run off and tell my counterpart at Portsmouth what you’re up to?” she asked. Her tone of sarcasm was duly noted.

Kyle looked at the younger woman. She wore her blonde hair up in a bun, revealing a slender neck, a soft, sloping jawline and strong shoulders. She wore a tasteful blue blouse in the club’s shade, with black slacks with wide bottoms to hide her shape. She was fit, this one was.

Back in the day, Kyle thought, I’d have seen women like her outside the player’s gate.

Yet that was unfair to Moore, an earnest, hard-working woman who wanted a future within the game she used to play as a girl. That had come out in conversation – she had been one of the better pioneers within the ladies’ game until repeated bouts with tendinitis had forced her to call time on playing and get into sports marketing instead.

That part of the conversation had gone pleasantly enough. But now, it seemed as though she was out of her depth in asking Kyle questions he really had no business answering.

At least, that’s how Kyle felt.

“You’d better not,” he finally said. He tried to smile. It didn’t come off right.

“Look, I know you were upset about what happened at Hemel Hempstead…” she began. She had barely gotten the words out of her mouth when Kyle waved a hand at her.

“Damn right I was,” he interjected. “But it wasn’t what Hemel Hempstead did to me that made me mad. It was what you did to me. And now here you are, in my office, looking for a bloody favor from me. How would you feel, Ms. Moore?”

She looked down at her paper and made another mark. This one was a dark, straight line, and Kyle didn’t fail to notice it. He had struck a nerve with the woman, and he was glad of it.

“I’d feel like I would want a co-worker to act a bit more professionally,” she said.

“Most people who have been caught out feel that way,” he replied.

“Like you got caught out at Leyton Orient, Mr. Cain?” She had evened the score.

“Let’s talk about professionalism again,” Kyle said, his voice hardening to just short of a snarl. “I don’t care for what you did to me and as of this moment, I don’t care for you. But since I want you out of my office, if you want my plan, here it is.”

“When the club can afford young players, bring them in and build around them. Since we can’t at the moment, give our existing young players a chance to prove their worth within the framework of an eleven which gives us the best chance to win each week. Due to the size of the squad, that eleven is probably not going to change much as long as the team is successful. Focus your attention on creating an atmosphere of support and success. That is what I am trying to build.”

The younger woman was now taking notes. She finished her writing and stood.

“Thank you, Mr. Cain,” she said. “Would you care to address the marketing team meeting at eleven o’clock with that information so they can hear it from you?”

Kyle knew perfectly well that this hour was right in the middle of training, but evidently Moore did not. So he replied in the best way that he could.

“Unfortunately, that time is during training,” he said. “So I’m afraid that doesn’t quite work for me.”

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

20^th December 2014 – Hartlepool United (6-4-10, 16^th place) v Oxford United (5-5-10, 19^th place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #21 – Victoria Park, Hartlepool

Kyle was pleased to get out of town for the day.

The trip to County Durham had been quite pleasurable. Jenna was comfortable at home and though she wanted to visit her friends in East London, that would have to wait for the holiday period.

Sooner or later, Kyle was going to have to reach out to Stacy and that was going to sting. Jenna wanted to go home for awhile and he was going to have to allow it.

He had more pressing things on his mind, though, as he sat in the coach. The bus pulled onto Teesside and up Clarence Road. There, across the street from the Asda Hartlepool Superstore, sat Victoria Park.

As he looked at the anticipated Hartlepool team sheet prepared by his scouts, he thought the biggest problem Pools would have wouldn’t be getting a result, but rather diaper rash.

The anticipated starting eleven included three teenagers and a twenty-year old. But on their day, the kids could really play.

The problem, though, was finding the right day. As with the “girl with the curl”, when Pools were good they were very, very good but when they were bad ... well, they were awful. Part of the process of blooding young players involved taking occasional lumps, as Kyle well knew.

He hoped to catch them on a bad day.

Upon arrival at the ground, Kyle took Ashdown aside to tell him he was on the bench, and the reasons why. The keeper understood. He wasn’t happy, but he understood.

“You are the goalkeeper best suited to move this club forward,” Kyle said. “But I can’t have what I saw last week against Bury and I think you know that.”

He gave better news to Clarke, who got the start in goal. Whing, the hero of the Bury match, could hardly wait to get back out there, and his partnership with Wright, vice-captain and captain respectively, looked great on paper.

Where it lacked was in getting opposing strikers marked, so Kyle’s words to his central pairing were plain. He expected better from both of them.

Otherwise, the eleven looked the same as from Bury. There was no reason to change it.

At the start, Oxford caught their hosts on the hop, with Hylton’s square ball setting up Hoban perfectly in front of goal with just thirty seconds on the clock, but the Irishman fired wide from just ten yards. Oxford could have led before anyone on the park had broken a sweat, but the chance had gone begging.

After that, it looked as though Hartlepool’s ‘good’ kids had showed up. That was bad for Kyle’s Oxford.

One of their teenagers, midfielder Aaron Tshibola, came back in nine minutes, barely missing Clarke’s right post from just inside the area, and referee Bobby Madley gave the home team a free kick from just outside the Oxford area only to see Sam Collins fire over.

Hylton then got the best chance of the match, beating Pools’ offside trap and being sent through clear by Maddison, only to miss the target to the right.

Kyle was near apoplexy on the bench. Two wonderful chances, and neither one had found the target.

His only solace came from the fact that Hartlepool was just as inept in front of goal. Nicky Featherstone managed to drag a shot wide in 33 minutes where it would have been easier to hit the target, and Michael Duckworth hit Clarke right in the chest with an effort from less than ten yards out three minutes later, with the keeper not knowing much about the effort but forcing a corner in any event.

Hartlepool had been much the better side, and as Madley prepared to blow the whistle after two minutes of added time, Kyle turned back to the bench to pick up his wipeboard for the halftime team talk which he hoped would wake up his lads.

As he turned back, he saw MacDonald strip veteran striker Marlon Harewood of the ball near the right touchline and force an effort into the box. Defender Johnny Burn couldn’t cut out the effort, which fell right at the feet of Callum O’Dowda. The unlikeliest of goals had given Oxford a 1-0 lead with the last kick of the first half.

It had changed everything and nothing at the same time. Oxford had a lead it hardly deserved, and Kyle made that plain at halftime.

“Good teams find ways to win matches like these. You are catching them on a good day. Be better in the second half and find a way to hold this lead. You’re resilient and I like that, but you’re letting kids run you right off the middle of the ground. Take the midfield back and let’s take home three points today.”

The second half began and it was very similar to the first. Pools’ kids held possession in vast swaths, but now were starting to find the target with more regularity.

Clarke denied Darren Holden with a fine save in fifty minutes, and stopped Tshibola with some ease two minutes later. Harewood then outjumped Whing right in the center of the six-yard box on Pools’ next trip up the park but the striker nodded over the top.

Pools made a double substitution just after the hour and given that Harewood had been a first half substitution, the introduction of Marvin Morgan and Tommy Miller put the home team out of bench moves.

Advantage, Oxford. At least in that sense.

Pools boss Ronnie Moore had seen the opportunity to grab an equalizer, with his club playing well and putting Oxford’s hands to the pumps. Clarke turned Morgan’s goal-bound effort behind for a corner in 66 minutes.

From the corner, Michael Duckworth headed on the effort – right onto the foot of Burn, who shot in one motion. Clarke then committed what could only be described as highway robbery, making a stupendous reflex save which not only denied the defender coming forward, but pushed the rebound past him and onto the boot of Whing, who thundered it into touch.

High-fives and general slapping of hinder parts abounded among the visitors after the effort, and Oxford soon cleared its lines. Kyle looked at Ashdown on the bench, and saw the veteran keeper was applauding with his teammates. Good. But it also looked like he had gotten the message.

Duckworth fired wide again a few minutes after that but Kyle already knew it was time for fresh legs. Wright hadn’t had the best of matches, and Kyle pulled his captain in favor of Dunkley as part of his own double move in 75 minutes. Hoban, who had been pedestrian up front, was also sacrificed in favor of the loanee, Godden, at the same time.

Marvin Morgan was next to miss the target, misfiring in 80 minutes, but then made Kyle go to his bench for his third substitution moments later when he met Whing in a clash of heads which left the Oxford man apparentlty concussed.

Whing was carried to the touchline and Meades was called upon. This time, the conversation upon the player’s entry was much more professional, and Kyle went to the stand to check on his defender.

Chief physio Andy Lord was treating the player and Kyle noted that he hadn’t been taken straight to the changing room – a good sign.

“Doesn’t look too bad, Kyle,” Lord told him. “He’s got some symptoms but right now it just looks like a nasty knock.”

It did indeed. The defender had developed a mouse over his right eye from where the impact had taken place and that was where the icebag was going to put a lid on the rather spectacular swelling which can accompany injuries around the eye socket.

But soon, the match was over. It had been one of those days.

In ninety minutes, Oxford had managed exactly one shot on target. Yet, it had brought home three points.

Oxford United: Clarke: Bevans, Whing (injured, Meades 82), Wright (captain) (Dunkley 75), Skarz, Mullins, MacDonald, Maddison, O’Dowda, Hylton, Hoban (Godden 75). Unused subs: Ashdown, Rose, Balmy, Ashby.

Hartlepool United 0

Oxford United 1 (Callum O’Dowda 45+2)

H/T: 0-1

A – 3,442, Victoria Park, Hartlepool

Man of the Match: Callum O’Dowda, Oxford (MR 7.7)

# # #

[jdoyle9293]

Smash and grab, the best kind of win. I like how the intensity is clearly getting to Kyle, he needs something--or someone--to take his mind off it! Great work as usual 10-3.

[neilhoskins77]

Kyle is really starting to get some form out of the players at Oxford United. Hopefully redemption for the mess he made at Torquay United is on the way. Great stuff.

[tenthreeleader]

This is a very nice little run. I'm pleased with how the team is playing. However, until they start losing, I can't develop certain parts of Kyle Cain's character. Nice problem to have to have, for the time being.

___

“I won’t say we were good. I won’t say we even deserved the three points. But we’ll take them. I wouldn’t blame Ronnie Moore a scrap if he felt hard done by today, but I was very proud of the way we competed when we did not have our best day.”

For a change, Kyle had taken the high road. He had already heard Moore’s comments – and his animus toward Oxford and its new boss had been duly noted – but as the proud owner of three brand-new points in the table, he could afford to be more gracious than his host had been.

There was no invitation to meet for a drink after the match – an expression of petulance from Moore, Kyle was sure – but he hardly cared. His team had jumped past Moore’s in the table and now, thoughts of relegation were nearly a thing of the past.

There was plenty of good to talk about. The team had kept the second clean sheet of Kyle’s tenure but its first of the season that wasn’t from Jamie Ashdown. Prior to Kyle’s arrival, the Us hadn’t kept a clean sheet in the league since September.

Clarke had been tremendous. There was no denying that his save on Burn had saved Oxford two points. Kyle told him so after the match. He’d have been daft not to have acknowledged it.

Meanwhile, the word on Whing was that he would miss about two weeks. His concussion wasn’t a bad one, but obviously keeping him symptom-free would be key over the coming days.

On the coach ride home, Kyle caught up on some news.

Bristol Rovers had hired John McMahon to his first managerial job at age 61. The first thing the longtime Shrewsbury and Tranmere coach had done was to strip defender Mark McChrystal of the captaincy. That hadn’t gone particularly well.

That said, seeing some different faces was bound to help them. By a quirk of scheduling, Rovers had played four of their preceding five matches against Welling – both their Conference fixtures as well as consecutive ties in the FA Trophy, which required a replay to settle.

Once the news had been digested, Kyle got a chance to look at the fixture list again, and this time he tried to avoid indigestion. As the players ate a boxed catered meal on the way home, he saw that Dame Fortune had turned its back on Oxford in terms of opposition.

Part of the good run the club currently enjoyed was due to the team playing lower-level opposition. That would change over the festive period.

Boxing Day would see the Us host third-placed Shrewsbury, with a trip to Plymouth two days later to face second-placed Argyle.

Kyle hoped the team would have a special effort in store for Shrewsbury – he felt they owed Micky Mellon’s side after being dumped out of the FA Cup – and God only knew what the players would have left in the tank for Argyle.

Portsmouth was four points clear of Plymouth in the table and seven points ahead of Shrewsbury. Victory for Oxford on Boxing Day would put a serious cramp in Mellon’s style, Kyle was sure.

After the holidays, the schedule was again more kind – the bottom two clubs, Cheltenham and Dag and Red, awaited the Us.

But even that had its drawbacks – Oxford would be done with both relegation candidates for the season by the middle of January. The run-in, where Kyle’s bread was buttered in terms of a top-half finish, would be much more difficult.

But yet, it was about to get worse.

Kyle now had to run a holiday party he would have preferred not to have to attend.

# # #