[FM15] Kyle Cain's Flying Circus

[tenthreeleader]

Kyle Cain’s Flying Circus

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot

The early morning sunlight crept over the windowsill and slowly peeked into the master bedroom. The louvered blinds turned back a portion, but not being fully closed, allowed a few rays an unauthorized entrance.

One of them scored a bulls-eye on Kyle Cain’s face, causing the manager of Oxford United Football Club to frown as he awakened rather earlier than he would have wished.

He moved a hand in front of his face, squinting at the sudden intrusion from Sol, and looked around his room.

He was on Ibiza, a small island midway between the mainland of Spain and the island of Mallorca. It was one of the most popular tourist attractions in Spain during the summer months – and his trip there had been a gift (and bonus) from his chairman, Daryl Eales.

Oxford United’s gut-wrenching League Two playoff final loss to Shrewsbury Town had been hard to swallow, but was now starting to fade into the stuff of painful memory. As a thank-you for the outcome of the season – financially as much as anything else – Eales had told Kyle to take a few weeks and recharge his batteries, and to be ready to report for training on the first of July.

A number of his old players wouldn’t be there when the new season started – which meant Kyle would have to put his head down and find some new heroes of Saturday for the good people of Oxfordshire.

Giving up was not an option. There were real expectations now, not the least of which were those Kyle had placed upon himself.

“My job at United was to send the fans home happy,” Sir Alex Ferguson had once said. “That’s the value of never giving in.”

If there was one thing Kyle Cain couldn’t be accused of doing, it was giving in. At least, in a footballing sense.

He had spent the first few days of his vacation in a shell, being hard to reach emotionally as he often was, replaying the match in his head over and over – and even on a DVD which he brought with him on the flight.

At that, his daughter Jenna had finally rebelled.

“Put that away, Dad,” she said, as the plane winged its way southward. “We’re going to have a good time. Can’t you forget about Wembley for awhile?”

Father and daughter had had some difficult moments in the preceding months. Jenna’s boyfriend, Miles Booth, had been released by United at the end of the season and was in trial with Oxford City thanks to Kyle’s intervention on his behalf.

As such, Miles was in dryland training and wasn’t on the holiday trip – not that Eales would have bought his ticket.

It was a subdued trip, at least at the start. Kyle finally managed to forget about defeat long enough to spend a very enjoyable night on the beach shortly after arrival – Ibiza is famous for that, among other things – and as a result, he had gone to bed late.

Which brings this story full circle. To bed late, up too early – it wasn’t the kind of thing that led to an enjoyable day away.

Kyle reflexively rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and immediately cursed himself for having done so. He had a chance to go back to sleep, and that had wrecked it.

He sighed heavily and rolled to his right in the bed.

He wasn’t alone.

# # #

You didn’t think I was going to just leave all this stuff hanging, did you?

Author’s notes: FM15, Home Nations and major European nations loaded. Could not resist the chance to write some more of the Cain saga. So, get ready.

This will mark the first time in my eight years here that I'll have two 'young' stories going at the same time. It should be a fun balance -- I have plans for The Warsaw Pact as well, and hopefully can keep them going concurrently. We shall see.

13 May 2016

ttl

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Stacy Cain rolled to her left and looked at her husband.

She wasn’t sure that coming with him on holiday was a good idea for a variety of reasons, but the text she had received from Eales right before the playoff final had convinced her that the club’s desire to see the manager and his wife at least try to reconcile was genuine.

Boyd Stokes hadn’t taken it well. That was to be expected.

She had moved out of his flat the day after the final, and her things were on the way to Oxford before the day was out.

Out of a sense of guilt, she had done what she felt she needed to do – and even though guilt can be a powerful motivator, it doesn’t always leave the best taste in one’s mouth when it’s acted upon.

To the couple’s right, Owen Marshall Cain lay in a basinet, two weeks old and full of life and vigor.

Their son had come into the world the week after the playoff final, and provided the perfect opportunity for Stacy Cain to try to reclaim her husband’s good graces.

Allison Austin had left the car park disappointed on that day, after the coach rolled in from Wembley. The women had seen each other and talked, and let Kyle make his decision. Neither one of them liked the idea much – or liked each other much, to be fair. Both were also upset at Kyle himself but clearly something had to be done.

Heavily pregnant, Stacy had won the day, and Kyle simply hoped that for once in his life he had made the right decision.

In a non-footballing sense, that is. Oxford, so far, had been a very satisfying decision for him, and he was looking forward to having a full season under his belt with a group of players who had nearly shocked the English footballing world with a march from 22^nd place at Kyle’s arrival to fifth in the final table – only to fall at the last hurdle.

The next week, Stacy had given birth, and Kyle had been there. Not in the room itself, mind you – Stacy didn’t want him there and he understood that fully – but he had done the father’s duty beforehand by timing contractions, getting her to the hospital, and then adoring the new life they had created.

That was one thing Kyle was very good at. He was a doting father to Jenna, even if he was maddeningly inconsistent with her from time to time. He meant well. He thought that made a difference.

The first night they arrived on Ibiza, they had a long talk about some of the things they had said to each other. For a change, Kyle did most of the talking in this discussion, since Stacy had inflicted the vast majority of the hurt.

And he could now talk with Stacy on equal terms with regard to their indiscretions, since the score was now most definitely even on that account.

The big thing that came out of that discussion was that Kyle finally got Stacy to tell him Boyd Stokes’ name. That counted for a lot with Kyle and he made sure his wife knew that.

He had explained it thusly: if they were going to reconcile, whoever it was might try to make a play to get back into her life. Kyle wanted to be prepared. That was not unreasonable.

And so it was a good start to the holiday, until Jenna told them her news.

# # #

[gaz_man]

Wow. What a start. Really enjoyed Kyle in the other series. Will be interesting to see how this season pans out. Will the Flying Circus be on the pitch or off it i wonder? Can't wait to find out

[jrfellow]

The best part in FM is building the next season team. Looking for bargains, putting your whole transfer budget on a great player (for that level), getting some good loan players... good luck in season 2 of Oxford United!

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks, gentlemen. I trust you will enjoy this piece as much as the first. Kyle has some work to do in squad building and a few areas he'd like to see addressed. But first things first ..

____

“You’re what?”

“You heard me,” Jenna said.

“You’re seventeen,” Stacy answered.

“So what? It doesn’t change anything,” Jenna replied.

“Does Miles know?” Kyle asked.

“He does. I’ve told him,” she responded, now unable to look either of her parents in the eyes.

Just shy of age forty-one, Kyle and Stacy Cain were to become grandparents, if their daughter decided to keep her child.

Children having children is a significant issue in certain parts of society, and it was a very big issue in that Ibiza hotel room that afternoon.

“So how many times did he really come to the house?” Kyle asked Jenna, and at that Stacy snapped her head toward her husband.

“There was more than one?” she snapped.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out, but obviously only once was needed,” Kyle retorted. So far, it had been 48 hours and their rapprochement was already under strain.

But Stacy seemed angrier at her daughter than Kyle had been – his anger had been reserved for the boy the day after Kyle found out that he had skipped training, and Jenna had skipped school, to be together under his roof.

Kyle noted, not without a degree of bitter satisfaction, that someone else could do wrong in Stacy’s eyes, and that wasn’t a bad thing for either one of them to realize.

He was still an emotional work in progress, and as Jenna explained the entire sad lexicon to her mother, Kyle sat back and let Stacy do the talking.

“A little parenting practice wouldn’t do her any harm,” Kyle decided. After all, with a new arrival in the family, Stacy would need it.

It wasn’t as though Jenna could hide her condition any longer – when Kyle was gone, morning sickness was something she dealt with on her own – so it was time to come clean when the family went on the trip together.

That evening was stilted but the remainder of the holiday trip passed without major incident.

Coming home, that would be another matter entirely.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Kyle welcomed most of his senior squad for the start of preseason training on July 1. That was early for some, but the team had had six full weeks away and the manager wanted an early start to his planning for the season to come.

He wanted a team in condition for the rigors of League Two, and hopefully, a Cup run or two. There would be some new faces, though, and they came in by ones and twos as preseason drills began.

The club had exercised the option on goalkeeper Jamie Ashdown’s contract in the close season, but word was that several clubs were interested in backup Ryan Clarke, who had lost the number one shirt to Ashdown in the stretch run of the prior season. Neither one was really an answer for the future but for now, Ashdown was the present and that was that.

Kyle’s first official signing as Oxford manager was already on hand and it was a bit of a surprise to those who had seen him in the flesh just a few short weeks ago. Jermaine Grandison, freshly out of contract at Oxford’s playoff conquerors, Shrewsbury Town, had joined the Us on a free and solved the club’s issues at right full back. Big, strong, powerful and 24 years old, he scratched a number of itches in the Us hierarchy.

It was also a bit odd to see a player who had played very well against Oxford just six weeks ago now wearing their colors, but the players welcomed the new man happily. Except for Meades and Bevans, who wanted more playing time at right back and now would have to earn it.

One player missing that Kyle really wanted to see back was James Maddison, the fans’ Player of the Year and a member of the League Two Team of the Year. Unfortunately, he had been so good that his parent club, Coventry, now understandably wanted to reap the benefits of their loanee’s experience. They said he now had first-team commitments.

That meant the search was on for his replacement. That was going to be interesting, but Kyle had foreseen losing Maddison the season before and had put the scouting team on to looking for a replacement.

The player they found was a real handful. Elliott Whitehouse, property of Notts County, seemed willing to fill the void. He could best have been described as a Maddison with size, an Ivan Drago lookalike with a reported nasty streak as wide as his professionalism. Kyle loved that thought.

Another player Kyle wanted and needed to replace was the departed Isak Ssewankambo, who had gone back to Derby.

The makeup of the 2014-15 Oxford team hadn’t really allowed for Kyle to play 4-2-3-1 since the best options for the holding midfielder position were also good options to play on the back line. Ssewankambo’s arrival on loan had given Kyle much more flexibility in his team and tactical selection and he liked that freedom.

That position was one that needed to be filled with a player under contract to Oxford United, but even so, it needed to be filled somehow – and now there was Manchester United to consider.

The parent/feeder arrangement between the clubs gave Oxford access to United’s youth pool – which was a considerable improvement over what he could pull from his own youth academy.

Enter Matty Willock, a long, lean midfielder who had put in time with Arsenal as a schoolboy and was pegged by some as indeed a possible United man of the future. Kyle happily made him a different United’s man of the present, and the player was only too happy to make the switch south for the season.

There were other United starlets who expressed interest in moves to Oxford but with Whitehouse potentially on the way, he didn’t want to extend his loan total too greatly before the season proper began.

There was more money in the coffers – player departures, prize money from last season and £293,000 in television revenue gave him a six-figure transfer budget and over £400,000 to spend on wages.

Some of that money went to Joe Skarz, whose contract was about to expire. He knew full well what he meant to the team – and so did his agent, who tried to negotiate a contract that would have completely destroyed the team’s wage structure.

That negotiation was protracted and long, with the player finally settling for a raise to £80,000 a season and a top-earner clause which allowed Skarz to match the salary of Oxford’s highest-paid player in the event the team signed one other than the full back. At that salary, he matched Hoskins for the highest earner score.

When Skarz was on his game, Oxford was very hard to deal with, especially with Callum O’Dowda playing well in front of him on the left flank. After his hip injury the season before, and the subsequent signing of Danny Potts on loan from West Ham, Skarz had taken some time to round back into form.

But this was a new season, for whatever that was worth. Skarz was getting the nice pay packet but now would have to show he was worth his stuff, as the £900,000 minimum release clause in his new deal indicated he might be.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

There was other news on the management front. Kyle now had a Director of Football.

After handling the Skarz negotiations himself, Kyle quickly decided that was enough of that, and got permission from Eales to hire 64-year old John Ward to handle the contract and administration side of things.

One of the conditions Kyle agreed to when taking the job was not to hire or fire any of the staff. That was great in some ways and not so great in others, as there were gaps that needed to be filled in some areas and redundancies in others.

But Ward was a welcome addition. A striker who had made a name for himself at Lincoln City in the 1970s, he had served Watford, Aston Villa, Burnley, Wolves, Carlisle, Stockport and Colchester as an assistant manager and had managerial experience at York, Bristol City, Cheltenham, Carlisle, Colchester, and two stints at Bristol Rovers, where he also served as Director of Football.

In short, Ward knew his way around the block. So, ss a welcoming gift, Kyle had him negotiate new contracts for the key staff. Nothing like a flying start for the new guy.

Before Ward’s arrival, Kyle had had successes in contract negotiations with Cheyenne Dunkley for three years, youth striker George Jeacock for two years, Patrick Hoban for two years, Danny Hylton for two years, and an extension for Matt Bevans. Cian McCormick also put pen to paper as did the club captain, Jake Wright.

Meanwhile, Whitehouse rejected the first loan offer from Oxford even though his club accepted, so Kyle and Ward sweetened the pot and tried again.

Also, Conor Townsend, recently released by Hull City, came in on trial for the preseason. He could play the center of midfield as well as most positions on the left side and was a versatile player.

For the time being, the initial friendly schedule had only four matches in it, so there was an opportunity to see players in action for limited periods.

July 11 – Motherwell

July 18 – at Salisbury

July 25 – at Oxford City

August 3 – at Thame

Notably missing from that list – Manchester United, the parent club contractually obligated to play a money-spinning friendly against Oxford but which couldn’t seem to find an open date.

Kyle knew Eales would want the money, estimated at £160,000, from a visit by United no matter who they played. It remained to be seen when the friendly would be played.

Too, the Capital One Cup first round draw had been less than kind to Oxford – Watford, a top-half team in the prior season’s Championship, at Vicarage Road on the 11^th August – so the possibility of a few Cup games to give players extra games wasn’t necessarily on the cards, at least in that competition.

Kyle and Ward scooped up home friendly dates with Belgian side KRC Genk and nearby Corby Town to give his team six warmup matches, which was fairer to the players vying for spots.

One was going to be trouble – Genk had finished second in the Jupiler League the preceding season and was preparing to enter Champions League qualification – and the other was not supposed to provide nearly as stern a test.

As for trouble, Motherwell might well have provided plenty of it too – runners up to Celtic in the SPL, they were preparing for a Europa League qualifying test of their own against Mladost CKB of the Montenegrin First League just six days after coming to the Kassam Stadium.

Josh Ruffels went on a season-long loan to Grimsby Town, even as the elusive Whitehouse wouldn’t come to Oxford. No matter, thought Kyle, and had Ward submit a loan bid for Manchester United’s 20-year old starlet Joe Rothwell to do the same thing. And while he was talking with the Red Devils, Kyle also asked for Demitri Mitchell to come for the season as well.

It was tempting not to use up all his long-term loan slots on United alone. But Kyle managed.

# # #

[Mr_Demus]

Great read so far. I like your style.

[Maviarab.]

Awesome stuff Tenthree!

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks, gents ... now let's see how the new group does on the pitch!

___

11 July 2015 - Oxford United v Motherwell

Friendly #1 - The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Referee: Nigel Miller

“You know what to do out there. Impress me and earn your places. I don’t give a hang if they’re top-flight from another country, do what got you to Wembley last season and let’s have some fun out there tonight.”

It was a coolish evening in Oxfordshire – the kickoff temperature was only 15 degrees Centigrade and that made it barely shirtsleeve weather for the time of year.

And then there were the Steelmen, winners of 19 SPL matches a season ago, and Scottish Cup semifinalists. Surely Ian Baraclough would want a stout performance out of his men before sending them into European competition.

From the kickoff, the Scots were in the ascendancy, with Ashdown a busy man in goal for the Us. But as the match passed twenty minutes, Oxford started to find its legs a bit – and then started finding the range against keeper Dan Twardzik.

Before that, though, Conor Townsend went off with a dead leg and Kyle brought Josh Ashby, he of the playoff final injury, on for the ex-Hull man he’d have done anything to sign.

Then it was off to the good stuff. First it was Will Hoskins, sweeping home a beautiful ball from O’Dowda on the left in 27 minutes to fire the home team into a shock lead. Then it was MacDonald five minutes later, taking a truly terrific feed from Ashby on the right and driving a low shot off Twardzik’s hands and home in 32 minutes.

Ben Hall responded with a counterattacking goal for the Steelmen four minutes from the break, which brought Kyle to the touchline for the first time with a gentle (for him) reminder to concentrate and see the task through.

That talk had surprisingly good benefits, as Hoskins scrambled home a loose ball as the match ticked over into injury time for 3-1, and when Oxford earned a late corner in the two minutes of first half added time, O’Dowda’s effort was put through the Steelmen’s goal by defender Lionel Ainsworth in one of the game’s truly great all-time own goals. It was a magnificent header, perfectly placed, and absolutely at the wrong end of the pitch.

That led to a euphoric changing room at half, to the surprise of absolutely no one. It also led to a great second half as well, with Jake Wright looping a header over Twardzik’s despairing reach in 49 minutes for a 5-1 advantage and a general exodus from the Oxford bench to the playing field, as Kyle cleared the bench with a big lead.

The substitutes didn’t do half badly either, and Danny Rose earned a sixth goal two minutes from time with a low effort that hit the base of Twardzik’s left post before rolling along the goal line and into the net.

It was a magnificent and rather unexpected effort against better opposition, which now had some thinking to do as it prepared to play a European tie.

Most importantly, it looked as though “Kyle Cain’s Flying Circus” might just be right back on song.

Oxford United 6 (Hoskins 27, 45, MacDonald 32, Lionel Ainsworth og 45+2, Wright 49, Rose 88)

Motherwell 1 (Ben Hall 41)

H/T: 4-1

A – 2,761, The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Man of the Match: Alex MacDonald Oxford (MR 9.2)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Kyle didn’t really expect to run into Allison again so soon, but after the match, there she was, in her usual place outside the players’ door as Kyle left the stadium.

Stacy rarely showed any interest in coming to the ground, and Jenna was off watching Miles try to earn a place with Oxford City, so he had been on his own for the match while his wife looked after little Owen.

“Good job today,” she offered as Kyle passed.

He turned to her, showing a look of surprise he could not hide.

“I still support the club, even if I can’t have the manager,” she said, trying to keep a brave face.

“Well, I don’t know what to say about that other than thank you, on both counts,” Kyle responded. Never known for the stylishness of his oratory, this was about as close as he ever came to being smooth.

“I did say I would be your friend,” she offered, “and I did mean it.”

“That’s very kind,” Kyle responded, suddenly unable to look Allison in the eye.

He remembered back to their one and only romantic encounter, and sighed heavily. That was a good reason not to look a spurned woman in the eye.

“Look, I want you to know I don’t blame you,” she said. “You have a new baby, clearly the club wants you to reconcile and keep bad news out of the papers, but I do understand. You did the only thing you could.”

She paused. She’d have thought it a pregnant pause but that would have been in rotten taste.

“How are things at home?” she asked.

Kyle ran his fingers through his hair, as he always did when he was nervous. “Well, it’s sort of a nervous peace, I guess you could say,” he offered. “It’s not the same, but then I don’t suppose it would be for awhile. We’re all trying to heal.”

“I see,” she answered, now looking at her shoetops. “Anyhow, you know I want the best for you.”

As she spoke, Vic Young joined her, leaving through the media gate and joining her friend. One of two Oxford Mail reporters covering the team, she was a friend to both Kyle and Allison and hadn’t been happy to see either of her friends so upset as they had recently been.

“Kyle,” she offered. “How are you getting on?”

“I always wondered what it would be like to be missed,” he said in a rare moment of complete candor about the opposite sex. “But if neither of you mind my saying so, now that it seems to have happened, I’m finding I don’t much like it. But the wee one is doing fine, and that’s my responsibility at the moment. I wish it could be different.”

That was an astonishing thing for Kyle to say, and especially in front of a news reporter. But Kyle knew he could trust Vic Young and that meant everything in this case.

Allison looked at Kyle in reply and tried not to look wounded.

“I wish I had known that,” she said. “Honestly, Kyle, I wish I had.”

“I don’t even know what to say,” Kyle responded. “It’s hard, but I made this bed and now I have to lie in it. Nobody said that would be easy.”

The two ladies looked at each other and Allison prepared to take her leave. She motioned to Kyle and spoke in his ear.

“Nobody said it would be easy not to have you lie in my bed, either,” Allison whispered. “Something for you to think about.”

With that, Allison and Vic walked to their cars, leaving Kyle standing thunderstruck in the entryway.

# # #

[Maviarab.]

Damnit Ten...stop making Allison such an attractive prospect

[ChileanRanger]

So, I come back after my laptop stops working and I find this. Jeez, 10-3, is the purpose of the story Oxford or just Kyle's multiple problems? Because he seems to have a lot of those right now.

[tenthreeleader]

Anyone who has been reading my postings over the last eight years on this board knows the answer to your question, CR ... it's "both".

____

The next opponent, on paper, was supposed to be easier.

Salisbury had finished mid-table in the Conference the season before and Kyle’s rotational policy meant that most of the second eleven would get the start in this match.

He was expecting much, even for a friendly, and after the dismemberment of Motherwell in the first friendly, so was everyone else in blue and gold.

Overconfidence after one friendly was something Kyle didn’t care for and he made his feelings known after the first poor training session following the match.

“You men are out here to get in match condition, not to talk about how you’re going to walk the league,” he had snapped after seeing far too much disdain for the small things on the training pitch. “I can make this very hard on you if you want, and since some of you don’t seem to think you should be training yet, it’ll be even more unpleasant.”

Fazackerley had said that some of the players had complained about the early start to training, but that was too bad. There were six matches to play, places to claim, and a squad to rebuild with a number of departures from the season before.

So Kyle was in a bad mood that day, even as two new players arrived.

Tom Richards, released by Fulham in the close season, arrived on a free transfer and immediately was penciled in as backup to Skarz and O’Dowda, since he could play both positions.

It didn’t look as though trialist Conor Townsend, who would have been a real catch, was interested in signing with Oxford, so Kyle was looking for a player who could play the left side and back up both of those key players. Richards fit the bill.

Two more United men arrived that week as well. Joe Rothwell was one, fully stocking the cupboard in the center of Oxford’s midfield. Kyle was already thinking about pairing him with Ashby in midfield, and liking the thoughts that grouping gave.

The other was just as intriguing. Josh Harrop, a young player who was recovering from a mild groin strain at the time, came in as well – and he could play almost everywhere on the park except striker and goalkeeper. He was fabulously useful and wasted no time in informing the coaches about everything he could do.

So while the new players acclimated themselves to the team, Richards celebrated by immediately contracting a virus and being sent home for a week.

And while the team was busy not worrying about Salisbury, Kyle had turned his attention to the next friendly, which would be a big one: Racing Club Genk.

This was a Champions League qualifying team, second in the Jupiler League in Belgium, and which would be a first-class handful for his fourth-tier side. He couldn’t look past Salisbury either but when he thought about it, Genk was going to be a personal challenge for him and for every one of his players, even if it was a friendly.

Meanwhile, he also thought about Allison. Stacy had tried to settle in as comfortably as she could in Oxford and Kyle appreciated that, but she had made her meaning plain, and there was nothing for Kyle to do but sit and think about what she had said.

For her part, Stacy seemed to adjust to life fairly well in Oxfordshire, which was a bit of a surprise to everyone. Having grown up a few blocks away from Kyle in East London, the change of pace was actually a good thing for her.

Finally, though, Kyle felt strong enough to ask Stacy what she had seen in Boyd Stokes.

The answer hurt.

“He wasn’t you,” Stacy said. “That was what I was looking for.”

Kyle was sorry he had asked the question.

# # #

[ChileanRanger]

Gee, what a nice way to say it.(And the award for I Regret Asking In The First Place What Possessed Me To Do It? goes to...Kyle and Stacy!)

Also, somewhat good times for Oxford, arguably one of the worst for Kyle. All you need is Moore back, out for revenge and Kyle will be well and truly screwed.

[Azza2306]

10-3 I have just finished reading The Rat Pack after reading Raising Cain and while the writing is amazing in both I have one question....... What the hell happened to Rob and Patty???????

[tenthreeleader]

They are still out there, and one day the story will be finished. The problem I have is that FM08 will not play on Windows 10, not even in emulation. So I need to find a way to keep playing the game upon which the save is based.

___

18 July 2015 – Salisbury v Oxford United

Friendly #2 – The Raymond McEnhill Stadium, Salisbury

Referee: Andrew Bromley

The Raymond McEnhill Stadium in Salisbury had a few hundred fans in it for the friendly – about what was expected, but that wasn’t really what Kyle cared about.

Max Crocombe was making the start for Oxford in goal, his first senior action for Kyle, and the manager wanted a good look at the young shotstopper. Townsend was at left back, Danny Rose was in the middle of the park and last season’s youth whiz, Guy Barry, was playing off Hoban.

So it was a fairly young team that took the pitch – and it was a fairly young team that got bent into all kinds of awkward positions by their hosts in the first quarter of an hour.

And it was that pressure which finally paid off for them, with Mark Brown-Hill firing in a truly well-taken half-volley in seventeen minutes. Crocombe had no chance and Kyle was rather surprised to see his team, which had enough veteran backbone to put on a better show, suffering from a big-league case of letdown after an excellent performance against Motherwell.

Happily, though, Oxford soon struck back – within three minutes, as Hoban headed home from Meades’ excellent cross from deep on the right. That should have been enough to kick-start the bigger club, but it didn’t really work out that way.

The game got to half still at 1-1 and Kyle had a not-so-gentle word for his team. Even if it was a friendly, they had to be better than they had shown in the second half.

Unfortuately, they didn’t show it. They didn’t show anything like it, in fact, and that was fact. There was possession, there were chances, but they were wasteful in the extreme in front of goal.

Kyle made seven substitutions on the hour to give his starters a chance to put things right and when they didn’t, he simply pulled them off the park. What was worse was that his subs – players who were supposed to get a chance for extended playing time against Genk – couldn’t do it either.

Skarz, Dunkley, Wright, Hylton, Willock and Grandison couldn’t do it. Rothwell, MacDonald and Will Hoskins couldn’t do it.

As such the non-league opposition held the League Two high-flyers to a draw that had no one happy wearing blue and gold.

They had deserved their draw, though, and that could not be denied.

Salisbury 1 (Mark Brown-Hill 17)

Oxford United 1 (Hoban 20)

H/T: 1-1

A – 584, The Raymond McEnhill Stadium, Salisbury

Man of the Match: Jonathan Meades, Oxford United (MR 7.7)

“There just has to be a better way than this,” Kyle spat as the players showered and changed for the trip home.

He was willing to forgive a bad performance, but this one, against a club that should have been overwhelmed, was hard to accept.

The players knew what was coming. They were going to run – and run quite a bit – before the next friendly, one where Oxford should have felt like Salisbury had before the match.

“We won’t be favored for that match just like Salisbury wasn’t today,” Kyle told them once the coach had started for home. “I want to see if you handle it like your opponents did today.”

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Kyle had been badly hurt by Stacy’s comments but in his heart of hearts, he really couldn’t blame her.

She had always found a way to keep emotional control over him in the past by reminding him of it. He didn’t care for it – in fact, he hated it – but he became so used to hearing the words that when she wasn’t around, he used them on himself.

It was a reason he hadn’t gotten closer to Allison, he thought. He was so conditioned to failure that he knew no other way. He couldn’t stand prosperity, it seemed.

But one person who seemed quite pleased indeed with Mrs. Cain’s return to the Cain household was the chairman, Daryl Eales.

It was only natural that he should have wanted them to reunite. The negative publicity surrounding the club over the spats of the season just past were unseemly and as a good businessman, Eales wanted to do the club’s business in a positive light.

That said, in spite of all the bad press, Kyle Cain’s management had helped turn a profit for the season for the club – and even though they didn’t make it out of League Two, they were well positioned to make noise in the season ahead.

As such, he was a valued employee and as the club’s profile rose, Eales wanted everything to be right with Kyle from the club’s point of view. There was no harm in that.

Kyle’s point of view didn’t seem to matter so much, even though he didn’t say so in so many words. As happy as he knew Jenna was with having her parents back under the same roof, Kyle was keeping his own counsel.

Stacy’s words were burning. And with the visitors from Belgium arriving at the Kassam, Kyle wasn’t in a very good mood. It was not the right time to cross him.

21 July 2015 – Oxford United v KRC Genk

Friendly #3 - The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Referee: Stuart Atwell

Genk was a good side. A very good one, in fact. Now managed by former Rangers front man Alex McLeish, the team was getting ready to face CSKA Moscow in a Best-Placed qualifier for the Champions League and finishing a three-match English tour at the same time.

To this point, results had been indifferent – a loss at Cardiff and a draw at Wolves – but the dip into League Two figured to be just what the doctor ordered for the Belgians.

Most of the first team would be in the starting XI for this match and Kyle was simply hopeful that they could hold down the score.

He didn’t tell that to his team, of course, but a sign he had posted over the inside of the dressing room door containing a quote from the American football coach Marv Levy had put his feelings across pretty well.

“When it’s too tough for them, it’s just right for us.”

Of course, Levy’s claim to infamy in the States was being the only NFL head coach ever to lose four consecutive Super Bowl games, but the feeling of the quote was right, and really, nobody had to know that part of the story.

The pre-match music indicated that the Us weren’t expected to set the place on fire either, with a lot of light stuff and none of the “Lux Aeterna” stuff that had highlighted the second leg of the playoff semifinal against Luton.

But then, they hadn’t been fancied to beat the SPL’s Motherwell either, and had sent the Scotsmen home with a performance worthy of “Longshanks,” as regular Richard Is in a footballing sense.

Kyle certainly didn’t think of himself as any sort of Malleus Scotorum, though, and simply wanted a good effort from his side against another quality opponent.

From the start of the match, Oxford gave at least as good as it got. Kyle’s words to the team to go out and have fun certainly helped things – and on the half hour, they had quite a bit of fun indeed as Danny Hylton latched onto a lovely little cross from Grandison to finish powerfully past Laszlo Koteles in the Genk goal for 1-0.

The smallish crowd was pleased, but that ardor turned to angry mutterings just six minutes later as Holly Tshimanga slipped between Dunkley and Wright to power past Ashdown from ten yards.

Kyle looked over at Fazackerley and made a decision. With his deputy’s assent, he switched to 4-2-3-1 and nodded at Ashby to play off the striker’s shoulder. Six minutes later, Hylton had the ball in the net again, thanks in part to the Manchester United man, Willock.

His ball from just outside the area found Ashby right where he was supposed to be, and his lead ball into the box found Hylton an inch in front of the defense to make it 2-1.

The change in tactic had freshened up Oxford nicely, and as both teams were now playing the same alignment, Kyle decided to see if a straight-up comparison of styles would find his men wanting in the second half.

The answer, delightfully, was no. Oxford stood tall in the second half and held off their higher-profile visitors with ease, with a third goal coming from Hoskins fifteen minutes from time.

Oxford had more of the possession, more opportunities, and had left a Champions League-caliber side a wreck with a very impressive home win.

Oxford United 3 (Hylton 28, 44; Hoskins 75)

KRC Genk 1 (Holly Tshimanga 38)

H/T: 2-1

A – 2,867, The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Man of the Match: Danny Hylton, Oxford United (MR 8.8)

Next up, though, was a special match for more than one reason.

Not for the first time in his life, but for the first time in a footballing sense, Miles Booth would get a chance to show Kyle Cain that he was wrong.

# # #

[mark wilson27]

A good preseason so far sir, lets hope you carry the form into the forthcoming season. As always sir a pleasure to read your legendary stories

[tenthreeleader]

The friendly between Oxford United and Oxford City is held almost every year, with the smaller club given the emotional support of most of the town.

Court Place Farm had hosted the previous year’s event, won by United 3-1 under Stuart Appleby, but Kyle had a special reason to want his team to play well.

He told Danny Rose so before the game.

“You let Miles Booth have so much as a sniff in this game, I’m going to come looking for you,” Kyle told him, and the midfielder didn’t know how to take his manager’s words. So he asked why.

“Because he’s your opponent and this match means something to me,” the manager said.

Rose, like everyone on the senior team, knew that Booth had an ongoing relationship with Jenna Cain, but didn’t know how far they had progressed.

He didn’t say anything, but everyone knew that a special effort, even for a friendly, wasn’t just going to be requested, it would be demanded.

And not surprisingly, the thoughts around the Cain household were devoted to the match as well. All the pain of Ibiza and Jenna’s announcement to her parents that she was with child came back up as the days counted down to the match.

Miles hadn’t set foot inside the house since training had started with City – at least, that anyone could tell – and Jenna would go out in the evenings to be with him rather than bring him under her parents’ roof.

“Maybe getting them back together wasn’t the best idea I ever had,” Jenna had texted Miles after the Genk match.

It was a mess. Jenna wasn’t adjusting terribly well either to pregnancy or the idea of being a mother – but she wanted to keep the child.

It led to intense conflict between Jenna and Stacy, which continued to surprise Kyle a great deal.

The night before the City match, Kyle and Stacy lay in bed after Jenna had gone to sleep. Stacy was nursing Owen under a blanket and Kyle had a few pointed questions for his wife.

“She isn’t going to do anything with the child,” he told her. “Why are you jumping on her like you are? Shouldn’t we be trying to be a little bit supportive?”

“Miles Booth is in no way the type of person who will want to marry Jenna,” Stacy answered. “He’s a footballer, all he cares about is his football and having his way with our daughter. He did the one, and now he wants to do the other when he plays your team. I would think you’d want to support your daughter’s honor a bit more.”

“Don’t make this my fault,” Kyle warned. “I did the best I could with Jenna while you weren’t here.”

At that, Owen finished his feeding and Stacy put the child on her shoulder, rubbing his back to burp him.

“Do you see what I’m doing?” she asked.

“You’re burping the baby,” Kyle answered.

“No. What I’m doing is showing responsibility. And I seem to be the only one concerned about that at the moment.”

Kyle frowned. “You aren’t the only one in this house who thinks about that,” he said. “That’s naff.”

“I seem to be,” she said. “You seem to care more about football too. Your daughter is pregnant, and you’re doing your own thing.”

Kyle shook his head sadly. “Stacy, I do wonder sometimes if the sun shines on anybody but you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re always right. You desert the family, you come back when you feel like it, and you correct both me and Jenna for things that happened when you weren’t even around.”

Stacy’s eyes flashed with anger but Kyle wouldn’t be put off.

“No, listen, because it’s time you listened,” he said. “We did the best we could and Jenna made a mistake with Miles. Everyone knows that. Now, it’s down to you to decide how you’re going to react. If you aren’t going to be supportive, the least you could do is get out of the way of the people that are.”

She looked at him with predictable anger, but she held the trump card – Owen, who was nestled against his mother’s shoulder.

“Should I just leave again?” she asked.

“If you want to go through all this again,” Kyle said. “I’d prefer you didn’t but what I would also prefer is that you start acting like a parent instead of like a spoiled brat.”

She glared at him, almost sulking in her expression, and Kyle stared right back. This time, he wasn’t giving in.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

There were housekeeping items in a footballing sense that week as well.

The bookies put out the promotion odds – and gave Oxford no respect at all.

As you might have expected, two of the relegated League One teams from the prior year – Colchester and Walsall – were at the very top of the list at 3-1, with also-relegated Scunthorpe at 6-1. The fourth relegated team, Crawley Town, was fifth at 33-1 with Luton sandwiched in fourth place at 10-1 despite losing a two-legged playoff to Kyle’s Oxford.

Down the list, there was Oxford – in a tie for sixth with Tranmere, Stevenage, Burton Albion and Southend, all at 40-1.

“If I were a betting man, I’d get those odds while I could,” Kyle bravely told his team at training the day the odds were released. However, betting on the game when a part of it was an extraordinarily bad idea, and everyone knew that.

Better news came later that morning, when Eales told Kyle that he could now use fifty percent of the revenue from player sales to reinvest in the squad. That was a sure sign that the club’s financial position was improving.

But the talk now was about the city rivals and the eight-mile coach trip from the Kassam to Court Place Farm was done in less than twenty minutes.

25 July 2015 – Oxford City v Oxford United

Friendly #4 – Court Place Farm, Oxford

Referee: Pat Wright

Kyle met before the match with Johnson Hippolyte, who had earned his managerial spurs at Maidenhead United and had spent his entire career in the lower leagues, never playing or managing at the Conference level.

City might just get him there this season, though, so he was looking for a good performance against his Football League neighbors. And as the managers talked, Kyle watched Miles going through his paces.

“I’m going to play the boy against you,” Hippolyte said. “He’s for it, that’s for sure.”

“Good,” Kyle said. “I’d like to see how he’s progressing.”

“He won’t break into my first team any time soon,” Hippolyte replied. “He’s raw. I think he can play at our level if he keeps working.”

“Drax, that’s the problem I had with him,” Kyle admitted, using the City manager’s nickname. “A change of scenery was what he needed.”

“How are things with your daughter and him?” he asked, knowing the answer would provide insight into his player’s mind.

“Hard to say,” Kyle said. “I think they’re good but my wife won’t let him into our house any more. Jenna’s pregnant, though that’s not for public knowledge at this time, and he’s going to have some real decisions to make. He was a huge distraction for me and for my team and I had to do something. I hope he works out for you for a number of reasons.”

“I see,” Hippolyte replied. “Well, if he keeps his head down he has a chance at a lower league career. He’d need to really advance to get beyond that point. Still, though, he can be useful for us.”

Kyle answered that he didn’t want Hippolyte to think he was getting leftovers, but after Ashby had gone in the opposite direction the season before and now looked to be a legitimate League Two player, the inference couldn’t help but be made.

“Maybe this one will work out to my advantage,” Hippolyte joked before shaking hands with Kyle and retiring to his changing room.

The match started – and there he was, looking confident and a bit full of himself. Miles pulled his Oxford City shirt close to his chest, smoothing it out so people could see the logo, and looked at Kyle with a big smile.

He wasn’t smiling only five minutes into the match, when Rose skinned him and left him for dead at the right side of the City penalty area, penetrating with ease to take a rising shot that eluded Spanish goalkeeper Salva to put United ahead by a goal.

Rose reacted like he did it every day while Miles threw his head back in an expression of genuine frustration. He really did want to perform well, and Rose had abused him in a footballing sense. One-nil to United.

Miles got his revenge, though, with a crunching tackle that stopped Rose in his tracks three minutes after his goal – but when Rose couldn’t continue, Kyle frowned at the transgression in a friendly.

He grew angry, in fact. That sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen in a friendly. So Kyle countered with trialist Conor Townsend, recently released by Hull after spending last season on loan at League one Gillingham.

“Number twenty-four?” Townsend asked before heading on, pointing to Miles.

“Yes,” Kyle said. “Don’t hurt the kid, but make him pay for that tackle.”

Townsend did, skinning Miles for the second time that day five minutes after introduction and ripping another drive past Salva to make it 2-0.

Miles calmed down a bit after that but there was no stopping United in the first half. The Us treated City like a speed bump. They were everywhere.

They were that much better than City, and despite Miles’ industry, Townsend and Skarz made absolutely sure the smaller club wasn’t going to build anything down the right.

Townsend was a curious sort – Kyle knew he wanted to sign the player but he was of the opinion that Oxford simply wasn’t big enough for him. Some players are like that but for today Kyle had one task for him and he had already performed it admirably.

The halftime talk was short and sweet – don’t let up – and the substitution pattern in the second half took place as scheduled with Hippolyte’s men doing a better job in the second half than they had in the first.

Miles left shortly after the start of the second half but it didn’t matter – Hylton and Willock netted three minutes apart midway through the second half, to decide the issue beyond a shadow of a doubt.

For his part, Hippolyte was apologetic about the injury to Rose, but once Kyle learned that it wasn’t terribly serious he was willing to be generous – to the manager.

As referee Pat Wright blew his whistle to end the match, players started shaking hands with each other and Miles approached Kyle, hand extended.

Kyle accepted the peace offering but couldn’t resist.

“You’re drawing a professional’s salary now, Miles,” he said, with a touch of anger in his voice. “But that tackle on Danny shows you have a long way to go before you learn what being a professional really means.”

Oxford City 0

Oxford United 4 (Rose 5, Townsend 14, Hylton 74, Willock 77)

H/T: 0-2

A – 1,150, Court Place Farm, Oxford

Man of the Match: Conor Townsend, Oxford United (MR 8.6)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Kyle got a text from James Maddison the day after the Oxford match, which simply said “thank you”.

He wasn’t sure what it meant until he checked the football headlines that day.

Portsmouth had just bid half a million pounds for the boy from Coventry City and the Sky Blues had accepted. For Kyle’s money, James Maddison had been the League Two player of the year the season before, and now he was reportedly getting a contract for five times the salary Coventry had paid him just a season before.

That leads to thank-you texts.

Pompey’s promotion to League One as champion of the prior year’s League Two meant Kyle wouldn’t have to face his would-be protégé in the league, but he did wish that there could have been a way to have him in blue and gold for another season. The boy could play and clearly Portsmouth had seen that. So had Kyle – but the south coasters were a bigger club and that was that.

For the time being, Kyle’s task was to try to elevate Oxford United to Portsmouth’s level. That would take a bit of doing but he also saw that the squad of players he had was generally better than the one he had inherited a season ago.

Certain players were better than a year ago – Ashby most notably, and he looked ready to break out – and others such as Willock and Rothwell looked ready to do a job.

But there were other moves as well.

Kyle wanted to sign Conor Townsend and when he refused, Kyle ended his trial. There were other players who wanted to stay at Oxford and those were the ones he needed to focus on. Colchester, recently relegated from League One, immediately expressed interest and Kyle wondered whether another League Two team would be big enough for Mr. Townsend.

There were two other players who attracted Kyle’s interest and his new Director of Football was instructed to get deals done for both. Kyle was very pleasantly surprised when they actually happened.

Armand Gnanduillet, the former Chesterfield striker with a world of physical talent, was too good to pass up. His presence would give Roberts time to develop and give Kyle four senior strikers under his contract.

The other was definitely a player for the future – Jassem Sukar, who had played five games for Sunderland in the Premier League two seasons before, was cut loose and Kyle snapped him up. Still only nineteen years of age, he had great physical skill and simply needed polish. Both players signed on the dotted line just before the friendly at home to Corby Town.

29 July 2015 – Oxford United v Corby Town

Friendly #5 – The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Referee: Kevin Wright

Half an hour in to the fifth friendly, before a modest crowd at the Kassam, Kyle was wondering what his team would have to do to find a goal.

Two shots off the woodwork and eleven chances from right in front of goal had led to a stalemate, with Sam Baxter playing like an acrobat in Corby’s goal and their overly optimistic 4-1-2-3 formation in tatters before Kyle’s men.

The Southern League Premier Division team was backed as firmly against the wall as it could be at the Kassam without being pushed onto Grenoble Road, but it had not conceded.

“Maybe if we shot a football out of a cannon,” Kyle suggested to Fazackerley, but the assistant manager simply smiled and urged patience, something which had traditionally come to the boss in pitifully short supply.

“Give the lads time, it’ll come,” Fazackerley said. “How could it not?”

The answer, of course, both men knew perfectly well. There was no guarantee that anything at all would come. Both men had seen occasions where a team would dominate for 89 minutes, slip up once and get itself beaten. Someone had to be first.

Thankfully for Oxford, it was Hylton, who bundled over from about three yards out with three minutes to play in the half, and that really changed Kyle’s team talk.

“You’re going to roll on these guys in the second half if you just keep doing what you’re doing,” he told them. “Stay the course and have some fun out there.”

So it was that Gnanduillet showed his gratitude for his new contract by setting up Hylton for a goal and bagging one himself – within the first three minutes of the second half.

And with that, Fazackerley turned to Kyle.

“Oh ye of little faith,” he laughed, and Kyle sat back to enjoy the rest of the match, which saw his team rack up 24 attempts at goal to two for their visitors.

The substitution pattern started a bit early with the score 3-0, and both Mullins and Meades found the range in the final ten minutes to make the final score a very comfortable 5-0.

Hylton had been wonderful, the new guy Gnanduillet had been every bit as good, and Oxford had made very short work out of inferior opposition for the second straight match.

Things like that lead to confidence.

Oxford United 5 (Hylton 42, 47; Gnanduillet 48, Mullins 81, Meades 90+1)

Corby Town 0

H/T: 1-0

A – 2,176, The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Man of the Match: Danny Hylton, Oxford (MR 8.7)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

“How are you getting on?”

 

That wasn’t what Kyle wanted to see in a text message. It wasn’t the words themselves that caused the issue – but rather that they were on Stacy’s phone and they came from Boyd Stokes.

 

Judging by the other messages Kyle found, his wife’s onetime boytoy was having a hard time not being around someone he couldn’t have. There were no reply messages from Stacy on the phone that Kyle could find, and he hadn’t meant to snoop but when she went shopping, forgot her phone at home and the thing kept buzzing, Kyle finally went to shut it off.

 

And then he got to read the messages.

 

“I miss you.”

 

“How’s that lump of yours treating you?”

 

“Baby well? Would love to see him even if he’s not mine.”

 

So it was that when Stacy returned home, Kyle simply said, “you forgot your phone” from behind his copy of the Mail, and let her do the rest.

 

Kyle didn’t dare watch from around the newspaper but if he had, he would have seen Stacy’s face first go white, and then turn red with embarrassment. She texted a quick reply and erased the correspondence.

 

“I’ll start dinner,” she said, heading toward the kitchen.

 

“Yeah, do that,” Kyle said, deciding to let Stacy and her attitude twist slowly in the wind for a moment. “How’s Owen sleeping in the afternoons?”

 

“The day care providers say there aren’t any problems,” Stacy said.

 

“Good, because if you get too many more text messages like you got today, you’ll be on your own.”

 

Stacy blushed a bright and furious red, and for a change, had nothing to say.

 

4 August 2015

Thame United v Oxford United – Friendly #6

Meadow View Park, Thame

 

If Kyle thought that Corby Town was a speed bump, this Hellenic League Premier Division opponent was potentially even more so.

 

Thame United was founded in 1883 – making them ten years older than Oxford United – but unlike their visitors, they never advanced into the Football League.

 

Their home ground, Meadow View Park, is a lovely little community football facility which is groundshared with Aylesbury United and has a main stand on its western side. The community is about ten minutes east of Oxford proper so the road trip, such as it was, wasn’t too onerous.

 

Neither was the opposition, truth be told.

 

By the time Kyle had finally found a more or less comfortable place to sit on the bench, his team was already ahead 4-0, but one of his best players had been carted off with an injury.

 

The reason it was so hard to find a comfortable place was that the match was started in a driving rain, so slickers and rain gear – not brollies – were the order of the day on the Oxford bench.

 

The rain didn’t bother Will Hoskins at all, though. He netted nine minutes into the match on a fine cross from Tom Richards, who deputized for Skarz in the starting eleven, and did it again four minutes later, taking advantage of an entry ball from the United loanee Josh Harrop.

 

It was pretty clear that Harrop wasn’t going to last long in the match because he was in the very earliest stages of playing his way back into condition after a hamstring injury suffered in training with United – the latest in a rather annoying string of injuries for the teenager – but while he was out there, he looked very good indeed.

 

Five minutes later, it was Meades putting a useful ball into the box, which was turned past keeper Stacy Skinner by the mortified defender Kevin Maxwell for an own goal and a 3-0 lead to Oxford inside the first eighteen minutes.

 

But then it was Hoskins rolling on the ground in pain, the victim of a ridiculous and unpunished challenge from Maxwell, who caught him studs up right on the right thigh on the 22-minute mark.

 

“I don’t care if it’s a friendly, that’s a bloody red card!” Kyle screamed from the touchline, but referee Chris Kavanagh wasn’t interested for some unknown reason. Play resumed, Kyle removed both Hoskins and the already-gasping Harrop, and replaced them with MacDonald and Hoban, looking for more goals.

 

A minute later, Hylton was celebrating a goal, which was just what Kyle wanted to see. Most friendlies aren’t designed to be bloodbaths, but the nature of Maxwell’s challenge had really gotten his blood up.

 

There wasn’t a whole lot else to the first half, but Kyle reminded his players that places were still up for grabs in the team and that those mindful of that fact would be more likely to earn them. He then sent his team out for the second half, and was happy to see Hoban get on the scoresheet five minutes after the restart.

 

His team was dominant even though Thame was getting a surprising amount of the possession, and O’Dowda rounded out the scoring eleven minutes from time with a really cracking effort from outside the area that had even the home fans applauding.

 

The final was six – matching Kyle’s personal best at Oxford – and that was enough.

 

Oxford United 6 (Hoskins 9, 13; Kevin Maxwell o/g 18; Hylton 23; Hoban 50; O’Dowda 79)

Thane United 0

H/T: 0-4

A – 806, Meadow View Park, Thame

Man of the Match: Armand Gnanduillet, Oxford (MR 9.2)

 

# # #

[oatsie]

Still reading, still gripped. Great story pal!

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks very much, Oatsie! Glad you are enjoying!

___

The team seemed to be rounding into shape rather nicely. The team’s goal output had increased from three against Genk to four against Oxford City to five against Corby to six against Thame.

 

Under that line of progression, Accrington Stanley, the Us opening league opponent a week hence, should have simply given up the ghost.

 

Kyle’s appearance at the monthly board meeting, held the Monday after the destruction of Thame, laid out a set of expectations the manager was not expecting to see.

 

Eales ran things, as always, and read them out one item at a time.

 

“For the record, our expectations are to finish above mid-table in the league; reach the Second Round of the Cup, and to simply be competitive in the League Cup given the difficulty of the First Round draw we have received. We are of course in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy as well but as you know we won’t be judging harshly on that competition.”

 

To Kyle, that spelled ‘win one Cup match and we’ll call this good’. He was ready to take that idea and run with it, because the expectation of above mid-table was frankly too low in Kyle’s eyes. For him, anything less than contending for promotion would have been a waste of his time.

 

He liked the squad better than the one he had inherited. Players who were dead wood the season before were gone, replaced by players Kyle liked much better within in his system. There was the start of a pipeline of youngsters waiting in the wings since players like Hoskins were soon going to be too expensive to keep and needed to be replaced.

 

Ashby was one, but his early season work had been a complete revelation and made him the favorite to start in Maddison’s old spot in the center of midfield in the opening game.

 

Players like Gnanduillet and Sukar were players who could help Oxford grow and if they did it in League One, so much the better. Kyle genuinely did not see his team as a League Two-caliber squad.

 

Only he didn’t tell the board that. Instead, he gave Eales a pensive look and, after a moment, smiled.

 

“I think those goals are reachable,” he finally said.

 

“Good,” Eales said. “You will be judged on them.”

 

It was also the second year of Kyle’s initial two-year contract, and failure in this campaign would put him right back where he had been the preceding summer: unemployed.

 

That thought was the only thing that really ever frightened Kyle. He hadn’t handled the last episode of joblessness well and he was determined to do everything he could to make sure it never happened again.

 

His first year had been an unqualified success: 33 games played, 21 won, six lost, six drawn for a 63 percent winning percentage. His team had scored 74 goals and conceded 33, with the staggering output in attack being the highest of any professional team in England during that stretch.

 

He had never handled failure, perceived or otherwise, very well. His sacking at Torquay had sent him into a prolonged tailspin that made him wonder if a career in the game after retirement was really a good idea. Now, things had changed to the point where the club was paying for him to study for a Continental A License.

 

So to have goals that he thought he could reach – and even exceed – was a good thing. He could feel it. But as he left the meeting, he was thinking about Stacy.

 

Or more accurately, about those texts she had received. One of the reasons he had taken Stacy back was that she had sworn she wouldn’t spend time around, or talk to, Boyd Stokes. His texts had angered Kyle but he had to consider that she hadn’t encouraged them, so when he finally asked his wife to explain herself, she had done, not necessarily to his total satisfaction.

 

He couldn’t prove otherwise. So he had to be satisfied.

 

As such, his relationship with Diana Moore had changed a bit as well, once it became common knowledge around the front office that what Kyle had once done had now been done to him.

 

Now the club’s marketing director looked at him with a barely-concealed expression of ‘how do you like that’ which really rankled with the Oxford boss.

 

That said, Kyle had decided to concentrate on his wins and losses, “keeping his eyes on his own bobber” as the Americans might have said, though he had put up a small sign on his desk which read I hope karma slaps you in the face before I do. He dedicated that vignette to the woman down the hall.

 

Her sister had been a wonderful fling, but it hadn’t been worth the cost. Nothing was that wonderful.

 

But in the meantime, he was trying to get his team ready for fellow 2014-15 playoff club Accrington Stanley, scheduled to visit the Kassam to start the season.

 

Victory to start the season would be the best way to shut up Diana Moore and get things off on the right foot with a team that had a few new moving parts from the season just finished.

 

As he left the stadium for home the night before the season opening match, the text message light on his phone flashed. He activated his screen and opened his messages.

 

“How have you been, Kyle?” he read. It was from Allison.

 

Now the shoe was on the other foot.

 

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

8^th September 2015 – Sky Bet League Two Match Day #1

Oxford United v Accrington Stanley

The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Referee: Andy Davies

 

The weather was very breezy and unusually warm for the second week of September as Kyle and Stacy rose from bed on the day of the opening match.

 

Stacy had not seen her husband’s team play since the last month of the 2013-14 season at Torquay, and if she was truly honest about it, she would have told Kyle that she didn’t much like watching him at that point in his life. Or hers.

 

Obviously, she had never seen Oxford United play before and naturally not under Kyle’s management so as the two prepared to leave for the ground, there was quite an odd feeling in the Cain household.

 

Jenna was off watching Oxford City, hoping to get a look at Miles, who had made the substitutes’ bench that day and was on the cusp of making his professional debut. He had done well under the City coaching staff – better than he had done under Kyle, with the obvious reason being less interaction with Miss Cain while he was training across town.

 

Kyle had arranged for tutoring for Jenna in relation to her condition and the desire to avoid the inevitable comments that would arise regarding a teen mother-to-be in a school setting.

 

But none of that mattered at that very moment, as Stacy sat in the seat Allison had been the last woman to occupy in the front of Kyle’s Vauxhall. That wasn’t lost on Kyle, who at that moment was thinking of Allison rather than his wife.

 

He hadn’t answered the text. He had wanted to, partly out of spite for Stacy and partly out of concern for Allison. One of those reasons was more wrong than the other, and he knew it, but had managed to curb his desire to respond and, in a rare moment of emotional self-control, managed to stick by his decision.

 

That didn’t mean he had to like it. But Kyle was doing what he felt he had to do.

 

His first XI of the new season was written on the white board at the front of the room before the team arrived. With that, Kyle retreated into his office to await events while Stacy went to the directors’ box to meet the board. He hoped it wouldn’t be a disaster.

 

Oxford United: Ashdown: Grandison, Dunkley, Wright (captain), Skarz, Willock, MacDonald, Ashby, O’Dowda, Hoskins, Gnanduillet. Subs: Clarke, Whing, Meades, Richards, Rothwell, Hylton, Hoban.

 

The bigger news of the day came when Fazackerley entered Kyle’s office and sat opposite him at the desk.

 

“Kyle, I just want you to know I’ve decided to retire at the end of the season,” he said. Nothing like getting right to the point.

 

While Kyle was absorbing that news, he also knew he couldn’t blame his deputy. About to turn 64 years of age in November and having spent 46 of those years in the game since breaking in with Blackburn Rovers in 1969, Fazackerley had been in the game longer than Kyle had been alive. He deserved his day in the sun.

 

“Well, I will do everything in my power to make sure you go out a winner,” Kyle said, extending his hand. The two shook hands.

 

“You’ve taught me a lot,” Kyle said, and Fazackerley simply smiled.

 

“Very little you didn’t have in you from the beginning,” the silver-haired man said with the easy smile that Kyle had grown to trust in his time in charge. “You just didn’t see it. Now that you’ve had some success you can put those things to good use and help get this club promoted as a goodbye gift to me.”

 

The conversation was between two men who had seen a lot in the game – but one had seen much more than the other. Yet he accepted his junior status with good grace and a genuine desire to help his boss succeed.

 

Kyle admired that trait in his assistant. There was a lot to admire about Derek Fazackerley and as the two headed out for the first team talk of the new season, Kyle didn’t fail to remember it.

 

“Derek, why don’t you take the team talk?” he offered, and the assistant looked at the manager.

 

“That should be your prerogative, Kyle,” he said, but Kyle simply smiled.

 

“Tell them,” Kyle said, and stood to one side. Fazackerley then told the team of his intentions, and when he was done, the manager stood at the front of the room.

 

“Make this man’s last season a winning one,” Kyle said simply. “It starts today.”

 

It took just over a minute for Jake Wright to have the ball at his feet and the goal at his mercy, but he fired into Owen Wheeler’s body instead and the Accrington keeper made the first big save of the season.

 

Oxford immediately regained possession only to see MacDonald ring the right goalpost from ten yards, which made Kyle wonder about being snakebit. But the rebound fell to O’Dowda, and the winger wheeled and crossed back across the box, where the ball rolled kindly to Jermaine Grandison, with the debutant smashing home from eighteen yards with 92 seconds on the clock.

 

The Kassam Stadium crowd roared like it was packed to the gills even though it was slightly over half full for the opening match. Grandison had showed his worth almost immediately, with the former Shrewsbury man showing his pleasure at scoring for his new team.

 

But then Wright got himself booked by referee Andy Davies three minutes into the game – and just after the quarter hour, Accrington was on the penalty spot as O’Dowda was judged to have impeded defender Rob Atkinson in the box. Up stepped former Ranger Kal Naismith to take the penalty – and Ashdown saved it, diving full length to his left to get a strong hand on the ball.

 

The predictably huge lift to the home team lasted for about twenty minutes, and before it had ended, O’Dowda had made amends by scoring his first goal of the season, taking a great little lead ball from Ashby on his right, cutting around defender Seamus Conneely and ripping a rising drive past Wheeler just after the half hour.

 

That was wonderful. Ashby limping off two minutes before the break to be replaced by Rothwell was not. The kid had been a revelation in preseason training, and looked ready to claim Maddison’s old role for his own. But now he needed assistance to leave the field after a collision with Accrington skipper Luke Joyce.

 

Still, two goals up at halftime was good for Kyle and he told the team so, before sending them back out for the second half.

 

Once there, it was matter of keeping shape, staying compact and holding Stanley to shots from distance which was not terribly difficult to do. Like a beaten race horse, Stanley faded quickly in the second half but there was another debutant who had work to do, and six minutes from time he did it.

 

Gnanduillet did the honors, on one of the simplest of plays. Ashdown came out about 35 yards to take a free kick after an offside, and his booming effort up field found Hoskins in space inside the Accrington penalty area. He squared into the six-yard box and Gnanduillet became the second Oxford new boy to score in his first game.

 

But there was difficult news even in the second half, as Hoskins and MacDonald both took hard knocks from an aggrieved Accrington back line – making both men doubtful for the League Cup trip to Watford at midweek – an impossible mission perhaps, under the best of circumstances.

 

Oxford United 3 (Grandison 2, O’Dowda 31, Gnanduillet 84)

Accrington Stanley 0 (Kal Naismith m/p 16)

H/T: 2-0

A – 6,418, The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Man of the Match: Jermaine Grandison, Oxford (MR 9.0)

 

# # #

[oatsie]

Hi @tenthreeleader, do you have any plans to continue this story? I'd love to read more!

[tenthreeleader]

Absolutely. I have work to do.

___

There was already substantial injury news for Kyle after the first game of the season. MacDonald had a dead leg but was a doubt for the trip to Vicarage Road, but Hoskins had a deeper thigh bruise that would put him out for about two weeks – and Ashby had a pulled hamstring from his collision which would sideline him for at least a month.

That meant a great opportunity for the United loanee, Rothwell, to prove his worth in midfield. With the match at Watford coming up, Kyle wanted to play 4-2-3-1 anyway, which meant Rothwell would have to play in a number ten sort of role if he wanted to play at all – but the young man said he could and Kyle had seen nothing on the training ground to indicate otherwise.

Hoban was being held in reserve for this game, with Gnanduillet not quite recovered and Hoskins injured, so playing one man up front away to Premiership opposition seemed to be the best course of action.

It was also a chance for Meades to get some playing time, as Kyle had indicated would happen late the season before. A very versatile player, he needed the time and with MacDonald not fully recovered from his dead leg it seemed that the right side of midfield was the best place to play him.

Nobody was giving Oxford any chance in what was a brutal draw from their perspective. Even a reserve Hornets team should have had little trouble with the League Two team but Kyle prepared his team with the idea that they weren’t going to northwest London as makeweights.

But he also didn’t delete Allison’s text. He stared at it for parts of two days – that part where he wasn’t with family or on the training ground.

Stacy minded her p’s and q’s for a few days after Boyd’s texts, though, and eventually things calmed down in the Cain household.

This was a good thing. But friction was starting to grow between Jenna and Stacy, as the girl’s state began to show a little bit.

Stacy was evidently quite unforgiving of indiscretions which were not hers, and the two had several conversations they thought were out of earshot but which easily defeated Kyle’s headphones in the evening, enabling him to share in a few uncomfortable moments.

Let’s just say that Stacy wasn’t thrilled about the idea of becoming a grandmother quite yet.

Finally, though, Jenna struck back in the only way she could, noting that her mother hadn’t been exactly pristine herself in the preceding several months.

“Just you never mind about that,” Stacy began, but Jenna would have none of it.

“You can’t yell at me when you’ve been gone for such a long time and you were pregnant too,” she said. “My brother deserves better than that.”

It was an interesting argument and it hit Stacy like a cold glass of water thrown into her face. At that time, Kyle entered the room, disrupted once again from his work by an argument between mother and daughter.

He arrived just in time to hear exactly the wrong thing.

“Your brother?” Stacy snapped. “You mean your half-brother!”

 

# # #

[JayR2003]

Boom...

[tenthreeleader]

That's an attention-getter....

___

“What did you say?”

 They both said it at the same moment. Kyle and Jenna stared first at each other and then at Stacy, who glared back at them.

 “I wanted to see what you’d say,” she said, her voice just managing to avoid trembling. Her face was as white as theirs.

 “You see, it’s not much fun to get a nasty surprise, is it, Jenna?” Stacy asked, but it wasn’t lost on either Kyle or Jenna that she had failed to answer the question.

 “Tell me right now,” Kyle demanded. “If this is one of your stunts there’s going to be hell to pay. And if this isn’t one of your stunts, there’s going to be bigger hell to pay. Your choice.”

 “Jenna is ours,” Stacy said. “I was just trying to get your attention so I could make my point.”

 “Don’t make it like that,” Kyle warned. “You’re on thin ice as it is.”

 She started to respond but Kyle interjected.

 “Not another word, Stacy,” Kyle snapped. “I mean it. Not. Another. Word.”

 The two stared at each other numbly.

 She gave in. Kyle was pleased to note it.

 Finally, Kyle spoke and when he did, his words were cutting.

 “I think you miss him,” he said, and Stacy wheeled to face her husband.

 “What a ridiculous thing to say,” she snapped.

 His eyes bored in on Stacy’s and she found it impossible to look away.

 “You thought you had found someone better,” he said, his tone growing more and more accusatory, “and you came back here trying to put things right. Well, you’re having second thoughts. Aren’t you, Stacy? You wouldn’t treat either of us like you have been unless you had at least considered it.”

 She frowned, and blushed a fiery, hot shade of red. “I’ve thought about him, yes,” she admitted. “Just like you had thought about Charlotte, I’m sure, when we were all angry with you.”

 “So I want to know what you’re going to do about it,” Kyle said. “I put my life on hold, changed it, in fact, to give this one more chance. Jenna is doing the best she can, she’s done something she’s accepted responsibility for, and we’re trying to put things right as a family. Now, you can either be a part of that or not. It’s up to you.”

 She decided to try another tack. “Aren’t you even thinking of Owen in all this?” she asked.

 “Don’t hide behind the baby,” Kyle replied. “I’m doing this because of the baby. I want him to grow up in a good situation, but if his mother is going to behave like this, then I have to call it quits. I just can’t do this anymore, Stacy.”

Stacy shook her head. “I want this to work out, Kyle,” she finally said, sagging into a chair. “I can’t be this angry all the time. You can’t be this angry all the time. But I have needs too and I hope both of you see that.”

“Maybe you’d better tell us what they are, Mum,” Jenna finally said. “We’re tired of having to guess.”

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

11 August 2015 – League Cup First Round
Watford v Oxford United - Vicarage Road, Watford
Referee: Geoff Eltringham

That conversation made for some very quiet meals in the Cain household for the next few days. But this time, unlike the last time, Stacy hadn’t left.

Jenna had spent a fair bit of time out of the house, though, mostly with Miles as time permitted. The boy was on the fringes of Oxford City’s team and was really trying to get his head down and get into the team.

Kyle was happy about that for two reasons: first, it meant that Miles was trying to provide for himself and his unborn child, and that meant a lot since he had also taken a second job in town to try to make some money. Second, it meant he would improve as a footballer and that might mean a career in the game.

And there was a third reason, which he would never have said out loud: he was glad for Jenna to get away from her mother for a time. Stacy had always been a bit of a handful in their younger days when she was upset, but Kyle had put up with it because, in the beginning, when they had been together it was magic.

He himself wasn’t too unhappy to get out the door for the trip to Northwest London, though, but the reception his team was likely to get from its Premiership opposition was not fun to contemplate.

He’d have them playing 4-2-3-1, that was for certain, and given the current striker situation after only one game, perhaps one striker was the best idea. The lone striker he chose was Hylton, and the rest of his team would need to bring its very best game to have a ghost of a chance.

As expected, Watford stormed the goal in the opening moments. Ashdown, though, held firm and was good when he had to be, while the Hornets were quite wasteful indeed in reply. Odion Ighalo was the chief culprit, missing two open sides in the first ten minutes before Troy Deeney finally beat Ashdown on the floor thirteen minutes into the match to give Watford a well deserved lead.

Kyle didn’t change anything, didn’t yell, didn’t fuss, and was rewarded five minutes later when O’Dowda picked up a free kick on the left and floated a ball into the box that Dunkley found with his forehead. He smashed the ball past Heurelho Gomes to level the match eighteen minutes in.

So far, so good. They had scored away to a Premiership opponent, but there was a lot of work to do, and there was even more after Whing pulled up lame chasing a through ball 27 minutes into the match. Kyle wasn’t aware that Whing had leg muscles that could be pulled given his lack of pace, but being forced into an injury substitution that early wasn’t pleasant.

Harrop came on for the veteran, and was asked to try his luck in one of the many positions he could play. He was also pleased that Meades, another multi-talented player, was in the eleven to show his skills. He might have to move around.

Oxford held its shape nicely for the next few minutes, and finally felt comfortable enough to run forward after the half hour – when O’Dowda beat first Juanfran and then Ikechi Anya down the left before crossing to meet the onrushing Hylton. The striker fired Oxford into a shock lead nine minutes before the half and the traveling support could hardly believe it.

“I can hardly believe it,” Kyle told Fazackerley as the two sat themselves back down after the goal. Referee Eltringham blew for halftime a few minutes later and Kyle had a very important team talk to give.

“This is great stuff,” he finally said. “But you have a big second half ahead of you. Don’t let this go to your heads, lads, remember you still need to get forward and pressure them. You can do it.”

As the second half began, Watford seemed to wake like the proverbial sleeping giant, but their shots, either from long range or off-target, didn’t seem to bother Ashdown very much.

The onetime Premiership keeper stood tall again, swatting away an effort from Hocine Ragued, who had come on when Ighalo was crocked at the end of the first half, like he did it every day.

But even Ashdown couldn’t stop the rising drive from fifteen yards that the Tunisian international powered home as the match ticked over to 65 minutes that leveled the score and gave the old air of inevitability back to the match.

The Us were playing heroically but couldn’t seem to find a way forward against their more illustrious opponents. Seventy, seventy-five minutes passed without that way becoming apparent. Sensing extra time and trying to steal a winner, Kyle substituted Hoban for Wright and went to 4-4-2 to try to find a late winner, without success.

Added time loomed large and O’Dowda was completely exhausted, so Kyle used his last substitution to bring on MacDonald for him, giving the team one wing threat with fresh legs.

The first half meant fifteen minutes of exercise, as neither team appeared ready to try to surge forward for a winner – and most of the second half was the same way.

As the match turned to 117 minutes, Kyle looked at Fazackerley and motioned for his note pad, to start figuring out penalty takers. His team was about to take a Premiership opponent to spot kicks and he was thrilled – until he saw Deeney burst through the defense and beat Ashdown.

Kyle stood, stunned, as his defense stood, hands on heads, aghast at what had happened. There was time for one final effort but it came to nothing.

Out in the first round. And cruelly so.

Oxford United 2 (Dunkley 18, Hylton 36)
Watford 3 (Troy Deeney 13, 117; Hocine Ragued 65)
H/T: 2-1
A – 12,462, Vicarage Road, Watford
Man of the Match: Troy Deeney, Watford (MR 8.8)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

“How can you fault them?” Kyle asked. “I mean, seriously, how can you fault this effort?”

It was a disappointed bunch of Us that gathered to get ready for the homeward trip after the match, but Kyle had to face the press and its never-ending penchant for finding fault.

 “They just let up at the end,” Bill Churchill said, to Kyle’s ire. The Oxford Mail reporter had been on the wrong end of the manager’s wrath the season before and this wasn’t a good way to open his account for the new season.

 “They got beat by bigger, stronger, faster,” Kyle said. “There’s no shame in that. This is a good side for its level and it’s going to win its share of games but this team we played today is in the best league in the world for a good reason. They played better than we did and they deserved to win.”

 Vic Young then piped up, which Kyle liked a lot better.

 “What if this match had been played in Oxford?” she asked. “Different result?”

 “I don’t know about a different result, but it would have been great to have this tie at home, I have to admit that,” Kyle answered. “I think we gave them a good game regardless of where it was played. But now I have to figure out how to get this group of players ready to go on the road to Colchester three days after losing an extra-time Cup tie.”

 “Preparing us for bad news?” Churchill again, who was now two-for-two.

 “Leave off,” Kyle finally said, unable to contain his annoyance. That surprised some of the London beat writers, who had made this gaggle a bit larger than Kyle was used to seeing.

 Somebody with a BBC microphone now shouldered his way to the front of the pack to get a radio interview, and Kyle did that duty as well. He finally left, to see Watford manager Kenny Jackett waiting for him.

 “Come on, Kyle, join me for a glass,” he offered, and Kyle accepted. The Welshman didn’t seem to be patronizing, and that was why he honored the home manager’s offer.

 As they talked, Kyle loosened up a little bit. He never liked losing, for certain, but he was willing to be a good sport about it when it was accepted that his team was supposed to be beaten. Jackett seemed a kind enough chap, and as they shared small talk while Kyle’s team prepared to go home, he got another text message.

 “I heard things aren’t going so well for you at home,” Amanda wrote. “I’m sorry to hear that. I just want you to know that I care.”

 He waited to decide what to do with this message as well. He thanked Jackett for his hospitality, and then boarded the coach as the last man on board for the trip home. Then he pulled out his phone and answered.

 “Thank you,” he wrote. “It’s a tough time. But I wanted you to know that I appreciate you.”

 Then he wondered how she could possibly have known.

 # # #

[tenthreeleader]

The coach ride home had been quiet but in the end, the loss hadn’t seemed to hurt the players too badly. They could learn from this loss, and surely could feel good about themselves by getting to extra time.

It was Jackett who had more work to do, and he had said so plainly while he and Kyle had enjoyed a glass of wine after the match.

“We were supposed to be better than that,” he said. “Of course you had a lot to do with it.”

Kyle couldn’t disagree, but as the team’s thoughts turned toward Colchester, he couldn’t help but wonder about what might have been. A victory at Vicarage Road would have been the kind of thing that would build a young manager’s reputation, and he hadn’t failed to note it.

But it hadn’t been on the cards and so the players who had gone the full two hours against Watford were given two days off from training both as a reward for a job well done as well as to render them fit for any kind of consideration against recently relegated Colchester.

He also tried, once again, to be patient with Stacy, who had crossed yet another line with her drama-inducing comment about Jenna.

Jenna had always been the one person Kyle could count on to be in his corner, and even after her pregnancy had been confirmed, he had been a loving and supportive father. She had repaid him in kind.

And now, Stacy had done this. It left a very bad taste in his mouth.

Boyd Stokes was bad enough. To even think about someone else being Jenna’s father … well that was just too much.

It was enough to give a man a complex.

But it seemed to Kyle that in Stacy’s mind, well, he just deserved it because he had done it once too.

And so it was that Kyle went to the Swan and Castle, his favorite haunt with Allison, to drink alone the night after the Watford match.

He needed time to sort out a few things.

“Benny, the usual,” Kyle said, sitting at the bar instead of in his corner booth. It reminded him of Allison and that wasn’t what he needed.

Benny Chapman, the bartender with the biggest ear in Oxfordshire, complied with the manager’s request, giving him a Shotover Trinity, his new favorite. Since he was driving, he knew he would need to nurse that pint because the absolute last thing he needed was a drink-driving charge to answer.

But he wasn’t really there to drink. Bartenders are good listeners.

It was fitting that Chapman was a barkeep since he had been something of a pub league legend in his younger days, at least to hear him tell it. He came to the Kassam from time to time every other Saturday, but for the most part he stayed behind his bar, doing very good business and hearing people’s troubles for far less than a shrink charged.

“I hear the missus is at it again,” Chapman said as Kyle sat, and the manager gave him a look of amazement.

“Bloody hell, does everyone in this town know what’s going on in my house?” he asked, trying to keep his composure.

“Now then, Mr. Cain, don’t you fret,” the older man said. “I was at City’s match the other day and I saw the young Booth lad talking with her after the match. They were having a right go at each other in the car park.”

Sadly, Kyle shook his head and took a longer pull from his glass than he would have liked. So that was how people knew.

“She needs to mind her own bloody business in public,” Kyle mused.

“How’s your girl?” the barkeep asked.

Kyle’s first impulse was nearly to ask “which one?” but caught himself just in time.

“Jenna? She’s fine,” he finally replied. “But this whole thing with Stacy is causing a lot of worry.”

“She’s messed up, that girl,” the bartender replied, knowing he could freely express such an opinion around a man who held the same opinion himself. “Want some advice?”

Now Kyle smiled. “Please,” he said, taking another pull from the glass.

“Let her simmer down,” Benny said, but that wasn’t what Kyle wanted to hear.

“So I should be even more patient,” he mused.

“What choice do you have?” the bartender asked, taking a glass out of his dishwasher and rubbing a stray spot from near the lip with a snow-white dishtowel.

“Divorce,” Kyle said immediately. “I’ve thought about it.”

“And what would happen to you and to Jenna and that baby?” the barkeep replied, but Kyle knew the answer. Everyone had told him they would be just fine.

“In what way?” Kyle answered. “People go through this sort of thing all over the world.”

“But they aren’t football managers in the public eye,” Benny said, his patient tone striking a chord with Kyle. “You’ve had enough damage to your reputation, don’t you think?”

Kyle swirled his ale around in his glass. “I suppose you’re right,” he finally said. “But you know I would rather not have to be so patient.”

“Neither would your other young lady,” Chapman said. “She was here the other night with Miss Young from the Mail, and we had exactly the same conversation.”

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

15 August 2015 - Colchester United (1-0-0, 7^th place) v Oxford United (1-0-0, 2^nd place)
Sky Bet League Two Match Day #2 – Weston Homes Community Stadium, Colchester
Referee: Darren Deadman

The most annoying thing most football managers can experience is for one of the players to go to the press complaining about lack of playing time.

Oxford Mail, meet Danny Rose.

The suddenly-disgruntled midfielder was actually about to feature in the XI but when he went to Churchill, well, all bets were off.

Ashby had passed him in preseason and both Rothwell and Willock were ahead of Rose in the pecking order as well, but Rose needed to get his head down in training and work, and he didn’t seem willing to do that.

But Ashby was hurt, Rothwell was trying to find form and Willock was the man ahead of Rose as the Us prepared to face Colchester just three days after getting their hearts ripped out by Watford. A man going to the press was the last thing in the world Kyle needed.

So, when the muckrakers came calling, Kyle flung some back.

“He doesn’t want to be here, he can leave,” Kyle said tartly. “This club has made an investment in Danny and if he doesn’t want to stay, we’ll find him a new club.”

“Doesn’t that undermine you if someone else wants to leave?” Churchill asked.

“Things are going far too well here at the moment for you to be asking questions like that,” Kyle snapped, remembering his feud with the reporter from the season before. “Anyone in my changing room who wants to challenge me can go ahead and try it. You won’t find many takers.”

He was annoyed, and why shouldn’t he have been? Rose was reasonably popular with the fans and that counted for something, but the best eleven play each week and at that moment, Danny Rose was not one of them. The problem was, with the team playing away Kyle couldn’t simply pull him out of the eighteen – which Rose had made for this match – so he sat on the substitutes' bench as the Us faced one of the teams recently relegated from League One.

The distraction didn’t help matters, as the hosts were on the scoreboard within the first three minutes. Tom Eastman’s looping header beat the leaping Ashdown to his right post with two and a half minutes on the clock to send a very angry Kyle Cain to the touchline to ask what his team was thinking.

One thing Kyle could see clearly – if Jonathan Meades was thinking anything at all, he was keeping it to himself. The midfielder, in the XI due to fatigue issues to other players and the last Oxford player to come to Kyle saying he should be playing more, certainly wasn’t acting like it.

Between Rose and Meades, the two players who had been the squeaky wheels with Kyle about wanting to play more, there right now wasn’t a serviceable player between them. He returned to the bench after sending a firecracker in Meades’ direction from the touchline about concentration, but nothing really seemed to help. Even a card for Willock didn’t seem to have any effect on the Us, who were playing without emotion and seemingly without a plan.

“I swear to God I’m gonna yank him out of there,” Kyle snarled, as Fazackerley tried his best to keep his boss calm.

But Kyle was mollified a few moments later as Grandison got things going in the right direction, with a long punt – and it was truly that – of about sixty yards down the left that found O’Dowda in full flight. The winger raced in and equalized in the 18^th minute to calm down the manager and get the visitors on the scoreboard.

It wasn’t pretty. It was almost crudely direct. But it was effective, Colchester had no answer for O’Dowda’s pace, and things were all even. They became uneven just over ten minutes later when O’Dowda got on the end of another raking pass – this one not so much long ball as a rather inspired switch of play from right to left by MacDonald, but with the same result.

The favored home team was suddenly having an unusually difficult time adjusting to direct play, and nobody on the Oxford bench missed that fact. It seemed to be inviting the counter game as much as anything else – only that wasn’t the style Kyle preferred. He was considering changing his mind, though, since just about every time his team moved forward, a longer ball would stretch the defense to the snapping point.

Nineteen-year old defender Frankie Kent was a particularly egregious offender in that regard and before long the Us were just bombing the ball up Route One in search of a third while goalkeeper Sam Walker did the best he could to keep his defenders organized.

Halftime came first, though, and Kyle fully expected Colchester to drop its defensive line from its present too-high setup to one farther back, allowing the Oxford wings and midfield to come deeper to start plays in the offensive half. Teams could pick their poison that way – death by direct play and pace or death by good wing play, overlaps and crosses.

With the start of the second half, Kyle had some reason for optimism – but was keenly annoyed when Willock was carded again and sent off right on the hour for a seemingly innocuous foul against Alex Gilbey.

The Manchester United loanee couldn’t figure it out and neither could Kyle, but the first card had made Willock vulnerable and so it was always up to the referee to decide on his fate. Darren Deadman had done just that, and now Oxford needed to hold the lead with ten men.

Hoban was sacrificed for Whing, with Skarz coming on for Tom Richards, who had also been carded, along with a switch to 4-4-1 to try and hold off the home team for half an hour.

They held off Colchester for nineteen minutes, with Macauley Bonne beating Ashdown to his right post with a well-taken volley in 79 minutes to get the home team back on terms and the crowd back into the game. While Meades had gotten better – mainly because he couldn’t have gotten worse – Kyle wanted full commitment in the team for the last ten minutes and so off came the Oxford man for Rothwell ten minutes from time.

The ten Oxford men held their shape and the team escaped with a draw – which could have been much more.

Colchester United 2 (Tom Eastman 3, Macauley Bonne 79)
Oxford United 2 (O’Dowda 18, 31; Willock s/o 60)
H/T: 1-2
A – 3,284, Weston Homes Community Stadium, Colchester
Man of the Match: Callum O’Dowda, Oxford United (MR 8.8)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

“It happens. Sometimes you get put down to ten men. We didn’t defend well enough. It was just that simple.”

 That didn’t mean he had to like it, though, and Kyle certainly didn’t. The coach trip home from Essex was pretty quiet – especially for Willock, who felt badly enough as it was and now would miss the weekend’s matchup against Dag and Red, who, like Oxford, had won and drawn in their first two matches.

 It could have been worse, Kyle noted. Just a few days after some team members had played 120 minutes in the League Cup, they had gone on the road to a recently relegated team and come out with a point. That counted for something – exactly one point, Kyle mused as the coach pulled into the Kassam Stadium lot – but it was better than none and probably better than last season’s team could have done.

 But as Kyle unloaded his personal bag from the coach and tossed it into the boot of his car, he thought about how far his team had come for him to be able to have a thought such as that one and keep a straight face.

 “Not bad,” he said aloud as he started the car, and headed for home. With only a few days to prepare for the visit of the Daggers, Kyle knew he would have most of his first-choice eleven more or less ready to play. Several players had had to sit for the trip to Colchester and the team had still managed to draw, but the home match was one where Oxford would be expected to win.

 He was turning over potential team selections in his head when he pulled up to a stop light a few blocks from his home.

 He saw Miles’ car on the other side of the intersection and knew that he had been at the house – which was a bit odd being that it had been a City game day as well. He thought about the last time he had passed Miles Booth’s car headed in the opposite direction that close to his house, and remembered that that particular day hadn’t ended well.

 He hadn’t heard from Jenna that Miles was out of the team, and since his daughter was quite fastidious about making sure Kyle was aware of her fellow’s every move, it just seemed strange.

 Thinking it all through, Kyle pulled into the intersection, and never saw the Citroen which tried to run the light coming from his left. The car t-boned Kyle’s vehicle on the passenger side at a high rate of speed and flipped it over onto its roof, with the driver already unconscious inside.

 # # #

[tenthreeleader]

Miles was the first one to the scene, pulling off to the side of the road before heading to the driver’s side of Kyle’s vehicle. There wasn’t much he could do – and with the driver out cold, there wasn’t much he really should have done until professional help arrived.

 There was no fire, but broken glass lay everywhere on the pavement. The air bags had deployed in both vehicles and passersby were looking after the other driver, who was a middle-aged man.

 Within ten minutes of the accident, rescue crews had arrived and the process of extricating Kyle from his vehicle began.

 As bad as the accident looked, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Had the impact been on the driver’s side, Kyle could have been killed.

 As it was, he awoke in the hospital with a team of doctors hovering over and near him.

 He tried to shake his head from side to side to clear out the cobwebs but his neck had been placed in a brace so that wasn’t really possible.

 “Mr. Cain, don’t try to move,” a nurse said, motioning to a trauma doctor to re-examine the Oxford manager, now for all practical purposes The English Patient.

 Frustrated, Kyle did what the medical staff said. He couldn’t move, but no one had told him he couldn’t talk, so that was next on the agenda.

 “What in the bloody hell happened?” he asked. Surreptitiously, he made sure he could move all his extremities before moving on in the conversation.

 “Your car was hit broadside,” a doctor told him, while monitoring a morphine sulfate IV drip which was controlling Kyle’s pain level. He could read the label on the bottle and knew what he was being given, so he knew something bad had happened.

 “What gives with the pain juice?” he asked.

 “It looks as though that rollover broke your right forearm,” the doctor said, and Kyle wondered how he could have moved it as he had done without feeling anything at all. That’s what makes morphine special.

 “We have a match on Tuesday,” he began, but the doctor shook his head.

 “Don’t think about that now,” the physician advised. “If all goes well, you’ll be able to attend, but at the moment we need to get that arm set, get you off these pain medications and get you home.”

 “Is my wife out there?” Kyle asked.

 “She is,” the doctor said. “She, your daughter and another man are in the lobby. Your daughter’s boy friend, I believe. He found you at the intersection and called the rescue squad.”

 If Kyle hadn’t frowned at that, he would have smiled. It was very decent of Miles to both stay with Jenna and show concern for the man who had released him from Oxford United at the same time. Someone would have called the authorities of course, but in the end Kyle was very glad that it had been Miles Booth who had done the deed.

 After a few more minutes, the family was allowed in for a brief visit.

 “You’re pretty beat up,” Stacy said by way of greeting.

 “I am,” Kyle admitted. “You won’t love my pretty face any more.” The side windows and windshield were blown in by the impact and Kyle’s face had several cuts caused by the flying debris.

 His wife didn’t smile at the comment, but Jenna giggled.

 “Men look better rugged, Dad,” she said, touching his good arm softly as she spoke. Miles stood behind Jenna and Kyle motioned toward him with his left arm.

 “Thank you, Miles,” Kyle said softly. “I heard what you did. That was very decent of you.”

 “What did you expect me to do, just leave you there?” he asked. “I want the baby to have gran all healthy and well when the time comes.”

 Kyle finally smiled. “So do I,” he replied, before the effort of speaking became too much for him. He closed his eyes and fell back into silence.

 # # #

[tenthreeleader]

Kyle was released from the hospital the next day and Stacy drove him home. She didn’t look best pleased, but there wasn’t much else she could do.

 She was starting to like having him gone again, which wasn’t really surprising to Kyle, who was still trying to do his best.

 Word had spread quickly about the accident and his injury, with the Mail having pictures online less than an hour after it had happened.

 He spent the Sunday at home with his arm in a sling, painkillers the order of the day. But with Dag and Red coming to the Kassam in a few short days, there was work to be done.

 Part of the day was spent on the phone with a very patient Fazackerley, and perhaps surprisingly he was able to hold a more-or-less coherent conversation with his deputy despite the fog of painkillers making concentration a real adventure.

 They were talking about the next day’s training plan, since there was only one day to train before the Daggers’ visit, and the match plan, both of which seemed completely foreign to the manager at times.

 This was just one reason why Fazackerley was such a good man to have on board. He had done and seen most everything in the game during his long career, and nobody really worried when he was assigned a task. Now, he needed to do the task, which was a different matter completely.

 He prepared the match plan for the Daggers which Kyle immediately approved upon his arrival at the club offices the next day. Still very tired and groggy from his hospital stay and the attendant medications, he looked like he had been in a bar fight. Or a traffic accident, for the sake of accuracy.

 The press was present in force to see the battered Oxford United manager stand on the touchline while Fazackerley took training. They would want a statement, of course, and he would have to give one, and even though he had little to say, the paying public would want to hear him not say it.

 It was all part of the media dance Kyle was growing to dislike, and which he could not really avoid.

 He managed to get through training that day, his broken arm throbbing and eventually giving him a headache as well while he tried to concentrate on training through the pain.

 As he headed back to the offices for lunch, a PA brought him a sandwich and soup from the commissary. Unable to carry a tray by himself with his arm in a sling, Kyle appreciated the gesture.

 As he sat, a woman passed by his office door. She walked by, and then turned back to enter.

 “You look like you lost the fight,” Diana Moore said. The club’s marketing manager, she was on less-than-friendly terms with the gaffer after a series of high-profile dustups the season before had landed Kyle in trouble with the local press and Moore herself on notice from the front office that she needed to trim her sails.

 There was now an uneasy truce between the two – they didn’t like each other in the slightest, but it appeared as though the days of open warfare between them were over.

 It appeared that way, anyway. Kyle didn’t trust Diana Moore any farther than he could have thrown her, but then he had wanted to throw her quite a considerable distance at times.

 “Never saw the car,” he said, picking up a spoon to taste from a bowl of clam chowder which he was sure would make him feel better.

 “Obviously,” she said, turning to leave. “He saw you, though.”

 Kyle shook his head, annoyed at the little games she played. She loved to ride what the late cartoonist Al Capp had called “the ragged edge of disaster” – never saying anything which could be proven hurtful and thus cause the human resources complaint which would surely land her a P45 – but then, never really being anything but a cold, heartless … well, you know … when the chips were down.

 Her sister Charlotte had been the woman Kyle’s marital indiscretion had harmed, and she had not forgiven the man she now had to work with. Their feud had even extended to the use of the club’s social media the season before, at which point Eales had to take action.

 The problem was that the chairman didn’t wish to choose between two employees who were both good at their jobs. Moore was at least as good at her job as Kyle was at his, and Eales knew that a successful business needed both.

 So he bided his time, used his powers of persuasion, and finally set a hard boundary for two of his key employees who treated each other like a pair of bantam roosters.

 And then there was Kyle’s home front. Stacy Cain had been none too pleased to have to wait on her husband after his return from the hospital. Try as he might, Eales couldn’t understand why the Cains were having such trouble reconciling even though Stacy had told him up front that she missed being home and further knew that little Owen needed both his parents.

 The answer lay on her cell phone.

 As Kyle talked to the press, Stacy’s message light flashed. She was receiving a message – but not in text form.

 “Too bad that guy didn’t hit the other side of the car,” Boyd Stokes wrote. He was now using Google Hangouts. He was learning.

 “You’re naughty,” Stacy wrote back.

 Naughty, indeed.

 # # #

[tenthreeleader]

18 August 2015 – Oxford United (1-1-0, 4^th place) v Dagenham and Redbridge (1-1-0, 5^th place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #3 - The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Referee: Carl Berry

 

The crowd at the Kassam Stadium rose as one as the team took the pitch to face the Daggers. The place was about half full, but the team wasn’t the reason for the applause.

 

They were happy to see Kyle, who had his injured arm immobilized, his sling pinned to his Oxford United windbreaker on a rainswept August afternoon.

 

He raised his good arm in salute to the crowd as he headed to the dugout, most of his first-team players restored to full rest after the recent exertion against Watford. This was going to be a better Oxford team than the one which had drawn at Colchester and he had deliberately set the bar high in his team talk.

 

“This is a match I will expect you to win,” he said. “People will expect it, the fans will expect it, and you should expect it from yourselves.”

 

The biggest news of the day was the placement of one Danny Rose in the middle of the park. Kyle had a hunch, and even though Rose didn’t look like he was truly the true-blue-and-gold team player the manager wanted to see, he didn’t see harm in letting the player prove that he could walk his talk.

 

It wouldn’t have been the first time a manager had to walk his words back, and Kyle had been very plain once Rose’s comments had appeared in the Mail, but naming the player to the XI raised a few eyebrows around the ground. That was good. Nothing like keeping people guessing, Kyle thought.

 

The match kicked off and Oxford looked bright – particularly Rothwell in the holding position, who shielded the back line and helped link play like he had been born to the position. This was the kind of player who could make Manchester United sit up and take notice some day.

 

His crunching and fair tackle on Zavon Hines had the crowd roaring within the first ten minutes and it looked as though he could get along with Rose playing in front of him as well. The two looked a half-decent combination in the early going.

 

Then defender Mark Cousins felled Hoban as the match moved to nineteen minutes and referee Carl Berry pointed to the spot.

 

Rose grabbed the ball, evidently with a point to prove, and held it until his teammates backed away. The prodigal midfielder then placed the ball on the spot and whipped home a perfectly taken penalty to put the Us into the lead.

 

He headed back to his position with a smart backward trot. He never looked at the bench, he never pointed a finger at Kyle…nothing.

 

He was acting like a professional and Kyle noticed.

 

He looked at Rose, who wasn’t looking back at him, and simply nodded his head.

 

The Us stole the ball after the Daggers’ kickoff, and then it was O’Dowda off down the left looking for options. His ball into the box found … Cousins, who put through his own goal not sixty seconds after conceding a penalty.

 

While the Daggers’ distraught defender looked for a place to hide, the home fans celebrated a second goal which surely meant a good day at the office.

 

Until the Us let up, that is. Hines and Jodi Jones both beat Ashdown within the last seven minutes of the first half – with Jones’ marker in the second minute of first half injury time – to get Dagenham level and send Kyle into a snarling rage on the touchline.

 

“You threw away some damn good work out there,” he mused. “Two-nil up at home and a couple of throwaway goals cost you your lead. Don’t be the man responsible for their third.”

 

With that he sat in the corner of the changing room and watched Fazackerley say what needed to be said to each player. Before the team rose again, refreshments consumed, he walked to the front of the room.

 

“I meant what I said,” he warned. “You are a better team than the team you are facing. You can do this, and I want you to show me you can do this.”

 

As the team filed past him, Kyle put his left hand on Rose’s right shoulder. “Well done, Danny,” he said simply.

 

The player nodded, turned back to his teammates, and headed out the door.

 

The second half was markedly different. It was all of the Oxford United of the first half hour with none of the letdown which followed it.

 

United dominated from the kickoff and eleven minutes after the restart, Hoban had found the net with a beautifully-taken chip from sixteen yards which restored both the lead and his manager’s good humor at the same time.

 

Kyle was further pleased when O’Dowda found the range with a rasping effort from twenty yards just shy of the 70^th minute. The turnaround in the team’s concentration had been remarkable, and when Berry blew for full time, pundits were already giving the stricken Oxford manager credit for quite a nice motivational effort indeed.

 

He headed back to the tunnel to nearly the same ovation which had greeted him – the fans’ voices perhaps dulled a bit from over eighty minutes of cheering.

 

Life was good.

 

Oxford United 4 (Rose pen 20, Mark Cousins o/g 21, Hoban 56, O’Dowda 69)

Dagenham and Redbridge 2 (Zavon Hines 40, Jodi Jones 45+2)

H/T: 2-2

A – 6,095, The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Man of the Match: Joe Rothwell, Oxford United (MR 9.0)

 

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

“I love it when they listen,” Kyle smiled in his post-match interview.

 

There wasn’t a lot to dispute, at least not from the Oxford point of view. The team had played well for eighty of the ninety minutes and while some days that might not have been enough, it was in this case.

 

“How good can this team be?” Vic Young asked.

 

“For this league, I think pretty good,” the manager answered. “We have a close-knit group and these players now have almost a full year put into our system of play. When we are good, we’re like the Little Girl with the Curl. We’re very, very good. When we aren’t, we’re awful, which is what the end of the first half showed us. We are not the finished product by any stretch but I think the trend is good, as they say in the stock market.”

 

“So does that mean you’re bullish?” Vic asked, continuing the financial play on words.

 

“Until we get beat, yes,” Kyle smiled.

 

“How’s your arm?”
 

“It hurts, but let me take a moment here to thank the fans for their kindness,” Kyle said. “I appreciate the ovations I got today but I want to assure the fans that just because I was injured this week, it’s still business as usual. We have a lot of work to do and thanks to Derek Fazackerley, who implemented the match plan while I was away, we can talk about a true team victory today.”

 

That said, Kyle’s face was starting to show the strain of having his arm hanging in front of him all day. He needed to get it in a more comfortable position, and eventually media got the hint and let him go.

 

Waiting for him in the parking lot, in the manager’s reserved space, was a new car, a replacement for his now-destroyed Vauxhall Adam S – but this one was different.

 

It had all the features he couldn’t afford on the one he had bought after being hired, and then some. It was a brand new GTC, with about everything loaded onto it that Vauxhall could provide. It had always been Kyle’s choice of car.

 

He had thought he was getting a ride home, so he did a double-take as he passed the vehicle parked in his spot just outside the main entrance.

 

“What’s this?” he asked out loud, as photographers, who had obviously been alerted to the scene, began to snap pictures. That was Kyle’s first indication that it wasn’t a put-up job and nobody had parked in the manager’s place on a lark.

 

He approached from the right side, the driver’s side, and saw a note stuck gently into the window trim.

 

“From your friends at Vauxhall Kidlington and Oxford United Football Club,” it read. “Enjoy.”

 

It wasn’t the kind of gift that League Two clubs are able to handle out of petty cash, and Kyle knew it. Somehow, the club had traded out a car for him, and he knew who had had to handle the arrangements.

 

He smiled at the thought of Diana Moore having to do something nice for him. It was almost worth the broken arm.

 

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

The next day, Kyle was back at the doctor’s office, for x-rays to make sure everything was right where it was supposed to be. A plate and screws had been inserted in his forearm to hold everything together and despite the dull ache as everything settled down inside, he was doing fairly well.

 Reaction to the win had been quite good indeed, as one might have expected. Oxford was off to a tremendous start, despite the rough draw in the League Cup, and the media’s nickname of the “Flying Circus” seemed to be the perfect moniker for his lads.

 They got along famously (except for Rose at times), scored goals for fun, and if they continued to improve at that pace, were a very strong candidate for automatic promotion. That much couldn’t be denied, as the team’s midfield carved up opposing teams with ridiculous ease and laid on passes for strikers who, for the time being, couldn’t seem to miss the target.

 Of course, Kyle well knew that such a purple patch of form couldn’t be expected to last forever, and he had to prepared for the day it ended and the inevitable consequences which would follow, but on that particular day Kyle simply enjoyed his team’s status as one of the better teams in its league.

 He sat in the office of Oxford’s team physician, Dr. Harper Robertson, and waited for the verdict. Usually the good doctor devoted his time to Kyle’s injured players, but this was a bit of a departure from the normal.

 “Some post-operative pain is normal, of course,” Robertson said. “You’re going to feel it for a few days but the important thing to remember is to be judicious in the use of pain killers.”

 “Don’t worry,” Kyle responded. “I may be a lot of things, but I’m no pill-popper.”

 “That’s good, because some of the things we could give you would be unpleasant if you were to take them for too long. We want you to be careful.”

 “It got pretty sore toward the end of the match yesterday,” Kyle admitted.

 “Keep it elevated if you can,” the doctor advised, giving advice Kyle had already figured out for himself. The prior night, simply resting the cast on a pillow on the arm of his easy chair had brought immediate and profound relief.

 Stacy sat outside in the foyer, waiting for her husband’s appointment to end. Though he could drive himself where he needed to go, it was still probably safer if he was driven, and to that end Stacy was happy to oblige. She liked Kyle’s new car, understandably, and was pleased to help when she wasn’t working.

 Things were actually on the upswing for the family in a financial sense. Kyle was in the second year of his contract, Stacy had found another library job in Oxfordshire, and at times things seemed like they might, someday, return to the way they had been.

 She had Owen in a car seat next to her. The little guy was really a joy to have around – a quiet, sweet, happy infant, which made him unlike his father in so many ways in his mother’s eyes.

 She still didn’t particularly care for Kyle, but life was acceptable as long as they didn’t go after each other like a couple of bantam roosters. On the days where they failed she tried not to think about Boyd, but she still missed certain parts of her old double life.

 She also still texted him. Stacy had been mortified when Kyle had found her cell phone and the messages it contained, and warned her about further contact with her former paramour. She hadn’t been smart.

 Now they used a messenger service she could hide, and she felt better. As long as she had a wireless connection, she could have a part of her old life back – the best part.

 “A pity whoever it was that ran that light didn’t kill the bastard,” he had texted, and Stacy had had to warn him in response.

 “He is still the father of my children,” she said. “He might not be all you want him to be, but don’t put him in the ground.”

 He had apologized profusely for that, but one thing he had said to make amends made her feel better, and made her think while she waited for her husband.

 “I still want you.”

 # # #

[tenthreeleader]

Matches were coming fast and thick by this point – and there was good news on the home front not involving the Us.

 

Miles had not only made his professional debut for City, but had scored in a 2-2 draw against North Ferriby in the club’s Conference North home opener at Court Place Farm. Johnson Hippolyte’s men were off to a solid start – after consecutive away wins at Worcester and Solihull Moors, the draw had City in second place in the Conference North.

 

It was not a bad time to be a football fan in Oxford, even if the level of football wasn’t exactly Premiership caliber. You could go to one stadium or to the other and have a decent chance of watching a victory.

 

For his part, Miles was reasonably easy to live with after his first professional goal. Kyle thought back to how he had felt after netting for the first time for Orient, and the special gift Stacy had given him that evening.

 

“It’s not like that ever happens anymore,” Kyle mused to himself as he shook his head sadly. But still, he felt happy for Miles and was pleased at the confidence the lad was now showing.

 

What pleased him less was how Jenna was being treated. Miles was taking his football very seriously and that meant he wasn’t doing some of the things Kyle felt he should have been doing now that he had accepted responsibility for his actions.

 

Such as making sure she got to the doctor’s office on time and on schedule. Kyle’s placement of his daughter in a public school had eased a bit of the stress on her both personally and academically, and it had been expensive, but her well being was worth it, and Miles needed to be a participating piece of the whole puzzle.

 

Sometimes he was and sometimes he wasn’t. Sometimes Miles was thoughtful and kind – such as when he had looked after Kyle in the immediate aftermath of his accident – and sometimes not, such as when he forgot to take Jenna to the doctor two days after the Dagenham match.

 

That had brought about a short and rather sharp conversation between father-to-be and actual father, with mother-to-be right at her dad’s shoulder.

 

“Sometimes I don’t know where you get your sense of responsibility,” Kyle complained. “It wasn’t hard for you to get Jenna where she needed to be today. Where were you?”

 

“Training ran late,” Miles answered. “It’s not like the boss lets us text or use our phones while we’re on the training pitch. Would you let your players chat up their girlfriends while they’re working for you?”

 

“Training eventually ended and you never did text her,” Kyle said. “And don’t change the subject. This isn’t about my training, it’s about yours.”

 

But Jenna had the last word.

 

“This baby is yours,” she said, pointing to her midsection. “By caring for me, you care for this child.”

 

He really couldn’t say anything to that. Jenna’s look told him all he needed to know.

 

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

22 August 2015 – Morecambe (1-2-0, 15^thplace) v Oxford United (2-1-0, 3^rd place)
Sky Bet League Two Match Day #4 – The Globe Arena, Morecambe
Referee: Mike Dean

 Miles laid low for a day or so after that incident, and the storm blew over after the proper amount of penitence from the young man.

 Of course, the person who decided that enough was enough wasn’t Kyle, it was Jenna, and that was the way it should have been.

 But in the meantime, Kyle had left for Lancashire with things more or less under control in his house. The pain in his arm had settled down to a point, and things were more or less normal for the Us as they hit the road for a matchup against the Shrimps.

 It was one of the longer League Two excursions for the team – just north of both Blackpool and Fleetwood, the team had a chance to unwind on the coach trip – and Kyle liked the vibe he was seeing.

 The onboard movies were fun and light, and when the coach had pulled in for the night, a very loose bunch of Oxford United players repaired to their rooms for the evening.

 The pre-match meeting had gone without a hitch and the players all seemed to understand their assignments. Kyle was starting to wonder if he was being set up, but as the team headed to the ground at 9 am Saturday morning, he couldn’t help but feel optimistic.

 As the players dressed for the match, Kyle toured the room. He got nods of understanding, statements of intent (some of which were even printable), and a general thought that today was going to be a very good day indeed.

 The only player who didn’t seem completely jacked up for the match was Hoban, who had had trouble finding the net and was paired with Gnanduillet in an effort to find chemistry up front.

 Kyle hadn’t yet settled on a first-choice strike pairing. Hoskins was the best technical striker at the club but Gnanduilet’s strength and power made him an ideal target man. Hoban had great talent and Hylton was the top returning scorer from the season before. Roberts being on the shelf meant that upon his imminent return, Kyle would not be short of strike options.

 Today it was Hoban’s turn, and the Irishman looked ready to play in everything but spirit. That concerned Kyle, but the team took the pitch looking crisp and sharp in spite of Hoban’s reticence.

 It turned out that Kyle needn’t have worried. Less than two minutes into the match, there was Hoban sprinting off to the corner flag after a wonderfully incisive early move, started by Gnanduillet’s great ball onto O’Dowda’s run on the left. He reached the byline before pulling back into the six-yard box where Hoban had the simplest of finishes.

 That was because there was no Morecambe player, including goalkeeper Barry Roche, within fifteen feet of Hoban when he received the pass. It really was just that easy.

 “So much for confidence issues,” Fazackerley grinned at Kyle, who could do nothing but agree.

 The start was very bright, even for a team now accustomed to offensive fireworks. Just after the twenty minute mark, Hoban was celebrating again, with a goal that was nearly crude in its directness but still counted on the scoreboard.

 A back pass to Ashdown found the keeper with all sorts of time, so he strode forward, and his thundering boot up the park found Gnanduillet’s head twenty-five yards from goal. He in turn nodded the ball onto the run of Hoban, who split the defenders and scored.

 Roche’s look of frustration at his two central defenders was as telling as it was satisfying but eight minutes later, everyone on the visitors bench was mortified.

 Ryan Edwards, who had been culpable on both of Hoban’s goals, now slid through Gnanduillet’s legs in the area, with referee Mike Dean not hesitating in pointing to the spot.

 Hoban grabbed the ball, of course, and finished off his hat trick within half an hour of the opening kickoff. Oxford was home and dry already, but Skarz intercepted the first Morecambe volley forward after the goal and started back, finding Gnanduillet in space. His ball to Hoban found the red-hot striker at the top of the D, but now he was covered, so he returned the ball to his provider.

 The Morecambe defense melted away, Hoban was played onside by Shaun Beeley, and suddenly he was alone in space at the penalty spot. Four-nil in 31 minutes.

 The crowd was going wild by this time, the Morecambe defense was in tatters and Hoban was within a goal of the league lead, all in 31 minutes.

 The Us continued to pile on the pressure, with MacDonald streaking off down the right a few minutes later only to see his square ball headed to the top of the area by defender Andy Parrish, with Rothwell claiming. He put the ball into the six-yard box, naturally for Hoban, who was marked tightly by Edwards. This time, Hoban, simply beat him, playing with his back to goal, and spinning around the defender to strike past Roche in 38 minutes to make it 5-nil to Oxford, with all five of the goals going to the same player.

 This time, the fans behind the Oxford bench were bowing at Hoban, who deserved, and loved, the adulation. Jack Redshaw’s strike for Morecambe two minutes later showed there was still a pulse from the visitors but the match was already dead.

 “Don’t let up on them,” Kyle warned, only to watch his team do exactly that from an attacking standpoint in the second half. Obviously, Hoban drew special attention, but still had a chance for a double hat trick right on the hour, denied by a sprawling save from Roche who had dived to his left to claw a shot around the post.

 Ten minutes from time, Redshaw struck again as the Oxford defense went to sleep, which gave Kyle some fodder for the post-match team talk.

 But otherwise, he could hardly complain, and neither could Patrick Hoban.

 Morecambe 2 (Jack Redshaw 40, 80)
Oxford United 5 (Hoban 2, 22, pen 30, 31, 38)
H/T: 1-5
A – 2,037, The Globe Arena, Morecambe
Man of the Match: Patrick Hoban, Oxford United (MR 10.0)

 # # #

 

[mark wilson27]

I see you've got the attackers working well together and scoring plenty for you sir. A five goal haul for Hoban, could this see other clubs noticing him ?

[tenthreeleader]

I hope not

___

“One of the best performances I’ve ever seen, I can’t doubt that,” Kyle said to media after the match. “Patrick had one of those days where everything he touched turned to gold, but I also want to note that without Rothwell and Gnanduillet playing the way they did today, I don’t think we get five, that’s for sure.”

 Vic was on this trip, which made Kyle happy. He had had little trouble from the Mail in recent weeks but he still didn’t trust Bill Churchill, and with good reason. Plus, Vic Young had something Kyle wanted. And no, not that.

 After he finished talking with the press, he talked with the beat reporter.

 “How’s Allison doing?” Kyle asked.

 “Fine, last I heard,” Vic replied. “We haven’t had a girls’ night out in awhile, but as far as I know, she’s okay.”

 Then the reporter smiled. “Why do you ask?” she said.

 “I need to talk with her,” Kyle said, “and I need to know if she’s willing to talk with me.”

 “And what shall I say you want to talk about?”

 “Her life,” Kyle said. “I’ve not done a very good job of caring about it, as a friend or anything else.”

 “Why are you so concerned now?” she asked. “You have a new baby, you have a job that you’re excelling at, and you have your wife at home, which is the most important thing of all. Why?”

 Kyle bowed his head.

 “Sometimes I just don’t see it working,” he admitted. “Since I was in the accident, some things have happened that I don’t really care for and I have my suspicions.”

 The two walked down the hallway toward the Oxford changing room, where the players were still in their post-match routines. Vic had gotten her quotes from Hoban and the key players in the interview area and now it was only a matter of waiting for the team coach to leave.

 Of course, before the coach could leave the manager needed to be aboard, and as he told his story to Vic, they finished their cooldowns, dressed for the trip home and headed to the coach in ones and twos.

 “She’s talking to somebody, and I think I know who it is,” Kyle finally said, a tinge of sadness in his voice.

 “Look, why does that bother you so much?” Vic asked.

 “Well, I’ve known her since I was about ten years old, and there are these two children …”

 “I get that,” Vic interrupted, “but when on earth are you going to start doing things that will make you happy? How long are you going to have to punish yourself and be miserable inside, which I know you are? Don’t try to kid me, Kyle, it won’t work. I have to watch Allison, when I see her, and she’s as miserable as you are. Because you won’t act.”

 “I didn’t tell you this to get a lecture,” Kyle began.

“Well, that’s too bad, because that’s exactly what you’re getting,” Vic replied, a tinge of anger in her voice. “I’m friends with both of you and right now I’m the only person in this whole situation who isn’t being listened to. I’ve asked Allison to reach out to you informally and even offered to do it. You’re not happy and I’m sitting here wondering what in the bloody hell I have to do to get you two together!”

 Kyle’s eyes narrowed.

 “That is what I’m trying to arrange,” he said. “So slow down for a minute and understand that I’m trying to do the right thing for myself, and if I’m really lucky, for my children. For a change.”

 # # #

 

[tenthreeleader]

There was a whole week between games this time, giving the team a full day off on the Sunday and allowing the players to enjoy a victory day without having to report for training.

 AFC Wimbledon, off to a decent enough start, was next. And the relationship between Kyle and Vic seemed to be changing.

 Their set-to of sorts stuck in the manager’s mind, and the reporter had a bit of a job on to try to stay objective in writing about the five-star performance against Morecambe as well.

 One thing seemed to be obvious: when they were on their game, Oxford United was the class of League Two in attack. They had shown it enough times to make believers out of most journalists – the fans were, as always, harder to convince – and Vic had to write about Kyle’s team at a time when she wasn’t best pleased with the manager on a personal level.

 Of course, that was her worry. Journalists weren’t supposed to be close to their sources, so it was a test for Vic to stay on the straight and narrow the day after the match.

 She did, but couldn’t resist a comment about Kyle being hard to please. This was a reference to the reporter getting the Oxford match staff to play the song Cain and Abel for Kyle on Allison’s behalf the season before. The song contained a variation on that lyric.

 The jibe wasn’t lost on the manager, who filed it away in his memory – and also on a piece of paper in his desk. Sometimes you never know when you’ll need to call in a favor in the beautiful game, and though he hadn’t minded the personal reference at first blush, there were really only a handful of people who knew what it really meant. This in turn meant that if anyone else ever needed to be clued in … well, he would have preferred to never see things come to that.

 While Kyle wondered how he could take a positive step for himself, a very small complication now entered the picture. Small as in size, not stature.

 Little Owen was a delight, and despite the friction between his parents, he seemed to have the ability to calm things down between them by his mere presence. The boy was coming up on three months old now and as such people could stop using weeks to denote his lifespan.

 The boy had been born with a shock of bright blonde hair, just like Kyle had been, but with his mother’s nose and cheeks, something Kyle himself appreciated. Kyle’s had been broken twice while an active player, giving him the appearance of a losing pugilist.

 And now with his broken arm hanging in a sling, Kyle could appreciate more than ever that his son was much easier on the eye than he had ever been.

 Even Stacy could see it, and for a change when she held the boy she didn’t make an offhand remark about his father.

 “We may not have much of a marriage but we make cute kids,” she said one evening, as Owen finished his bottle.

 “Hopefully grandkids too,” Kyle offered. He was still trying to broker a peace between mother and daughter in addition to his other worries, since Stacy still wasn’t entirely onside with Jenna’s impending motherhood.

 So as he sat in his den that evening preparing the match plan for Wimbledon, Kyle thought about the situation in which he now found himself. He was trying to build relationships within his family at the same time he was considering changing his family situation.

 The realization hit him, and Kyle dropped his pen on his desk and put his head in his hands.

 “Kyle Cain, you’re a bloody idiot,” he sighed to himself.

 # # #

[tenthreeleader]

29 August 2015 – Oxford United (3-1-0, 2^nd place) v AFC Wimbledon (1-1-2, 12^th place)
Sky Bet League Two Match Day #5 – Kassam Stadium, Oxford
Referee: Mark Heywood

 It wasn’t an easy week.

 While his injured arm healed, Kyle had to deal with several issues. First, the skin under his cast was starting to itch and that wasn’t pleasant.

 Second, he was finding out that scratching the “Allison itch” wasn’t pleasant either.

 Despite his misgivings, he had reached out to her. And to his slight surprise, she both answered him and was cool at the same time.

 “It hurt,” she had said. “Can you understand that?”

 “Of course,” he had answered. “But it hurt both ways and I hope you can understand that.”

 They had left the conversation at that point, which was probably for the best.

 It allowed Kyle some time to rest his mind and beat himself up a little more, which was something he excelled at doing, and also some time to concentrate on the phoenix club known as AFC Wimbledon.

 League status had come more quickly than anyone had dreamed for one of two clubs in the Football League to call itself Dons. In 13 short years of existence, the club had been promoted five times, starting in the Combined Counties Premier League and moving all the way to League Two, where it prepared to meet Kyle’s men at the Kassam.

 During that stretch, they went 21 months—from 22 February 2003 to 4 December 2004, a span of 78 matches – without losing in their league, to set an English senior record. It was at the lower levels, but still, that was a run to be respected.

 In the meantime, Kyle was worried about maintaining the Flying Circus’ own run, which saw them enter play second in the league on goal difference to Stevenage. Despite Oxford’s dominance in attack, Borough never conceded (well, okay, once), and as such they were top while Oxford was not.

 None of that mattered in warmup, though. Kyle was concerned, naturally, with the three points at hand, with the details to take care of themselves if the points were secured.

 Not surprisingly, Dons came out in a 4-5-1 designed to take all the fun out of things for the home team. At the start of the match, the visitors had ten men behind the ball and it was going to be a test of patience for Oxford.

 Hoban, the five-goal hero, was the first to get frustrated, finding his path to goal blocked by a sea of blue shirts after being played in through a great ball by Rothwell six minutes into the match. Shwan Jalal hardly had to move in the Wimbledon goal, but it hardly mattered because the ball never reached him.

 Yet just before the quarter-hour the Dons central defense didn’t get Gnanduillet marked, and the new boy who started the play with a great switch to Grandison on the right was also there to finish it after the fullback found MacDonald in deep. His cross found the Ivorian’s forehead and the header was perfect, bouncing once on the way to the lower left corner of the Iraqi keeper’s goal.

 Right at that moment it looked as though Oxford could almost literally do no wrong. Fifteen minutes later it was MacDonald from distance, his scorching drive finding nothing but the upper right corner of the Iraqi keeper’s goal for a two-nil lead that had the fans wondering how many their men would score.

 Before half, though, fans had to rethink their calculations as Dons defender Brian Saah put a perfectly placed header home with just two minutes to go before the interval. The only problem was that the header came off a MacDonald corner and beat Jalal instead of Ashdown. To make matters worse, just moments later Saah had to be helped off the field after coming second best in a collision with Hoban, meaning Dons finished the first half with ten men.

 It was hard to find anything wrong with that kind of first half performance so Kyle’s words, as they had been against Morecambe, were to guard against complacency and that this time his players needed to actually listen to him.

 That day, Morecambe had scored not one but two consolation goals that had annoyed Kyle greatly even as his players celebrated a storming win. He wanted nothing of the sort on this day and as such, it was down to the manager to be sure expectations were communicated completely and well.

 This time, they were.

 The Dons couldn’t get near the Oxford goal. For a club that seemed to concede more than its share of goals even as it scored them by the bushel basket full, Kyle’s biggest wish on the day was for a clean sheet.

 Just after the hour mark, Oxford absorbed some rare pressure from the visitors and countered them for pace. MacDonald started it with a run to the center line followed by a simply marvelous forty-yard raking ball to the right for the run of Hoban, who cut inside and then fed Matty Willock for the on-loan United man’s first goal for Oxford in 63 minutes.

 It was as good an example of counterattacking football as Kyle had ever seen at any level, and as the Oxford bench celebrated, the manager simply leaned back in his chair. Fazackerley, on his way to the touchline to celebrate, simply slapped his boss on the knee.

 “Enjoy, Kyle, this is as good as it gets,” he said. There was no sense in disagreeing.

Oxford United 4 (Gnanduillet 14, MacDonald 29, Brian Saah o/g 43, Willock 63)
AFC Wimbledon 0
H/T: 3-0
A – 7,423, The Kassam Stadium, Oxford
Man of the Match: Alex MacDonald, Oxford (MR 9.2)

 # # #

[tenthreeleader]

“Twenty goals in the last six matches counting the cup. Eighteen in the league. What are you feeding these players?”

 

Churchill’s question got right to the heart of the matter.

 

“Thirteen goals in the last eleven days,” Kyle laughed, showing that he had been reading the team schedule. “But to be serious, right now everything we shoot seems to be finding the back of the net. I haven’t seen anything like it.”

 

“Surely confidence isn’t an issue.”

 

“Surely overconfidence might become one,” Kyle answered, anticipating the older man’s next question. “Right now we are a very happy, very loose bunch. We plan to keep it that way but we can’t start thinking that we’ll just show up and win. That ruins everything.”

 

The numbers didn’t lie. Not only was Oxford top on goal difference, the U’s haul of 18 league goals was nearly double that of any other team in League Two, with Cambridge and Scunthorpe next with ten each.

 

Oxford had scored more goals than Exeter, Newport County, AFC Wimbledon and Hartlepool combined, with Hoban alone scoring more goals than all of those teams in total.

 

To make matters even more wonderful from Kyle’s standpoint, fifteen of those eighteen goals had come from open play. Only two had come from the penalty spot and one from a set piece. This appeared to be an extraordinarily gifted offensive club at this level of football and the question now was, ‘how long can it last’?

 

“But I won’t lie to you, right now this team is playing like a dream. I’ve seen purple patches in form before, but right now some of the lads think they can do anything.”

 

“You could have named your score today. The number you chose was four.”

 

“I think that’s disrespectful to our opponent and I won’t have that,” Kyle said, “but in truth this is the kind of team that we all want to see here. Players want the ball, they want to put it in positions where teammates can do something with it, and they want to make a positive difference. I’ll take that kind of mind set any day of the week.”

 

With that, he headed back to the changing room to enjoy the sounds of winning before returning to his office to close up shop for the night.

 

Fazackerley checked in before he left, his customary smile now glued to his face these days, and as Kyle watched a summary of highlights from the match left on a DVD for him by the media staff, he allowed himself to feel a measure of satisfaction.

 

He rose to leave, walked down the hallway toward the staff entrance past the now-silent Diana Moore’s office, and felt even better about himself.

 

She hadn’t had much to say these days, with Oxford unbeaten in the league and cruising atop the table with more goals in the onion bag than any senior level team in England.

 

He opened the door to the staff car park and saw Allison waiting for him.

 

“Hi, Kyle,” she said, meeting his gaze with piercing blue eyes that didn’t back away from his. “Let’s go out for a drink.”

 

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

They did.

 Back at the Swan and Castle, with Benny Chapman pouring his favorite Shotover Trinity, he had a few moments of enjoyment until he realized that someone would surely let Stacy know where he had been.

 “You haven’t done anything wrong,” she began. “I wouldn’t even worry about it – I saw that Stokes fellow with her outside the ground anyway. She had Owen with her.”

 At that, Kyle felt a rush of red haze behind his eyes. But then, he was doing the same thing so in the grander scheme of things, he couldn’t really be angry.

 He decided to sit back and enjoy his evening. The inevitable fight could wait.

 But as he sat with Allison, his phone flashed with a congratulatory text message from Eales, and Kyle knew what he had to do.

 If Stacy would be told of Kyle’s evening activities, it was a good bet that Eales would be as well, and since the manager needed to stay onside with his boss, Kyle figured it would be better to tell him personally.

 So he texted back. “Out with a friend,” he wrote, “but we need to talk at earliest opportunity. Personal matter.”

 “I’ve heard the rumors,” the chairman wrote back, which was not what Kyle wanted to read.

 “If there are rumors, they’ve nothing to do with me.”

 Meanwhile, Allison was being patient across the table while Kyle texted with his boss.

 “Who are you talking to?” she asked.

 “The chairman,” he answered, putting his phone back in his pocket after a final message to show he wasn’t cutting off the conversation. “Where I’m going in my home life, he needs to know because he’s the guy who is responsible for Stacy coming back into my house.”

 “I know,” she answered, swirling her drink in her glass.

 “That hurt you. I’m sorry about that.”

 Now Allison bowed her blond head, at last dropping eye contact with Kyle after a span of time that seemed almost uncomfortable.

 “Well, nothing to be done now,” she replied. “Except figure out what we’re going to do from here.”

 “I guess I had always imagined this being a happier conversation.” Kyle’s brave attempt at humor fell on deaf ears.

 “A few months ago, it would have been,” she replied.

 Kyle frowned.

 “What’s that supposed to mean?” he answered, his eyes now narrowing.

 “Well … I wasn’t entirely truthful to you after that public party before the Luton playoff,” she said. Now she couldn’t look him in the eye at all.

 “You mean the one where …” Kyle’s voice trailed off.

 Allison had made quite a scene that night in the company of a young man who she had claimed was a friend.

 “...yes,” she said. “Will tried very hard that night, and I turned him down because I thought there was still a chance for us. But then came the final, that night we talked with Stacy, and …”

 Kyle sighed. “How long has this been going on?” he asked. “Not that it’s any of my business.”

 “About a month,” Allison offered. “We’ve been a couple for about a month.”

 Kyle muttered an obscenity under his breath and looked at Allison. He had had his opportunity. She had practically begged him. He had said no. And now he was paying the price.

 Still, it was a price he needed to pay until some form of resolution was forthcoming with Stacy. It was the right thing to do.

 As Kyle drove home that night, he kept reminding himself of that sad and painful fact.

 It was the right thing to do.

 # # #

[tenthreeleader]

“Remember that meeting I wanted? Never mind,” Kyle had texted Eales the next day, and as the manager prepared to take training on the Monday following the Wimbledon match, Fazackerley noticed a change in his boss’s mood.

 “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so quiet, Kyle,” the older man said.

 “Bad news, I suppose,” he had replied, to the assistant manager’s puzzlement. Fazackerley had not hesitated in being a sounding board for Kyle on all matters professional but, wisely, he backed away now. It wouldn’t have done to pry.

 But as a result, Kyle’s full attention was on his players before the impending transfer deadline. Oxford was scheduled to play on the deadline night – the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy was getting under way for the Us and a trip to Southampton lay ahead against Eastleigh – but the senior squad saw a different Kyle Cain than they had seen earlier in their current run of good form.

 In some ways that was good. In others, not so much.

 Kyle’s anger – both at himself and at Allison – had been intense and he had to repeatedly remind himself not to project that mood onto his players. Yet everyone who wore the warmup suits that day knew full well that to cross the boss on this day would be footballing death. It was in his eyes.

 They didn’t have to ask.

 But deadline day itself was quite interesting.

 For one thing, the August awards had been an Oxford sweep, which was nice news for the PR folks. Hoban deservedly won the Player of the Month award, O’Dowda was the Young Player, and Kyle himself nabbed the manager’s gong for a brilliant start which had people talking far afield from Oxfordshire.

 With lots of money in the coffers, the temptation had certainly presented itself for Oxford to spend. Yet Kyle wasn’t in that kind of mood, so when John Ward came to him that afternoon with a list of players available for purchase, there was only one name that really interested him.

 Kyle wanted to shore up the central defense, midfield and look to the future all at the same time. While he loved Rothwell and Willock in the middle, neither player was contracted to Oxford United and that wasn’t optimal. Ashby would have a role to play in the future but, being injured, he couldn’t help.

 A player released that week by Swansea could, and hopefully would.

 Twenty-one year old Giancarlo Gallifuoco could play both the holding position as well as the center of defense – sort of like an Isak Ssewankambo except not a loan player – and he was willing to sign a multi-year deal at an affordable price.

 Boom. That was done. Between Gallifuoco, former Sunderland and current Oxford u-21 defender Jassem Sukar, Skarz and Grandison, Kyle thought the future of the team’s back line could be reasonably assured.

 That was the only move the club made, though, with (knock on wood) things well under control on the injury front, the team playing extremely well and the playing squad nicely balanced across the park.

 That couldn’t be said for Oxford’s next league opponent, though. Since falling over two legs to Oxford in the playoff semifinal, traditional rival Luton Town had gotten off to an extremely slow, injury-riddled start which had seen them sink to 21^st place in the early table.

 They signed four players to free transfer deals on deadline day – former Blackpool, Bristol City and Derby striker Steven Davies, Rotherham defender Richard Brindley, 35-year old striker Aaron Wilbraham, who did his best work at MK Dons from 2006-10, and young defender Alfie Mawson after his release by Wycombe.

 The possibility existed that at least two and possibly three of the new signings would find their way into the match day squad. Kyle didn’t mind that – he had learned from long experience that derby matches could never be considered safe no matter how much misfortune had befallen an opponent – but he did hope to see all the Luton new boys in the eleven so as to provide the least possible synergy for his opponents.

 And then there was Allison. Deadline day gave Kyle a chance to shift his mind.

 # # #

[tenthreeleader]

1 September 2016 - Eastleigh (18^th place League Two) v Oxford United (1^st place League Two)

Johnstone’s Paint Trophy South Section First Round – St. Mary’s, Southampton

Referee: Trevor Kettle

 

At least the ground was nice.

 

Eastleigh was a lower-midtable League Two team that played in a Premiership ground – while their home at SIlverlake Stadium was being renovated, they were groundsharing with their parent club, Southampton, at St. Mary’s.

 

The club had earned a surprising promotion as Conference National champions the preceding season. They needed to expand, but recent headlines had put the club in the news for the wrong reasons. The pressures of successive first-place finishes in the Conference South and then the Conference National had put a great deal of financial strain on the club.

 

“Financial irregularities”, the papers had said, which was shorthand for a breach of Financial Fair Play rules. In any event, the Spitfires were under transfer embargo and thus finding life in the Football League to be rather challenging.

 

They started close to a first-choice eleven for the match, while Kyle, to be honest, did not.

 

Oxford United (4-1-3-2): Clarke: Bevans, Whing, Mullins, Richards, Rose, Meades, Harrop, Hylton, Hoskins, Barry.

 

Guy Barry, the whiz of the u-21 team, was up front, fresh off a brace in his last appearance despite his sixteen years of age. He was paired with Hoskins, hunting for form and looking for a place in the eleven. Some teams had ‘big-little’ strike combinations, while others had pace/target pairings. This was a “young/old” pairing. There was really no other way to describe it.

 

Kyle had wanted to play Max Crocombe in goal but the player had received his first full callup for New Zealand and the manager had no intention of standing in his way. So Clarke deputized along with ten outfield players who were rather markedly different from a usual Oxford matchday team.

 

The bench was strong, with Ashdown, Wright, Willock, O’Dowda and Hoban waiting in case any of them were needed, and as the match kicked off, Kyle was curious to see how his makeshift XI would fare.

 

As the match started, it looked like he would be one of the very few who was. The place had a listed capacity of 32,505 and later attendance figures showed the ground was filled to .008 percent of that capacity.

 

That meant 262 people were in the stands, which didn’t matter as much as the home team breaking through twelve minutes into the match through veteran midfielder Craig Stanley. He had spent seven years in League Two with Morecambe, Torquay, Bristol Rovers and Aldershot, and was the reigining Conference Player of the Year for a superlative season leading Eastleigh into the Football League.

 

Kyle wasn’t happy but he also couldn’t complain, having selected the eleven himself, but his mood improved through a fluke goal four minutes later, as Meades shook loose down the right, launching a hopeful ball into the box for the run of Hoskins. However, defender Jamie Turley was between them and, trying to clear, instead deflected the past keeper Jake Larkins and into his net for an own goal sixteen minutes in.

 

Mollified to an extent, Kyle watched his team do what it should have done, which was begin to play better. Shortly after the half hour, Richards shook loose down the left and found his way to the byline blocked. He squared for Hylton at the top of the penalty area and the striker-turned-midfielder rifled a shot squarely off Larkins’ crossbar.

 

The rebound fell to Guy Barry, and in the finest tradition of young Oxford strikers, the boy didn’t miss. He had a rather simple finish, but first he had to hold his nerve, and when he did, Oxford led.

 

The halftime talk was thus changed and Kyle kept things light at the break. The team was playing passably well and as such the second half was devoted to defending – something Kyle’s Oxford was not known for being especially good at doing.

 

So, this was a good time to try. Away from home, in a cup competition, with a second eleven. What could go wrong?

 

Well … nothing, in this case. And that made Kyle a happy boss.

 

There was a drawback. Meades pulled up with an obviously pulled hamstring in the 64^th minute and that was annoying – the player who wanted more playing time was now going to have to spend more time in the training room and like it – so that forced Willock unto the park in his place.

 

But the larger goal was achieved with some style. While in a more defensive mind set, Oxford allowed only two attempts at goal in the entire second half while taking eight themselves. The first half had actually been slightly tilted in the home team’s favor but the second half was a lot different.

 

Eastleigh was forced into seventeen fouls – whenever Oxford had had decent possession, they had been fouled in order to get them stopped – and the result was a satisfying win indeed.

 

Eastleigh 1 (Craig Stanley 12)

Oxford United 2 (Jamie Turley o/g 16, Barry 32)

H/T: 1-2

A – 262, St. Mary’s Stadium, Southampton

Man of the Match: Craig Stanley, Eastleigh (MR 7.7)

 

# # #