[FM15] Raising Cain

[Alephmoonwalker]

The best thing about this story is the very developed and complex characters. Absolutely loving your stories 10-3. #inspiring

[tenthreeleader]

Thank you, Aleph! I appreciate your kind words. I am a published writer of some years' standing but my main stock in trade is public relations and journalism.

___

The Spice Lounge was decked out as one might have expected for a blowout party.

The popular Indian restaurant on the north side of town was the site of the team’s holiday event and with a tidy winning streak in their back pockets that had been extended just 48 hours previously, people were bound to be in the best of holiday spirits.

Except for Kyle.

Being Scrooge wouldn’t do, of course, but “Bah, humbug!” was definitely first on his list of pet phrases as he pulled his car into the restaurant lot an hour before the event began.

Jenna was with him. That helped, and in a way she was his security blanket. No one would dare bother the manager about his party history with his daughter standing right next to him, would they?

No, of course not. No one would say a word.

That said, it was the first party he had attended since that day.

He had been ashamed. Embarrassed. Guilty as hell. And he knew it.

Everyone knew it. What had started as a fun time earlier in the day, when Charlotte had sent him a picture wearing nothing but a Santa’s helper hat – had wound up nearly destroying Kyle’s family.

That was understandable. He had been foolish. Very foolish, and he was still paying the price for that foolishness to the present day.

Club media boss Tim Flores approached Kyle with the same kind of tasseled red cap Charlotte had worn that day and handed it to him.

“Here you go, boss,” the young man said, and Kyle frowned.

“Tim, you have no way of knowing why I’m saying this, but there’s no way in ‘ell I’m wearing that.”

“Why, Kyle? It’s Christmas.”

Jenna interjected to save her father’s blushes. “Bad memories,” she simply said. “Please, Mr. Flores, do as he asks.”

Puzzled, the young man went to find Fazackerley and gave him the hat instead. The assistant manager understood. He didn’t let on that he understood, but he did.

Kyle was the boss. He had made that abundantly clear. He had wanted nothing to do with this party, but club tradition held sway even over his authority in this case and Fazackerley was quite sure that his boss rankled under the yoke of having to have a good time.

Authority was important to Kyle, though he tried not to let on that it was important. He guarded that authority like a lioness protecting her brood.

After all, he had spent enough time trying to reacquire it after being sacked at Torquay. It meant something to him.

The players and staff began to arrive. They were in the mood to have a good time, and he couldn’t blame them. The team was playing brilliantly and he wanted them in just the right frame of mind to try to gain revenge against Shrewsbury.

That meant being careful this evening, which was another reason Kyle hated the idea of holiday parties.

Many a player – not just him – had come to grief at a holiday party for any number of reasons. For example, there was really nothing worse for a player’s short-term outlook than for his manager to catch him chundering behind a bush after too much of the grape at such an event.

The food began to arrive from the kitchen and punctually at 6:00, the event started.

While Kyle prepared to make his comments, Eales stepped to a podium at the front of the dining room, which had been rearranged for the private party.

“Thank you for being here this evening,” the chairman began. His traditional suit of Oxford blue seemed a bit out of place in a Christmas-themed environment, making him look like the thumb freshly struck by a hammer.

“I want to thank you for the year just past,” he continued. “We have been through quite a bit at this club, and I won’t pretend that some of the time we’ve spent at work and on the pitch has been easy. It has not. But we have reached the end of the year with a good degree of optimism for what lies ahead.”

As he spoke, Diana Moore entered the room, freshly arrived – and technically, late. Not that it mattered. She stood at the back, behind a group of players who acted like they were interested in what the chairman had to say.

“At the end of last month we brought a new manager on board and results have been better,” Eales said, stating the obvious. “We’ve announced a new relationship with Manchester United. We think the foundation stones are in place for a better future. But these are only first steps.”

“We want to own our own stadium. We want to find ways to increase revenue so we can do more of the things we need to do to be successful over the long-term. But we’re making progress, if the last month is anything to go by. And we think it is.”

He drew polite applause, and Eales felt it safe to continue.

“With that, I want to wish you a happy holiday season, a happy Christmas, and hope you have a great time this evening. Now, let’s hear from the manager.”

Kyle, very reluctantly, stepped forward.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

He was greeted with applause – even from Moore, which he found surprising. He was watching.

“Thank you,” he said, fumbling for a piece of paper from his pocket on which he’d written the bare minimum of notes. He wore casual clothes and nothing in club colors – along with the rest of the squad.

“First things first, if anyone tries to skive training tomorrow because they have too much to drink tonight, I’ll have your parts in a sling so fast you won’t know what hit you,” he said. It was not intended to be a laugh line.

It wasn’t.

“By the way, Happy Christmas,” he added, and that was supposed to be for laughs. Thankfully, that was how his words were received.

“Now, it’s the role of the manager to do a few things tonight, to thank people and give out a few awards which you lot have voted on before I arrived here. First, I’ve been told that Diana Moore of our marketing department took over this event when she came here and has done a good job of putting things together. So please thank her.”

The assembled gave her a nice hand. Kyle opted not to, but then he was speaking so that was excusable.

“And of course, Mr. Eales, without whom none of us have jobs,” Kyle added quickly, and that drew additional smiles.

“But what we’re really hoping for is that people have a nice time tonight and enjoy some of the spirit of the season. Not spirits, players. Spirit.” Kyle wasn’t going to make anyone forget Johnny Carson in his delivery, but he was good enough.

He finished his comments, and the players and assembled staff went through the buffet and drink lines. It looked like it wasn’t going to be such a bad night after all.

Kyle waited until the end to get his food, and sat at a table with Jenna, Eales and his staff to enjoy some music and the evening.

As he ate, Eales bent Kyle to his ear for a quiet word.

“Nice job so far,” he said. “But it’s been brought to my attention that you don’t care very much for Diana Moore.”

“No, sir, I do not,” Kyle said, trying not to bite his employer’s ear off in the process and instead settling for a bite of a wonderful crescent samosa. He was getting ready to tell Eales the reason for his animus when the chairman interjected.

“Fix that,” Eales said plainly. “I’m not saying that you have to be friends, but I am saying that at this club we treat each other better than you treated her. I’ve heard from Mr. Waterhouse about this and I promised him I’d put it right.”

Kyle simply looked at his boss with as close to a neutral expression as he could muster.

“Ms. Moore brought up my personal situation, and my estranged wife, to my face, Mr. Eales,” Kyle said, as evenly as he could. “I considered that to be out of bounds. Will you discuss this with her as well?”

Eales sidestepped the issue.

“You are in the position of authority,” he said.

“If that’s the case, I would consider Ms. Moore’s conduct to be insubordinate,” he said. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of this but I won’t tolerate an employee referencing my personal life.”

Eales, for his part, took Kyle’s words graciously.

“I will speak with her. But just consider this a quiet word, Kyle,” Eales said. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of this and I know you probably don’t either. I get that your job doesn’t hinge on marketing but on results. And you’re off to a brilliant start. But please, don’t let this get out of hand. As a favor to me.”

Kyle nodded. The last thing he needed was to fail with his employer and so he simply agreed.

“I’ll do my best,” he said.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Kyle held his breath – and sometimes, his nose – through the rest of the evening.

His players, nearly all of whom had brought their wives or girlfriends, had a great time. He met most of them and noted that even in a smallish city like Oxford, if you played football you could do pretty well in the romance department.

He handed out the club awards, including the Chairman’s Player of the Year Award, the Captain’s Award, the Players’ Teammate of the Year Award and others.

The highlight for Kyle was the gag awards, most notably the Miss of the Year Award, known as the “Barn D’Or”. It went to Hoban, for a truly grievous misfire in the first match of the season against Dag and Red when he managed to scoop over the top of the goal from a range of about four yards. In laughing embarrassment, the Irishman actually walked backwards to the podium to claim his prize – a deflated practice ball.

He thought it might not be so bad a night after all.

He hadn’t gone near Moore – the chairman had said he needed to be nicer to her but that didn’t mean he was going to seek her out – and he found Fazackerley surprisingly good company.

“I told you it wasn’t going to be that bad, Kyle,” the older man said, smiling as he always seemed to do.

As long a career as Fazackerley had had – he was Blackburn’s all-time appearance leader when he left the club with 671 matches over eighteen seasons – he had never been a full-time boss in England. He had assisted at Chester City, York City and Bury during his playing days before his only managerial role, as player-manager at Kumu in Finland.

Upon returning to England, he coached and assisted at Newcastle, Blackburn, Bolton, Barnsley, Huddersfield, Leicester and Birmingham – and famously, for Kevin Keegan’s England.

So he had seen a few gatherings like this over a lifetime in the game. Kyle started to relax.

It was then that he saw a woman who looked surprisingly like Stacy enter the room right through the front door.

“Can’t be,” he said, taking a sip of ale.

“What can’t be?” Fazackerley asked.

“I thought I just saw my wife,” Kyle answered.

Of course, it was Stacy, having her first communication with her husband since his hiring.

“Hello, Kyle,” she said, standing alongside him at the table, where there was no room to sit. “Mind if I drop in?”

“Not at all,” he said, moving to find her a chair.

Fazackerley moved to his left so Stacy would have room, and Kyle introduced his wife to the assembled.

“A pleasure, I’m sure,” she said, with a ready smile. Then she turned to Kyle.

“Thank you for inviting me,” she said.

“I wondered if an invitation would get through to the London Public Library,” Kyle answered, with his own smile in return. Jenna seemed happy to see her mother as well, and the two shared a hug while the ice in the room created by Stacy’s arrival slowly melted away.

He didn’t ask where she was living. She didn’t offer.

Kyle had told Eales at the time of his hiring that he was estranged from his wife, so he was mildly surprised to see her simply show up at the holiday party, even with an invitation.

For his part, Kyle was happy to see her. She looked well, she certainly didn’t seem to be in any physical distress, and she was starting to show just a little bit.

She wore her best coat – a navy blue dress coat which hugged her very nicely – and a black knee-length skirt. She looked good. Kyle really started to loosen up and even introduced her to a few of the players, starting with his captain and vice-captain.

That all seemed well and good, and as Kyle bought his wife a non-alcoholic drink and returned to the table, she looked up at him with a lovely smile.

“There’s a reason I accepted your invitation,” she said, as Kyle sat next to her.

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s Christmas. Aren’t good things supposed to happen at Christmas?”

# # #

[jdoyle9293]

Good things do happen at Christmas and I'm starting to think that Kyle Cain's fortunes are turning. Great piece on the Christmas party in Oxford, keep it up, 10-3.

[tenthreeleader]

Hope springs eternal, as they say!

___

26^th December 2014 – Oxford United (6-5-10, 17^th place) v Shrewsbury Town (13-4-4, 3^rd place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #22 – The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Sometimes, bad fortune is extra bad.

Clarke, who had played so brilliantly against Hartlepool, turned his ankle in training the day after the party. That threatened to wreck Kyle’s Christmas.

The keeper could take a spot on the bench and that was good, but it meant Ashdown would return to goal for the matchup against Town. Whing’s concussion symptoms had abated but he still hadn’t been cleared to play by the physio staff, so Dunkley deputized for the deputy captain.

And Will Hoskins was back, on the bench for the first time in Kyle’s tenure after making it through ninety minutes with the reserves without a setback. That balanced out Clarke’s injury in terms of impact on Kyle’s Christmas, but even though Hoskins was healthy, he was far from match-fit after six weeks on the shelf with a weight-bearing injury.

Despite all that, there was another motivator for Boxing Day: it was Shrewsbury and Kyle wanted revenge for the FA Cup.

It wasn’t so much the result that annoyed Kyle as the way in which the result came about. The offside goal which gave Town the lead was galling, and so was the complete breakdown which had doubled the arrears a moment later. Kyle chose to use that chaotic stretch as motivation.

“You owe these guys. They got a big break to go ahead of you in the Cup and they hit you when you were down after they got their break. This team should have beaten Shrewsbury on its ground. Now you get them on yours. Show them who’s boss.”

Oxford responded to Kyle’s words almost immediately, pushing Shrewsbury on the back foot from the opening kickoff.

Seven minutes into the match, Maddison retreated to just short of the halfway line to retrieve a Shrewsbury clearance, looked to his right, and put a slide-rule ball down the right to MacDonald, who caught up with it just short of the byline.

The winger’s cross into the box found Hylton, who deflected it from a very sharp angle to the left of keeper Jayson Leutwiler – and the ball changed direction, banking off the keeper’s leg and into the goal to fire the Us into a shock lead at home.

The crowd, which was slightly larger than for the last home match, was into things quickly as a result. What they saw was a virtually antiseptic half from the home team.

Defender Connor Goldson was harried into conceding on a corner on a backpass to Leutwiler thanks to a great play by Hoban, who chased the defender down like a hound tracking a fox. The set piece came to nothing, but Oxford wasn’t letting their higher-placed visitors come up for air.

Wright missed a piledriver in fifteen minutes and another searching MacDonald cross forced Jermaine Grandison to head behind for yet another corner a few minutes later. It was just great stuff from the home team.

Johnny Mullins had a pair of chances in the first half hour as well, but both misfired before he forced defender Bobby Grant to head behind his own goal again for another Oxford corner.

Kyle sat impassively, getting up from time to time to encourage his lads, and then sitting back down to watch them perform. Fazackerley looked on with as much satisfaction as Kyle, but it was pretty obvious that this first half was made of some special stuff.

Shrewsbury changed alignment from 4-4-2 to 4-5-1 midway through the first half to try to put a cap on Kyle’s dominant midfield, but it really didn’t help. The Us’ movement off the ball was superb, the ball went into space at the right times and Leutwiler was kept quite a busy man.

Ryan Woods went into the book for a trip on Hylton in 41 minutes, but Kyle was considering a move for MacDonald on the right wing. He had picked up a card and a very hard knock in retaliation for the challenge that earned him the booking, and Kyle was thinking about getting Meades into the game early as MacDonald hobbled along.

But the Scot had been influential, and just before half he proved it again. His throw from the right wing was headed right back to him by Mullins, and MacDonald whipped a perfectly-taken cross right into the middle of the six-yard box for the run of Hoban, and the Irishman didn’t miss.

No Barn D’Or for him, and Oxford had doubled its advantage right before the half.

To say the mood in the changing room was good would be an understatement. The players remembered the shock and humiliation they felt at conceding four to Town in the Cup and now Kyle knew that the mood of his squad was different than against Cheltenham.

Then, he had let the players enjoy their lead. Not so today.

“Great start, but there’s better in you and to take the three points you’ll need to show it. This was a wonderful first half but now is the time to really turn the screws on these guys. Take it to them. Make them sorry they showed up to play you!”

He turned to leave for the hallway so Fazackerley could do the individual talks, but then wheeled to face his team one more time.

“Send a bloody message!”

They did.

Goodness, did they.

Shrewsbury had had a few decent opportunities in the first half but once the second half began, those chances simply vanished.

Kyle’s side was so clearly the better team he was able to make early moves to replace the carded and nicked-up MacDonald with Meades, and to replace Hylton, who had also been dinged up, with Hoskins, who needed match time.

That was in 67 minutes. One minute later, Meades was celebrating his first goal for the club and just the third of his career, on his first touch of the match.

Maddison had started it, as he always seemed to, with a great ball to the right for the run of Hoban. The striker held the ball, which at first seemed puzzling to Kyle, until he saw what Hoban had seen.

The Irishman saw Meades chugging up the right, unmarked, and waited for the right moment to continue the play by feeding the overlap. But Meades didn’t cross.

He worked to his left and made space for himself. His low shot beat Leutwiler to his far post to the annoyance of the keeper, the anger of Micky Mellon and the rapturous adulation of the home faithful, who were about to see another three points safely home.

Kyle’s last substitution was Jéremy Balmy, the Frenchman who had yet to see senior action for Kyle. He deserved the chance to play and with the match well in hand, Kyle gave him that chance.

Unfortunately, Meades then limped off injured seven minutes from time after getting his ankle stepped on during a foray down the right, which forced Oxford to ten men for the last minutes of the match.

Shrewsbury nearly took advantage. Three minutes from time, Grandison’s long ball found the stride of David Norris, who then played the ball to the left for Mickey Demetriou.

The winger then crossed into the box, but the wind, which was beginning to gust, grabbed hold of the ball. It sailed over the despairing reach of Ashdown, who had come out to cut the cross – but Skarz was there to clear the ball off the line, playing behind his keeper.

With that kind of fortune smiling broadly upon United, Kyle could relax. Minutes later, revenge was well and truly achieved.

Oxford United: Ashdown: Bevans, Dunkley, Wright (captain), Skarz, Mullins, MacDonald (Meades 67), Maddison, O’Dowda (Balmy 71), Hylton (Hoskins 67), Hoban. Unused subs: Clarke, Rose, Ashby, Godden.

Oxford United 3 (Hylton 7, Hoban 43, Meades 68)

Shrewsbury Town 0

H/T: 2-0

A – 4,470, The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Man of the Match: Jake Wright, Oxford (MR 8.2)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

“I’m ecstatic. How did you think I’d be?”

Kyle was over the moon at a fantastic result against a good League Two side. That brought the current league run to five wins on the spin, and thoughts of relegation were now banished from anyone’s thoughts. Fifteen points out of fifteen is a great way to make that happen.

The win was comprehensive and revenge was sweet. There would be a third meeting of the clubs – at Shrewsbury – late in the campaign but by then Kyle hoped to have all the team’s goals reached by then.

His own personal brief of mid-table was within sight a lot sooner than he thought it might be. It was like a dream. Everything that had gone wrong at Torquay was going right now.

With the exception of the Cup tie at Shrewsbury, for a change nobody could think of anything bad to say about Kyle Cain’s management.

That seemed odd.

But as he talked with a modest press gaggle after the match, including BBC Oxford and the local papers, Kyle couldn’t help but feel confidence starting to build.

“This is a very satisfying run of results,” he said. “I can’t remember, even when I was an active player, when I enjoyed a league run more than this one.”

“Why is that?” It was Bill Churchill of the Mail, a longtime football reporter and longer-time cynic.

“There’s nothing like instant success,” Kyle replied. “These players have bought in and they’ve done everything they’ve been told to do. I’m just tickled to death for these lads, they’ve been brilliant in every way.”

“And if you go to Plymouth and crash and burn, what then?”

Kyle frowned, and defended his players perhaps more robustly than he ought to have.

“This isn’t the kind of team that will go and crash and burn,” he said sharply. “Even when we lost, they players played hard and well. I don’t care for that type of question.”

“But it is a possibility,” Churchill insisted.

“So is the Kassam Stadium getting hit by a meteor,” Kyle shot back. “These players are full of belief now. They shoot at the net, they think they’re going to bury it. They go up for a header or a second ball, they think they’re going to win it. They go for a 50-50 challenge, they expect the other guy to back out. That’s what footballers are supposed to think, Bill. Let’s let them enjoy that before we go tearing them down, yeah?”

“You have these players playing well, I’ll admit that.”

“Big of you, Bill.”

Kyle couldn’t leave well enough alone. But in this case, he felt it was warranted.

Upon leaving the stadium, he learned that Burton Albion, the team immediately ahead of his in the table, had hired former Norwich and Blackpool boss Nigel Worthington to take over a team of which more had been expected.

But once the players had left the changing room, it was straight onto the coach for the trip to the southwest coast. With only a day to prepare, the plan was for the club to stay two nights in Plymouth to try to recover some strength without having to waste a travel day.

Nineteen players and the coaching and physio staff boarded the coach. The injured players weren’t hurt badly enough to miss any time – which was good because Kyle’s senior squad was threadbare enough as it was. But the physios would be able to tell who needed to rest for the trip to League Two’s second-placed club.

As the coach rolled southwestward for the second game of the festive period, Kyle’s mind was racing on how to earn a sixth league win on the spin. That would be Oxford’s best run of form for nearly thirty years. He wanted that win.

But he needed rest even more. As Kyle contemplated even more Plymouth video, he leaned back in his chair, where his energy came to an end. He fell fast asleep.

# # #

[edtheguy]

After the previous post I was actually thinking to myself "I wonder if Kyle is going to be able to handle success any better than he could failure"

.....

It looks like this story will be interesting no matter what. I can see why you are enjoying writing it!

[tenthreeleader]

Thank you for the kind words! We'll see how Kyle handles his success!

___

28 December 2014 – Plymouth Argyle (14-4-4, 2^nd place) v Oxford United (7-5-10, 16^th place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #23 – Home Park, Plymouth

Now this was going to be a test.

Fresh off the coach from the big victory over Shrewsbury, Kyle’s Oxford moved up in the table – and straight into an away test against the team directly above their last opponents in the table.

Portsmouth was quite comfortable atop League Two with a seven-point cushion over Plymouth Argyle but still, the home team was formidable.

The coach trip had been long. Plymouth is the southernmost and westernmost city in England to host league football, and is also the largest community in England to have never played in the top flight.

Neither of those factoids really mattered to Kyle. What mattered, of course, were the points.

The team did video work on the day between matches but that was it. Under orders from the manager to simply lay around all day, the players did just that.

Small squads can get chewed up and spit out by the festive period, with matches on Friday and Sunday, and Kyle well knew it.

Knowing that victory could move his team past Burton Albion and into 15^th place, Kyle tried to keep as much of the magic from the Shrewsbury eleven as he could.

One change was in goal, where Clarke again came in for Ashdown. Mullins moved to right back in place of Bevans, and Rose slotted into the holding role in place of Mullins.

Dunkley once again deputized for Whing in the center of the back line alongside Wright but the front three-fourths of the midfield was the same as ever. Kyle gave Hoskins another try in place of Hylton, as he tried to find a striker in peak form.

Whing was expected back for the weekend matchup against tail-end Cheltenham at the Kassam but the physios didn’t think it wise to risk him just yet and Kyle listened to more learned opinion.

The teams lined up to take the pitch and Kyle knew this would be the best test yet for his team. For once, he relished the challenge rather than wanting to run from it.

He took his place in the dugout and watched his charges go to work. It didn’t take long before Oxford threatened.

In the fourth minute, Skarz shook loose down the left, but crossed early instead of going to the byline. The cross was too long and hit the nearly-antiquated Plymouth captain, Paul Wotton, in the chest. He tried to clear his lines, but made it only as far as Hoban at the top of the area.

The defenders converged on the Irishman and as they did, he simply slipped the ball to the right to the completely unmarked Will Hoskins, who slotted past Luke McCormick with almost ridiculous ease.

That was the stuff dreams were made of and it looked as though Oxford was picking up right where it had left off.

The dream lasted three minutes before the Pilgrims pegged them back.

A long ball from Lee Cox down the right found Dean Rittenberg a step ahead of Skarz. The midfielder went to the byline, slipped around Skarz as he tried to close, and crossed to the far edge of the six-yard box where Tyler Harvey was there to head past the stranded Clarke to level the scores after seven minutes.

The Home Park faithful showed their appreciation and Kyle turned to Fazackerley for a word.

Unfortunately, the word was profane, and the assistant manager couldn’t really disagree.

It was a great start for both teams, though, and that was good for the neutral. Not that Kyle was one of those.

Both teams earned corners within the next few minutes and Kyle was concerned at how easily the Pilgrims seemed to be finding shooting opportunities. They were second, after all, for a reason.

But then Maddison blazed wide from twenty yards and sent Plymouth hearts into throats, and the game was on again.

Hoban and Skarz played a two-man game down the left flank of the Plymouth defense and again the fullback provided the cross into the area, an artful effort toward the back post.

Once the ball arrived there, MacDonald outleaped defender Carl McHugh and nodded the ball into the ground, where it bounded over the onrushing McCormick’s dive and home for a 2-1 lead in 14 minutes.

Opposing teams weren’t supposed to do this to the Pilgrims, and their fans, who vastly outnumbered the 300 or so traveling supporters in the Barn Park End, were suddenly making a lot less noise than their visitors.

Referee Martin Atkinson was forced into action a few minutes later as tempers flared after the fast start. MacDonald was booked for a rash challenge on Jamie Richards, and Wotton evened the score by finally catching up to Hoskins and making the Oxford hitman pay as he tried to feed the right wing with a crunching, and late, challenge.

As Hoskins had just returned from injury, Kyle wasn’t best pleased, and wasted no time in letting the officials know. Hoban and Plymouth’s Lewis Alessandra then traded chances as the play went end to end. It didn’t look like lower league stuff, that was for certain.

Things finally settled down a bit as the teams couldn’t last that kind of pace. The best chance before half saw Maddison firing over from a good shooting position near the top of the Plymouth penalty area, and Atkinson’s halftime whistle was greeted with a bit of relief by Kyle, who had something to say.

”You’re on the verge of a great double. But what I need to see from you in the second half is a commitment to the kind of defensive play which wins games. They’re good, Plymouth is, but if you can show me what you’ve got left in the tank in the second half you’ll get a couple of days off to enjoy what you’ve done. You can do this.”

He thought the idea of getting a little rest after a difficult period would encourage the players to dig down deep and find that little bit extra he knew would be necessary to secure a very nice victory indeed.

He was also a bit alarmed by the new attitude of the Pilgrims once the second half began. Atkinson immediately went to his cards to book Aaron Bentley for scything down Hoban barely a minute into the session.

If the goal was to get the Us attention, it certainly worked. Their focus was suddenly marvelous.

Plymouth had used two of its substitutions at halftime, with Wooton coming off along with Alessandra. They showed intent, and a lot more pace, by their moves, but it was Oxford who carved out the first good chance of the half, with Hoskins missing with a wicked half-volley five minutes after the restart.

Reuben Reid, the substitute for Alessandra, made a bid to re-equalize in 61 minutes but was stopped by Clarke’s dive to his right.

He then denied Reid again in 65 minutes, making a superb reflex save at feet after the striker had wormed his way between Wright and Dunkley.

The captain wasn’t having one of his best games, but with the team already short on the back line, Kyle elected to try to motivate the man wearing his armband to get him to up the level of his play.

And for a time, it worked, even though Clarke v Reid Round Three was also needed to keep the score 2-1. A fine fingertip save denied the substitute striker in 71 minutes and it was then that Kyle finally went to his bench.

MacDonald, who had received a final warning from Atkinson after another clumsy challenge despite being on a yellow, had to come off, and he did, in favor of Meades. The other sacrifice was Hoban, which was disappointing because as the club’s leading goalscorer, more was expected from him. Hylton came on for him and Kyle trusted to luck to hold his back line together.

Dean Rittenberg went down on a hard challenge from Dunkley in 81 minutes and the defender was booked, but Atkinson evened things up 45 seconds later when Curtis Nelson sent Hylton flying on a run down the right.

Plymouth used its final substitution moments later and it was a bit of a headscratcher, as sixteen-year old midfielder Jake Miller came on for the influential Ollie Norburn. That was fine with Kyle, who now shifted his team to 4-2-3-1 to try to kill off the remaining minutes of the match.

On the counter, Maddison surged forward and his effort was blocked behind for a corner, which the on-loan midfielder quickly took. It went deep into the six-yard box, where it found the head of Johnny Mullins and into the back of the net.

A simple set piece had undone Argyle and a few minutes later, Kyle had the big win he craved.

It was the best run anyone at Oxford United could remember. And as the coach headed home to start the players on their days off, there was a sense of near-euphoria in the changing room.

The team was playing brilliantly.

Oxford United: Clarke: Mullins, Dunkley, Wright (captain), Skarz, Rose, MacDonald (Meades 73), Maddison (Bevans 88), O’Dowda, Hoskins, Hoban (Hylton 73). Unused subs: Ashdown, Ruffels, Ashby, Godden.

Plymouth Argyle 1 (Tyler Harvey 7)

Oxford United 3 (Hoskins 4, MacDonald 14, Mullins 86)

H/T: 1-2

A: 7,536, Home Park, Plymouth

Man of the Match: James Maddison, Oxford (MR 9.0)

Referee: Martin Atkinson

# # #

[jdoyle9293]

What a scalp that is - have to be proud of Oxford there. Perhaps a return to third tier via the play-offs, seems unlikely but seventh place doesn't seem too lofty with the current form. The glory days of the eighties lies ahead under Kyle Cain? Great stuff here, 10-3.

[tenthreeleader]

Genuinely could not be more pleased with how Oxford are playing. One of the best runs I've ever had in FM and probably the most satisfying given the state of the club at takeover.

__

“I’m not sure I can stand all this prosperity.”

Kyle couldn’t have been happier.

The coach ride home had been loud and fun. The festive period had gone perfectly, players were coming back off the injury lists, and he had options coming up in squad selection which would push the players who were already performing so well.

In just six league matches in charge, Kyle Cain’s Oxford had moved from 22^nd place to joint 15^th place, where they found themselves trailing on goal difference. A true mid-table position awaited, with plenty of season left to play.

They were very clearly the form team in League Two and had a series of matches coming up against three of the league’s bottom clubs. Cheltenham, 24^th and last, would be next followed by Dag and Red, 23^rd in the table. Exeter City would follow, another club really struggling.

The team had earned eighteen league points from eighteen, seven more than in seventeen matches under Appleby. The club’s point total had zoomed from eleven to twenty-nine in just six weeks.

And he was pleased at how the holiday party had gone with Stacy. She was still reluctant to join him in Oxford, though, and they were still estranged, but he finally saw light at the end of a tunnel that did not look like an oncoming train.

The news for some other managers, though, was not as good.

Bolton sacked former Celtic manager Neil Lennon after sagging to 21^st place in the Championship, naming Johan Mjallby as the caretaker. The Trotters had had one win in their last six and had scored just twenty goals in 24 matches.

But, Kyle supposed, it could have been worse. Chris Hughton was shown the door at Brighton, which was last in the Championship and had won only once in their last eight matches, while not scoring a goal in their last three.

And yet, there were other concerns for Kyle. Just before the calendar year ended, he sat with Eales and went over the expiring contracts on the Oxford squad.

Many of them contained club option renewal clauses and that was a very good thing. While it allowed him to “kick the can” down the road by simply renewing players for another year, there were some who would take negotiation.

One was the club captain, Wright. On a decent run of form since Kyle’s arrival, the manager had already decided his skipper deserved a new deal, but the question was what he would want in exchange.

The answer was, quite surprisingly … less.

Through his agent, the captain proposed a £7,000 pay cut for himself, and Kyle was able to offer his defender some of that money back, save the club in net spending, and look good in the process.

Some of the players, though, simply had to be renewed.

Hoskins was one. He was too important to the club to be allowed to leave on a free. Rose, Sam Long and Bevans were three others, the last being a young player the club wanted to keep on the books.

Whing, though, was a much harder decision.

The player, listed as a backup on most of the depth charts, was making an awful lot of dosh for a player not regularly in the first team at £70,000 per annum. That was £25,000 per year more than his manager.

But he had been a virtual ever-present for Kyle until his injury and he, like so many of the others, had bought into what Kyle wanted tactically. He was useful. And at age 30, he more than likely still had a good year or two left of decent football before he started to decline.

So he was renewed as well. Less fortunate were other players on the first team.

Balmy, who couldn’t crack the first eleven, was one, and his salary would be good to jettison. Michael Collins was another – Kyle didn’t like to non-tender players who had been injured but from what he had seen at training, Collins wasn’t going to supplant those men already playing. Backup striker John Campbell and his salary in excess of £40,000 per annum was also non-tendered, but all players were told before the new year so they could begin looking for new clubs while still getting paid.

That was a luxury Kyle himself had not been afforded. He was determined to be a better boss than his former employers had been to him.

That was a part of what drove him now.

His desire for revenge on those who had wronged him was fueling a negative energy which he knew wasn’t healthy but which would keep him more than motivated for some time to come. But now, he had something else to work for.

He was a success, at least in the short term, for the first time in far too long. He liked the feeling.

Jenna did too. Her father seemed different around the house – still ridiculously hard-working, but now there seemed to be a purpose for it all.

New Year’s Eve came to the Cain household and for once, all seemed well.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

The coaches had held a brief gathering at the training ground after the team had gone home on that Wednesday night. Cheltenham was next and Kyle expected three points.

That meant making the team work on a holiday evening. There was a short session scheduled for New Year’s Day as well and Kyle had made it abundantly clear that any player who showed up for training in a delicate state would leave that training in a more delicate state.

The mood was good but subdued as a result. That was the way Kyle wanted it.

“New Years comes and goes,” he told Fazackerley. “A player’s career does not.”

So he went home to spend a quiet evening with Jenna and at eleven o’clock, his mobile phone rang.

It was Stacy.

“This is an unexpected surprise,” Kyle said to his wife, in a greeting that was warm even for him.

“Just wanted to call and wish you and Jenna a Happy New Year,” she said.

“That’s kind. What are you up to this evening?”

“Oh, just watching the telly,” she answered. She sounded tired, which was understandable given the changes in her life.

Kyle decided to take the chance.

“So, Stacy, tell me, what will it take to bring you to Oxford? Isn’t it time to end all this nonsense?”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.

“I’m not ready for that quite yet, Kyle,” she said. “I’ve a good job here in London and I like what I’m doing. You can’t expect me to just pitch all that and run to you.”

“Well, we are married,” he said, in a teasing fashion. “Aren’t we supposed to live in the same house?”

But Stacy wouldn’t budge.

“I’m happy here,” she said. “Can’t you try to get a job in East London?”

“I’ve been employed by Oxford for six weeks,” he said. “And you want me to find another club already? That won’t fly. And I’ve told the chairman as a condition of my employment that I won’t look for another position for a year. They’ve had five managers here in the last twelve months.”

It seemed like such a circular argument. Kyle was ready to ask Stacy to come home and that was something for him to admit. And, it seemed to him that his wife was being her usual obstinate self.

Stacy thought Kyle was bending. That was good. But he wasn’t willing to bend far enough, which was typical of him. She thought that he might really be in the right occupation to suit his dominating personality, but his on-the-job persona didn’t match well with his primary role as husband and father.

“Well, what about if we looked for a similar job for you here?”

That was real compromise. Stacy thought for a moment.

“I don’t think it would pay the same,” she said. “And after all the family does need money to try to rebuild our finances.”

She has a reason for everything, Kyle thought to himself.

“Well, how about we talk about it next time we see each other?” he asked. He felt he was really trying to resolve the issue.

“All right,” she said. “You have a good night, yeah?”

“You too,” Kyle said. Just then, he heard a noise.

The toilet had flushed in Stacy’s flat.

At that moment, Kyle knew his wife was not spending New Year’s Eve alone.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

3 January 2015 – Oxford United (8-5-10, 15^th place) v Cheltenham (2-7-14, 24^th place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #24 – The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Referee – Darren Drysdale

It wasn’t really a happy New Year for Kyle.

He stewed over what he had heard in Stacy’s apartment for the entire next day, and even Jenna’s prodding couldn’t prise out of him what was wrong.

On the one hand, he couldn’t prove anything. On the other hand, if she was with a man, part of Kyle thought he deserved what he was getting for the trouble he had caused.

And if he could have had a third hand, that hand would be defending himself. But he didn’t have that option, so he simply sat and stewed.

The players could see something was bothering the boss at the New Year’s training and again during the tactical workup on Friday. He was very upset.

There was some nice news for him professionally, though, as he earned a richly deserved Manager of the Month gong for rescuing his club from the depths of the relegation contest. Maddison earned another richly deserved award as Young Player of the Month.

Jake Wright signed his contract on reduced terms, which helped the bottom like. Matt Bevans and all the staff up for renewal also agreed new terms for the next year at modest increases. The board informed Kyle that the Financial Fair Play rules had been met easily and so far, everything was going just great at the Kassam.

On the field.

Off, well, that was another matter.

So it was that the tail-end club in League Two, Cheltenham Town, came calling on the Saturday – a team Kyle had seen once already and watched his team eviscerate.

That was a word which could also have been used to describe his private mood.

As for changes, well, there were a few. Whing was returned to central defense after going a week free of concussion symptoms. Bevans, who had just signed his new deal, returned to right back and the carousel at striker continued with Hylton supporting Hoskins.

Otherwise, the eleven was unchanged from Plymouth. There was a nice feel to the squad now, with players settling into defined roles and performing as they were expected to perform. Every manager loved that feeling and Kyle was no exception.

Town entered the match in desperate straits. They needed points in a hurry and their hope was to catch Oxford on an off day and then hope they would rebound against Dag and Red. It was a tall order.

The crowd was bigger by about 800 fans than for the last home match against Shrewsbury, and Kyle wanted them to see a show which would bring them back. Five minutes into the match, Hylton got them out of their seats with a well-placed headed finish from an O’Dowda cross from the left.

That was how to handle last-place opposition, Kyle thought, and he settled back for the inevitable hiding he knew was in Cheltenham’s future.

Only it didn’t come.

The visitors earned a surprising amount of possession after Hylton’s goal and suddenly Kyle realized an important fact: his players were mirroring their manager’s complacency.

That brought him out of the dugout like a jack-in-the-box after Mathieu Manset burst through the defense and was denied by a sterling save from Ashdown in thirteen minutes.

“Concentrate!” he yelled, stabbing a forefinger against the side of his head as he did to make his point. That helped for a bit, but soon it became apparent that the visitors were made of sterner stuff.

They proved it in twenty-seven minutes, when Oxford couldn’t defend a set piece. It was simple stuff. Jordan Jones took it, Will Summerfield towered over both Wright and Hylton, who had come back to help, and gave Ashdown no chance.

Kyle stood, as stunned as anyone else in the crowd, at the ease with which the visitors had equalized. He turned to Fazackerley, and the frustrations of the last few days began to simmer.

“If we don’t see better play soon, nobody’s going to be bloody sitting down when I give the half time talk,” he snapped. Fazackerley chose to take the brighter outlook, which didn’t exactly endear him to his boss.

“We’re taking their best shot and we’re still level,” he offered, but Kyle would have none of it.

“We need to throttle this lot,” he said, his voice barely below a snarl.

For their part, the Us responded better after being pegged back, and as the match moved toward halftime, they were nearly acceptable to their boss.

As referee Darren Drysdale signaled for one minute of added time, Oxford struck. Hoskins’ ball to the right found the run of Bevans, and the youngster whipped a ball into the box for MacDonald. The Scot let the ball play off his chest and down, and he volleyed into the net in 44 minutes to restore Oxford’s lead.

That stayed Kyle’s hand a bit at halftime – but only a bit.

“I’m not liking what I’m seeing from this team, I’ll be honest about that. You have so much better in you and we saw it against better teams than this lot you’re playing now. Take this bloody match by the scruff of the neck and show me you haven’t dropped your performances.”

The second half began and immediately, the visitors were in the ascendancy. John Nutter, Theo Wharton and Asa Hall all came close within the first fifteen minutes with nary a reply from the Us on the field.

Or the Us off the field, for that matter. As the Americans would have said, the Oxford dugout was deader than Kelcy’s Nuts, and the only one who was showing any passion was the manager. That was an ominous sign.

Bevans was having a particularly hard time dealing with the Cheltenham wing play and as a result Kyle hauled him off, his new contract perhaps slowing him down, in 71 minutes for Mullins.

It hardly helped. Cheltenham generated more chances and finally got the equalizer their play deserved through Wharton – just after Kyle had changed to 4-2-3-1 to try to hang on for three points.

Mullins was the culprit, though not intentionally, when he headed the ball trying to clear his lines, but only as far as Wharton about twenty yards from goal. His thunderbastard beat Ashdown over his right arm, and it was a 2-2 match, marking Wharton’s first goal for the club.

Kyle threw his head back in disgust and yelled for Wright. The captain trotted over to him, and nervously leaned in for his manager’s words.

“You know what I want to see,” Kyle said. And with that, he waved the captain away.

Wright did know what Kyle wanted to see, luckily for him. And two minutes later, the Us provided it when Maddson, moved to a forward left position in the 4-2-3-1, burst into the Cheltenham area and was bundled to the floor by defender Lee Vaughan, who somehow avoided a card for his trouble.

Referee Drysdale gave the penalty, though, and it was confidently dispatched into the top corner by Rose to make it 3-2 to Oxford five minutes from time.

Now dropping deep to defend, the Us looked good value for their lead.

For three minutes.

Amazingly, Cheltenham surged forward and forward Zack Kotwica, a substitution after the penalty, broke Kyle’s heart with another surging finish. Maddison had slid to block tackle the ball off the feet of Wes Burns, but couldn’t regain his feet in time to challenge Kotwica. Since Maddison was the only Oxford player in the vicinity not ball-watching, this gave the on-loan Udinese teenager a clear shot at goal.

He did not miss. Kyle wanted to scream.

Three minutes later, it was all over. Oxford had dropped points against the last-placed team in the Football League.

And Kyle Cain was not happy.

Oxford United: Ashdown: Bevans (Mullins 71), Whing, Wright (captain), Skarz, Rose, MacDonald, Maddison, O’Dowda, Hylton, Hoskins (Meades 81). Unused subs: Clarke, Dunkley, Ashby, Hoban, Godden.

Oxford United 3 (Hylton 5, MacDonald 44, Rose pen 85)

Cheltenham Town 3 (Will Summerfield 27, Theo Wharton 83, Zack Kotwica 88)

H/T: 2-1

A – 5,453, The Kassam Stadium, Oxford:

Man of the Match: James Maddison, Oxford (MR 8.4)

# # #

[jdoyle9293]

The leaking of late goals - typical Christmas congestion fixtures. That's frustrasting though, especially against relegation candidates in Cheltenham Town. Good stuff as usual and the Stacy/Kyle dynamic keeps evolving and bubbling away nicely.

[tenthreeleader]

“Who here in this room wants to someday get out of League Two?” Kyle asked.

Not surprisingly, every man in the room raised his hand, including the coaches.

“Well, it won’t happen like that!” Kyle thundered. His sudden burst of unrestrained fury had the desired effect – the eyes of almost everyone in the home changing room grew as big as dinner plates.

“Look, we’ve had a great run,” he said, beginning to pace, which was always a bad thing for anyone unfortunate enough to be in Kyle’s path. The evening’s rain had plastered Kyle’s hair to his forehead, and the players sat, in their still-wet uniforms, waiting for permission to start their post-match routines. “We’ve had a great run but the bottom team in the entire f**king Football League is celebrating because they pegged you back not once, but twice. In the last ten minutes. On your f**king ground!”

He fell silent and since no one wanted to get in the way of his exterminating anger, they sat silently and tried to figure out where their manager was coming from.

“Anyone who thinks that result is acceptable should just tell me and I’ll take you out of the squad,” he snarled. “There’s no reason – at all – why this club should not have held these people off. And if you want to get promoted some day, that is the kind of team you will handle.”

He fell silent, his face red. Then he stared at each one of his players. Beyond the far wall, a lot of noise could be heard coming from the visitors’ changing room.

“Listen,” he said. “Those people in the other dressing room are celebrating. They are celebrating because they took away two of your points. You gave those points to them. What are you going to do to be sure that never happens again? Now, get changed. Training Monday morning at nine. Injured players in for treatment at ten tomorrow morning.”

The next day, quotes from Whing showed up in the Mail detailing what Kyle had said to the squad.

After thinking it through, Kyle decided not to formally discipline the player who had spread locker room secrets. In this particular case, he didn’t mind people knowing about his expectations for the team and his exact thoughts about its performance.

The only punishment for the player whose contract Kyle had just renewed was to lose his place for the coming match. He couldn’t abide that kind of discipline breach completely, and he had no intention of doing so.

After a short and one-sided conversation with Whing, Kyle went home to brood about Stacy.

He even asked Jenna for her thoughts.

“Dad, it could have been nothing,” was his daughter’s reaction. “You shouldn’t be so paranoid.”

“Someone was in the place with her,” Kyle said, and as he did so, he realized how defensive he sounded.

“So? People have guests, you know.”

“On New Year’s Eve, an hour before midnight,” he said. “Jenna, you know you’re the apple of my eye but I really don’t like how this sounds.”

His daughter sighed, her shoulders rising and falling heavily. She didn’t want to argue.

“I can see your point, Dad,” she finally said. “So, supposing it’s true, what are you going to do about it?”

Kyle smiled, but not in a way Jenna was used to seeing. It was a half-smile, almost an expression that indicated he understood the entire concept of irony.

“I couldn’t possibly comment,” he finally said.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Like Arya Stark, Kyle was starting to keep a secret list.

The Game of Thrones character’s nighttime prayer was a listing of people she wanted to see struck down. Kyle hadn’t gone quite that far in his thinking, and his list was considerably shorter, but a dose of valar morghulis wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for certain people.

As he lay in bed, sleepless, the night after the Cheltenham match, he thought a little karmic cleanup on Aisle 3 would suit him just fine.

He knew something was going on with Stacy. He was sure of it. He couldn’t prove it, but he was going to find a way. In terms of his obligation to Jenna, valar dohaeris thus became the words of the day.

Kyle felt that Stacy deserved better. He hadn’t been perfect, God knew, but he had repented, and tried to redeem himself. In response, Stacy had held his transgression over his head and used it as a cudgel whenever she wanted her way – which, Kyle had to admit, was all the time.

The anger he now felt motivated him. It was starting to drive him, and Kyle had to remind himself that he shared an equal obligation to Oxford United, the people who were giving him the opportunity to find what he wanted the most in the world, which was redemption from a footballing standpoint.

On the pitch, somehow Ashdown made the Team of the Week when it was released the next day, which caused a bit of sardonic laughter from the boss when he read the sheet. However, it also included all three of his forward midfielders, and Kyle thought that was wonderful. They deserved some recognition for powering the team’s resurgence.

A look at the table showed that the dropping of two points at home hadn’t really damaged the team’s place in the table. Oxford was joint fifteenth place, level with Cambridge United and Mansfield Town, but trailing both clubs on goal difference.

There were a number of things about which Kyle could be pleased. His team hadn’t been held off the scoreboard yet in his tenure, and when you can score, you always have a chance to win. So there was that.

But he felt justified in being hard on the squad for the late-match breakdowns against Cheltenham. His goals were starting to change, even though he hadn’t told anyone about that yet – including, and especially, the board, and most certainly not the players.

Kyle thought there was no reason in the world his team couldn’t challenge for the playoff places if it continued to win. Now, how extraordinary would that be?

The thoughts about success, he kept to himself. Kyle was not by nature an optimist, and so the thoughts he was having were in a way foreign to him.

Jenna understood, but then she always did. She seemed wise beyond her years, especially when it came to how to reach inside her father’s mind.

She thought him sweet but too strict in areas where he didn’t need to be. She felt his mental discipline was prone to wandering – something, perhaps ironically, he would never accept from his players – and he was very prone to seek revenge where she thought that leaving well enough alone would have done.

That was the case with Moore. The two got along like oil and water.

True to the chairman’s instructions, Kyle tried to change his attitude toward the younger woman. He didn’t know, and he didn’t ask, whether the chairman had spoken to Moore about the senseless personal insult she had thrown Kyle’s way.

He didn’t feel like a ‘boss’. He felt subservient.

And he hated that feeling.

He had to swallow his pride, and he hated that feeling almost as much.

Their paths, perhaps mercifully, didn’t cross often but when they did, Kyle went out of his way to be as polite as he possibly could.

He was so polite, in fact, that Moore went to Eales again.

The chairman knocked on the door to the manager’s office the day before the team left for Dagenham and asked if he could enter.

“It’s your place, Daryl,” Kyle said.

“I need to talk with you about Diana Moore again,” he said, entering to sit in the chair in which she had sat, across Kyle’s desk. “She’s uncomfortable.”

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Kyle sighed. In general, that wasn’t the right reaction, but it was understandable, at least to him.

“She says you’re being sarcastic,” Eales said. “I really do need to know what’s going on before she lodges a complaint against you.”

That got Kyle’s dander up, and it was only by the hardest that he managed to keep his temper, and thus his job.

“Mr. Eales,” Kyle said, retreating into the world of formality to make his point, “you directed me to be nicer to the lovely, charming and talented Ms. Diana Moore. I’ve done this to the very best of my ability.”

“I know you have,” he answered. “And she’s unhappy about how you did it.”

Kyle sat back in his chair and tried to compose himself. “Mr. Eales,” he said, “with all due respect …”

“…Kyle, you need to relax,” Eales said. “None of this ‘Mr. Eales’ business when you’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous, I’m angry as hell,” Kyle said. “And I was taught to be respectful to my bosses. And now with all due respect, I have to ask you if any of what’s happened here could possibly be her doing and not my doing?”

“Yes, that thought has occurred to me,” Eales said. “But she says your heart isn’t in it and she isn’t happy.”

“My heart is not for Diana Moore to read,” Kyle answered. “And I really do need to draw a line under this right here.”

“Can’t you just let go of what she did to you?” Eales asked.

“Which time?”

That caught Eales unprepared.

“I guess I do see your point,” the chairman replied, running his fingers through his hair.

“In point of fact, if she wants to play her little HR games, I could register a complaint against her as easily as she could register a complaint against me,” Kyle said, now standing on slightly better ground.

“So, what are your suggestions for fixing the issue?” Eales said, and then made a valuable insight into the mind of his manager.

“I understand that you don’t necessarily need to be the one to provide a solution,” he added quickly, and at that Kyle relaxed noticeably. “I do understand that. But if you can rise above the issue for a moment, how would you want this fixed?”

Kyle thought for a moment.

“I didn’t start the issue when she was at Hemel Hempstead,” he finally said. “And I didn’t bring up the issue of my past. She brought up both of those issues. I reminded her of what she did to me when she came here, and I was nice to her when you told me to be. Evidently she doesn’t like nice men.”

“Kyle, please,” Eales said.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t answer your question. I’m willing to apologize to her if she is willing to apologize to me first,” Kyle said. “I realize that sounds childish but I didn't start this issue. So, I don’t feel I need to apologize to her. I’ve been quite kind, actually, and if she can’t handle that well, then that’s not my problem. It’s hers.”

It was Eales’ turn to sigh. Kyle had a point, even as ham-handedly as he had tried to express it.

“Couldn’t you be a gentleman?” he asked.

“I could.”

“But you won’t? I guess that answer doesn’t satisfy me.”

“I didn’t say that. Mr. Eales, I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. I’ve been kind to the woman at your request. She threw it back in my face. Now, you told me that I was the boss. If she’s going to be disrespectful to me and insubordinate, I have to defend myself. But if you want to end this, I’ll end this. All I ask is that she goes first.”

It seemed too much to ask.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

For a change, Kyle did not travel with the squad to the match. He drove himself, and he took Jenna with him.

Dagenham is about ten miles east of the City of London so the trip gave Kyle the opportunity to bring Jenna to see some of her friends. And, he had to admit, time with his dear daughter was better than time on the coach with the players.

The team traveled on Friday morning and Kyle took his daughter to her best friend’s house to spend the night. He would pick her up after the match.

He had an errand to run before he met the team at the hotel.

Soon Kyle was near his old home, driving down Ruckholt Road to turn an upturned middle finger at the allotments where he used to live. From there, it was a hop, step and a jump onto the A106 heading west, turning south on the Cambridge Heath Road.

Soon, he pulled up in the parking lot of the Bethnal Green Library. He had someone he wanted to see.

Kyle strode through the main doorway and headed to the reception desk.

“Is Stacy Cain here today?” he asked, smiling kindly at the lissome young thing whose gaze now met his.

“She is,” the young lady responded. “She’s at the information counter.”

She had failed to recognize Kyle, which once was highly uncommon in this part of East London, but which now was not such a big deal. The lady had pointed off to the right side of the main lobby, and Kyle looked over to where she was pointing.

There he saw his wife, sitting at a counter working at a computer screen. A man stood behind her. He was nattily dressed, almost to the point of being a dandy.

And he had his hands resting on her shoulders as she worked.

The young lady looked at him.

“Did you want to speak with her, sir?” she asked.

Kyle turned to her, and this time the expression on his face was much darker.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” he said, turning to leave. “I’ve got all the ‘information’ I need.”

# # #

[jdoyle9293]

I'd like to think Kyle is a very fiery individual and often jumps to conclusions, usually outside of his working life where it appears to be going fairly rosy, so I've got a feeling he's blown this way out of proportions. Great work though, 10-3, I'm hooked.

[tenthreeleader]

Kyle is high-strung, nervous, and a bit scared. It's natural for him to wonder what's going on. But you might be right ...

___

10^th January 2015 – Dagenham and Redbridge (3-7-14, 23^rd place) v Oxford United (8-6-10, 15^th place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #25 – Victoria Road, Dagenham

Referee: Peter Bankes

If Kyle’s players thought their boss was angry before the Cheltenham match, well, they hadn’t seen anything yet.

Professionally, Kyle kept his mood away from the players, and that was necessary. But personally, things were not going well at all.

He hadn’t expected to see Moore before the team left for Dagenham, so when she didn’t show up he wasn’t disappointed.

But Kyle was more concerned with finding out who was handling Stacy when he dropped into the library. It was no ordinary touch. It was what the kids would call a PDA.

That thought burned its way through Kyle’s mind as he headed to the team hotel. Once there, he called Jenna to see how she was doing, reminded her to be ready after the match for the return to Oxford, and threw himself into his work.

That work, for today, was finding a way to turn Dag and Red into Dag and Wreck. He was getting angrier by the moment and he really wasn’t sure how to handle it.

One thing he was sure of, though. Meades was back in Kyle’s good graces, and he wanted to make sure the player knew it.

The day before leaving for Dagenham, the player had asked to see the boss and had apologized, in person, for his recent behavior. Kyle took that on board, noticed a renewed commitment from the player in training, and before the match Kyle returned the favor by asking Meades into his office.

“You’re in the team,” he said simply. “I’ve been very impressed with you lately and as short as I was with you when we had our discussion on the touchline, it seems to me that you deserve better when your play warrants it. You’ve earned this chance and I am happy to give it to you.”

Meades nodded and smiled, promised not to let the boss down as all players do after they get their chance, and went to the changing room to prepare for training.

There were other changes to the team. Clarke was back in goal, Mullins went to right back to replace the disappointing Bevans, Dunkley went into the back line to replace the equally disappointing Whing, and Hoban went up front to try to make a dent in the net.

Those were a fair few changes. Kyle told the team he was expecting a much better performance – and playing away from home, he felt the lads might just feel relaxed enough to give him one.

From the beginning, it was rough and tumble.

The Daggers, fighting for their League Two lives, came out strong, tough in the challenge and hard to break down. Whatever their coaching staff had put in their Wheaties at the morning meal had evidently been good stuff.

Zavon Hines gave the home team its first good opportunity in sixteen minutes, whipping in a corner which found the head of Jack Connors – and thankfully, the hands of Clarke after that.

Two minutes later, referee Peter Bankes went to his cards for the first time as Oliver Kemen sent MacDonald flying with a running body check on a foray down the right. Seven minutes later, it was Damien Mozika in the book for bringing down Meades in full flight with a scything tackle that got exactly none of the ball about thirty yards from goal on the left.

From Maddison’s free kick, Meades found MacDonald, who crossed for Hylton, who found the back of the net. Easy as pie. One-nil to the Us.

Even Kyle had to be impressed with the workmanlike way his players had nearly passed the ball into the Daggers’ goal. He turned to Fazackerley and, rarely enough for him in recent days, cracked a smile.

“Who kidnapped Kyle Cain, and what have they done with him?” Fazackerley teased in reply. Kyle, in a good mood, retained his smile.

What people dreaded seeing was the half-smile he sometimes cracked, showing that he either got a joke or worse yet, was mulling something over and was thinking about how to react.

But for now, all was well, the smile was genuine, and the Daggers, having been breached, covered up instead of going to the attack.

Meades celebrated his role in Oxford’s goal by getting himself booked for a retaliatory foul on Mozika three minutes after the opening goal. He evidently thought Bankes would forget the first foul, but the referee hadn’t done that. His hand on Meades’ shoulder and the clear words “no more of that” from his lips indicated that he remembered all too well.

And to his credit, Meades trimmed his sails. Perhaps he had remembered his promise to Kyle and if he had, fair play to the lad.

In thirty-five minutes, André Boucaud got the first real chance for the home team, but was stymied by a solid, strong-handed save from Clarke, who dove to his right to bend the Trinidadian’s low shot around the post.

A minute before half, Hines gave away a silly foul on the right wing, and got himself booked in the process, the Daggers’ third caution of the half. Maddison stood over the ball and put a perfectly-taken effort right into the middle of the six-yard box.

There Dunkley rose for it, heading home his first goal for the club and acting exactly like it, to give his team a two-goal lead at the break.

Kyle had, to that point, gotten exactly the effort he had been seeking.

Sending his squad out unchanged in personnel and virtually unchanged tactically, Kyle dared the Daggers to come out and do their worst.

Service to the venerable, 39-year old striker Jamie Cureton, playing for his fourteenth club in a long career, was starved early on, so the home team had to look for other options. Thankfully for Kyle, the Daggers weren’t particularly adept at finding those options – one reason why they were 23^rd in the table.

In fact, it was Oxford which had the better of play even as Dag and Red tried to climb back into the match. Just before the hour they were celebrating again. It was particularly pleasing because to start the effort, Maddison won a physical challenge for a second ball before sending O’Dowda away down the left. His early ball into the box found Hylton, who had ghosted between two defenders to volley home in 57 minutes.

His ninth goal of the season tied Hylton with Hoban for the club lead, and the points looked all but assured.

A few minutes later, however, the defenders – and Kyle – were shaking their heads after a fine effort from Ashley Chambers bounced up and down inside the Us goal after a thundering effort banked down off the crossbar and home in 68 minutes to get the home team on the scoreboard.

Still, though, it seemed vain hope and Kyle’s shouted instruction to keep things tight at the back seemed determined to make it such.

And then it was Meades, who was already playing on a yellow, who ended Chambers’ day for him with a crunching tackle in 70 minutes that had the home fans screaming for a second yellow. Kyle, seeing Meades’ blood was up, got the defender off the park a moment later to avoid the possibility of just such an occurrence.

His handshake with the defender told Meades he was still on good ground, and as Whing came on and Will Hoskins trotted on in place of Hoban behind him, it looked to be only a matter of time.

It was just that. Nice and boring, just the way Kyle wanted it. And when word came over the tannoy that Cheltenham had won, Kyle’s Oxford left Dagenham consigning their hosts to the foot of the table.

Oxford United: Clarke: Mullins, Dunkley, Wright (captain, Rose 87), Skarz, Meades (Whing 72), MacDonald, Maddison, O’Dowda, Hylton, Hoban (Hoskins 70). Unused subs: Ashdown, Bevans, Ashby, Godden.

Dagenham and Redbridge 1 (Ashley Chambers 68)

Oxford United 3 (Hylton 25, 57; Dunkley 44)

H/T: 0-2

A – 1,510, Victoria Road, Dagenham

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

# # #

[Cheesey1975]

great story so far...looking forward to the next part

[tenthreeleader]

“How does the top half of the table feel?”

That was the Mail.

“It feels good, and we’re making hay while the sun shines as the saying goes.”

The Oxford Mail changed reporters frequently to cover matches, but now that the team was on one of its best runs in recent memory, the face was getting more and more familiar.

Victoria Young was her name. She was hard at work, taking down Kyle’s words with great verve. For the paper to dedicate a reporter to the team on the road was a big ask for a smaller publication, and Kyle did his best to help her because he knew she was on deadline.

She was the very prototype of a football reporter – slightly disheveled clothing from travel, mussed hair – though her jet-black hair in this case was pulled back into a simple pony tail with individual strands sneaking out here and there – and a small catsup stain from her press box lunch near the waistline of her blouse that she would rather nobody had seen.

Her jaw sloped in a most pleasing way, with high cheekbones, a slender and sensitive nose, and deep brown eyes. If Kyle didn’t know better, he’d have said you could have gotten lost in them.

Still, “Vic”, as the players called her, seemed a decent enough sort. She had been fair to Kyle and his team and now that she was on the beat on the road, it seemed like she was the person Kyle needed to cultivate for the best coverage for his team. He had already given his players a “hands off” warning regarding her.

And for himself.

“You did a professional job today,” she continued.

“We certainly did,” Kyle responded. “I’m very proud of these players for going away from home and getting a result after a very difficult set of circumstances against Cheltenham, which I understand won today.”

Kyle wanted to make the point that if Cheltenham could play well against his team, they could play well against other teams. In a way, he was making an excuse for the home draw even while not overtly saying so.

“Yes, they did,” Young answered, “but let’s talk about your team instead.”

Kyle liked that kind of direct approach.

“Fair enough.”

“Maddison has been a revelation.”

“I’m very impressed,” Kyle immediately responded. “He’s a fine player and I do hope we can get even better out of him. He’s got real talent and he makes us go in the middle of the park.”

That was about as far as Kyle ever went in praise of a player, and Young was sure to note it. She then took another step that showed she knew what she was about.

“You are in the middle of a good stretch against bottom teams,” she said. “Your next two matches are against Southend which are 22^nd and Exeter, which are 20^th. Are you at all concerned that once you play stronger opposition your good run will vanish?”

“You go out to get three points against everyone,” Kyle responded. “We don’t control the fixture list. The only thing we can control is how we play. It is true that the vast majority of our schedule in recent weeks has been against the bottom of the league but I would add that the club we play next week occupies the position in the table we held when I got here. These are matches that confident, successful teams win to build more success and confidence.”

He thought for a moment.

“Though I should note, Vic, that nobody asked me that the converse of that question after we did the double over Shrewsbury and Plymouth.” For Kyle Cain, converse was a big word and he hoped he had used it correctly.

It was a fair response to a fair question, and the reporter didn’t fail to note that either.

With that, Kyle left the team to Fazackerley and drove to East London to pick up his daughter.

It had been a good weekend for everyone.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Eales sat behind his desk. Kyle Cain and Diana Moore sat beside each other on the opposite side.

“Kyle, Diana, thank you for coming here,” he said, like either one of them would have considered any other alternative.

Diana had indeed filed a complaint against Kyle, who had done his level best to not anger the woman any further. It hadn’t mattered.

Not only had she not honored Kyle’s request for a simple apology, Moore had taken the next step, complaining against Kyle for harassment.

Despite his threat, Kyle had not counter-claimed. He could see what was coming, and he wanted to claim the moral high ground.

And as such, both of them had been hauled to the chairman’s office.

“This needs to stop,” Eales said plaintively. “I can’t have two key staff members at each others’ throats.”

Kyle said nothing. He let Moore do the talking.

“I’m not at his throat,” she said. “He won’t do what you told him to do.”

Eales frowned, his heavy-set brows seeming to meet in the middle of his forehead.

“But I believe he has,” Eales said. “I told him to behave more correctly to you as you said you wanted, and by account of everyone I’ve talked to, he has done this. Everyone, that is, except you.”

Moore’s gaze seemed to go past Eales’ left ear and out the window of the chairman’s office.

“Does it not seem so to you as well?” The chairman was getting exasperated.

“You know what I want,” Moore said. “The complaint says exactly what I want and what I will require to avoid filing suit. I want his apology, and I want access to his team information and future plans when I want it, not when he decides I’ll get it.”

That was a rather stunning thing to say, and everyone in the room knew it.

Still, Kyle said nothing in reply. One of the two was going to have to be first.

Eales looked at his manager, who gave no clue at all as to his intentions.

Kyle was thinking seriously about telling Eales what he could do with his job if he lost this argument, but then that single word popped into his head again.

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

The unemployment line. No job. A history at his last job that included a complaint.

He would be finished in football. He couldn’t bear having to wait again for another job, of sitting in front of unthinking and unfeeling employers who didn’t care about their applicants as people – or anything else for that matter.

There was Jenna to think about. There was his child.

There was Stacy, and whoever was giving her a massage. But that was a whole different kind of thought. Three of those four people, he cared about. The fourth, he wanted to throttle. His mind was a turmoil of emotion.

All kinds of thoughts flashed through his head. Pain. Neglect. Hurt. Anger. Charlotte Weber, though he didn’t really know why. Reading Moore’s e-mail.

“Kyle, I need your thoughts,” Eales said. “You are part of this conversation as well.”

Kyle remained silent. Moore pounced.

“He’s got nothing to say, because he knows his conduct is beastly,” the younger woman said. “This can all be over if he’ll simply see reason.”

Kyle gave her the half-smile in reply. No one in the room had ever seen it, and it unnerved Moore.

This smile was different. Kyle’s blue eyes bore in on Moore, who suddenly felt quite uncomfortable indeed. The right corner of his mouth trailed up toward his ear, with just a hint of his white teeth showing between his lips.

“Why, of course, Miss Moore,” he said, with a voice as even and as quiet as he could muster. “I’ll propose a compromise, here and now.”

# # #

[edtheguy]

Oh boy, this should be interesting....

This continues to be a great story (as always), can't wait for more!

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks very much ... Kyle isn't exactly a master negotiator. He's just mad.

___

“I’ll apologize to you on the condition that my team plans remain my team plans,” he said. “Surely Mr. Eales would not approve of unfinalized team plans – which I guess would be ‘when you want them’ -- made public. I’m certain Mr. Eales would not want information about contract negotiations, which players I plan or do not plan to tender, that sort of thing, in the hands of the marketing department instead of the football staff. These are issues that affect the stability of the chairman’s business and I don’t think he would wish to see them compromised.”

He was forcing Eales to take a position.

The chairman hadn’t seen reason from Kyle’s point of view. Well, now he was going to have to.

“Mr. Eales, you and I are busy men,” he continued. “You don’t want a lawsuit, I don’t want a lawsuit, and I have a football team to run that is doing quite well at the moment. Since we’re all here to see Oxford United succeed, would that compromise seem reasonable to you?”

Moore did not fail to note that he had not said everyone in the room was busy, and she rankled. That was too bad for her, Kyle thought.

Eales looked at Moore.

“That seems reasonable to me, and it is certainly fair to say that the manager’s plans are the manager’s plans. There are items in the long-range plans of this club that are not within your purview, Miss Moore. It seems to me as though you are trying to hold something over Mr. Cain’s head and that’s not how we do things at this club either.”

Eales had forced Moore to either remain an outlier – in which case he would terminate her, she would file suit and the chips would fall where might, which more than likely wouldn’t be very far – or like someone who had just had a rage broken with a faceful of cold water, Diana Moore would need to move her position.

She drew another dark straight line on her note pad and thought things through.

“Very well, Mr. Eales,” she said. “And to make things easier, I would like to work with Mr. Fazackerley on matters of club interest in the future.”

The two looked at Kyle.

“I won’t accept out-of-channels interference in selection or policy matters,” he said. “The team sheet is made at my discretion and decisions on players and their contracts are made jointly by myself and the board. Miss Moore can continue to work with me, because as I am sure everyone in this room will agree, an apology will be enough to end this matter, yeah?”

The East London fighter in the manager was nowhere to be found. That was what Moore had counted on seeing, and it was exactly what she wasn’t getting. She had no option.

“Yeah,” she said sullenly. “I mean, yes.”

“Very well, then,” Kyle said. Bile rose in the back of his throat as he said his next words.

“I formally apologize to you,” he said.

Moore offered no apology in return. Kyle noted it. Eales noted it.

“Then that’s settled,” Eales said, motioning for them to leave. Kyle allowed Moore to precede him out of the room.

As the woman turned left to her office and Kyle turned right to head to his office, the manager had one thought.

“There’s no way in hell this is ‘settled’.”

# # #

[jdoyle9293]

Got the one up on Miss Moore, that's a start. Very much liked the latest update 10-3, the timing is always perfect as to when to stray from matters on the pitch.

[GylfiAsCharged]

Loved the Rob Ridgway story and this one is shaping up well too! Keep it up 10-3.

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks very much! I'm slowly working on more Ridgway as time permits but for now this is getting the majority of my attention.

___

Kyle was looking for loan players. And he let no one know his plans.

Despite a senior arrangement with Manchester United, Kyle’s new friends to the northwest had no intention of letting any of their u-18s or u-21s head to the Kassam. That was annoying.

Failing to make a deal with United, Kyle turned to their hated rivals from across the Pennines, Leeds. There he found Scott Woolton, a fine player who was on the fringes of the Whites’ first team but who would look great in Oxford yellow.

He played holding midfielder and defense and those were two areas Kyle wanted to see strengthened. His talent for the League Two level was undoubted and better yet, he was listed as available for loan.

But Leeds insisted on twenty percent of salary and that was too much for Eales. He told Kyle a ten percent contribution was all the club could afford, and Kyle did his best.

It wasn’t nearly good enough.

Neither was an offer for Bolton’s Filip Twardzik, who could do the same things as Woolton but without the salary contribution.

Twardzik straight-up wouldn’t come to Oxford. That settled that.

The next day, Fazackerley suggested that Kyle look at Izak Ssewankambo, a Swedish-born midfielder playing for Derby’s reserves.

“You’ll like the lad, I’ve seen him a couple of times. Great physical specimen, bags of pace and stamina, just needs some polish I’m sure we can give him.”

He could also play fullback, and that certainly helped. Derby required no contribution of salary, the player wanted first team experience – and this loan came through.

Kyle was pleased. He usually played his team in 4-1-3-2 but wanted an option to switch to 4-2-3-1 to kill off matches or to give a quality opponent a different look. Ssewankambo would allow Oxford to do exactly those things.

His problem was that he didn’t have enough players he could trust to play two holding midfielders and hold a decent backline in the process. This was an important step.

He notified Moore in due course about the team’s new signing so she could prepare the appropriate publicity – along with a note that the Swede’s last name did in fact begin with two “Ss” – because he figured she would double check and he really didn’t want to talk with her unless it was absolutely necessary.

As such, the season-long loan was made just before the match against Southend and with the player in transit to Oxford, the Us prepared to try to extend their run.

# # #

[Cheesey1975]

loving the updates

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks very much! Happy to provide.

___

17 January 2015 – Oxford United (9-6-10, 13^th place) v Southend United (4-11-10, 22^nd place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #26 – The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Referee: Mike Russell

Oxford United had won seven league matches and drawn one in Kyle’s time with the club, and that was starting to draw more fans to the Kassam.

Home attendance and ticket sales were up nearly twenty percent from just two months before. That had an obvious direct effect on the bottom line, and had bolstered Kyle’s position with the chairman on more than one front.

Most importantly, it helped his job security. Secondly, it helped him against Moore – and that was a fight always close to the top of Kyle’s mind.

He had capitulated and he hated himself for it. After pronouncing that Moore was going to have to work on Kyle’s terms, he had been forced to compromise in front of the chairman and that galled him, getting not the apology in return that he craved but rather merely a promise to keep her eyes on her own bobber.

He thought football managers were supposed to have authority over staff. That notion had been shot down most cruelly. But in the process, he had learned two things:

First, he couldn’t trust Moore. That was a given.

Second, he didn’t feel he could trust his chairman. The second admission hurt a lot more than the first.

Eales was worried about his business. That was all well and good. Kyle was worried about his job, which was why he had given in.

Moore, for her part, seemed worried only about Diana Moore.

But Kyle had more important things to worry about, such as getting three points over Southend to keep the run going.

The XI was what you might have expected. Bevans was restored to right full back, and Hoskins fronted Hylton up front – what Kyle thought was really the Us best pairing.

He also wanted to avoid any kind of slipup such as that which had befallen the team at its last home match. Cheltenham was still on his mind.

“This is another club you should be able to beat if you play to your capabilities. If you look up at the top of the table, you’ll see there are a lot fewer clubs in your way than there were a couple of months ago. But if you don’t see this job through to its end, you’ll kick yourselves. There is still plenty to play for, gentlemen. It starts today and it starts with three points against this lot you’re playing. Get the job done.”

So it was a bit of a surprise for Kyle to see David Worrell, Kevan Hurst and Shaquile Coulthirst lined up right across the front – Southend were playing three up front away from home.

Colin Lee was going for broke, and in his team’s position, Kyle couldn’t really blame him.

The first half was boring. There really was no other way to put it. Southend’s three-headed monster proved to be toothless. Even though the clubs split the possession right down the middle, Southend’s penetration ended right at the top of Oxford’s defensive third and that was just how it went.

On the other end, Oxford could generate chances but not a way to solve Daniel Bentley in the visitors’ goal. The entire first half was played in a stutter-step fashion – like two race cars trying to drag each other but with clogged injectors.

The best chance of the half came when Dunkley headed over from a Maddison corner in thirty-six minutes. That said, Kyle wasn’t upset with his players at half. Far from it.

“You’re playing another team that is counting on beating you to save their season,” he said. “I see effort out there and when the application comes from you, the points will come. Stay the course, work hard and put these guys away.”

He sent them out unchanged for the second half and Southend stuck to its three-striker alignment. In search of a winner that looked about as likely as lightning hitting the roof of the home dugout, Lee’s team battled on bravely.

They did get the first corner of the half, though, but little else.

As it began to rain, and Kyle turned up the collar of his coat against the cold, Oxford earned a throw halfway down the right flank in the Southend half. MacDonald quickly tossed it to Meades, who found Maddison at the edge of the area.

As he so often did, the on-loan Sky Blue found the open man – Hylton, on a diagonal run away from goal to the left of the Southend goal. In this case it wasn’t the first pass Maddison was interested in, but rather the second – as the defense sagged to cover Hylton, he crossed to the unmarked Hoskins, who finally broke down Southend in 56 minutes.

While Southend recovered from that hammer blow, Kyle’s men found their feet and started to press hard.

Moments later, MacDonald and Maddison were combining again, with the central midfielder throwing the ball to the right winger. His ball into the box found Hylton near the byline, in too deep to shoot and covered by a defender.

So, he did the right thing, recycling possession by putting the ball back out to MacDonald near the corner. The Scotsman whipped the ball right back across the six, and Hoskins was there to punish Southend for their momentary lapse in 67 minutes.

The visitors were coming undone in a most pleasing way. Hoskins looked like he had found his shooting boots again and the second half had been a damnsight more pleasing to look at than the first.

Having hung with League Two’s in-form team for a half plus ten minutes, Southend now came completely unglued. Their attack, such as it was, was even less potent than it had been in the first half. They had had one opportunity on goal in the first 45 minutes, and as the second half wore on, they had even less than that.

However, Wright couldn’t let the sleeping dog lie, the skipper winding up in referee Mike Russell’s book ten minutes from time for a rather ridiculous challenge on Barry Corr. He gave a sheepish, and penitent, smile toward Kyle as Russell finished his job, and returned to play chastened.

There was no sense in waking up Southend, but the visitors had long since given up the ghost, which must have caused great consternation on their bench.

But everyone in Oxford blue and yellow was cheering a few moments later when Corr took out his frustration with a retaliatory foul against Danny Rose, who had just come on as a substitute for Mullins.

Unfortunately for Southend, he did it right in front of Russell, and doubly so, he did it in the middle of the penalty area.

Now it was Hoskins grabbing the ball to finish his hat trick from the spot, a feat he accomplished with little difficulty and great fervor and zeal after the ball flashed home.

Then, six minutes later, Hoskins grabbed the ball again – the hat trick match ball soon to be a trophy in his case.

Oxford United: Ashdown: Bevans, Dunkley (Whing 76), Wright (captain), Skarz, Mullins (Rose 85), MacDonald, Maddison, O’Dowda, Hylton (Hoban 76), Hoskins. Unused subs: Clarke, Meades, Ashby, Godden.

Oxford United 3 (Hoskins 56, 67, pen 86)

Southend United 0

H/T: 0-0

A – 5,046, The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Man of the Match: Will Hoskins, Oxford (MR 9.5)

# # #

[Cheesey1975]

any more on what the plan for the wife is

[tenthreeleader]

If I told you that, there would be no sense in reading, would there?

___

Kyle was pleased that a larger crowd than usual could go home happy after his side’s exploits and it went without saying that Hoskins was over the moon at his performance.

The manager did nothing whatsoever to alter that perception, and Victoria Young’s questioning was unrelentingly positive this time.

“Would you have thought when you were hired that victory today would put Oxford United within eight points of the playoffs?” she asked.

“I could have hoped, but honestly, this run is the stuff of dreams. Everyone in the team has done a great job buying into what we are trying to do. They are playing for each other, sacrificing for each other, and that’s wonderful to see. The fans deserve a team that plays this well and right now I’d put us up against anyone in the league.”

“How much of a surprise was it to see an opponent playing three strikers away from home?”

“Colin had his reasons, obviously,” Kyle said. “One of those reasons is that his team has had trouble finding the net for whatever reason so he thought it was necessary. Beyond that, I’m not going to comment on the other manager’s team or setup.”

They all went home happy, especially Jenna, who was delighted at her father’s success – and with a glow her father had never seen before.

He was curious. But he decided not to push the issue, and as the team got its “victory day” off the next day, Kyle took his daughter to the movies for a simple day away.

While she looked happy and excited, Kyle couldn’t help slipping back into his brooding old self. He wanted to know who the guy was in the library, but he didn’t feel up to calling Stacy. He also felt selfish for thinking of himself when Jenna was obviously in good spirits.

“I probably deserved that,” he said to himself for what seemed like the millionth time since he had seen them together.

For her part, Jenna was close-mouthed about the reason she seemed to be smiling so much.

Finally, Kyle figured it out.

“Did you meet someone?” he asked, in the middle of dinner.

It was sort of blurted out, an expression of surprise, a question of curiosity, all in the same breath.

“Don’t look so surprised, Dad,” she answered, looking patiently at her father. “Yeah, I did.”

“Okay, out with it,” he said, turning a forkful of lasagna over to eat with the tines turned downward.

“What if I don’t want to?” his daughter asked playfully, giving him the hint of a smile that indicated she was teasing him. Usually, Kyle was a dangerous man to goad, but Jenna knew she could get away with whatever she wanted so long as she didn’t hurt his feelings.

“Sooner or later, I’ll drag it out of you,” Kyle responded, looking down at his plate.

“Dad, I’m sixteen, I’m old enough to decide who I want to be around.”

“Within reason,” he answered, taking a sip of ale. “Within reason.”

If he thought repeating himself would make his daughter open up, Kyle was soon disillusioned. She wasn’t spilling the beans, which meant that the two most important women in his life had mystery men.

But even those concerns took a back seat to what happened in training the next day.

Skarz went down with a hip injury and all of a sudden the situation wasn’t nearly as rosy as it had been the previous Saturday.

Skarz was an ever-present, the man who locked down the left flank and was the team’s most consistent performer. The news from the physios was dire: a minimum of four months on the sideline and perhaps longer.

It was nearly season-ending stuff and Kyle well knew it. He tried not to feel snakebit.

“Damn it all,” he thought to himself. “Finally, some success and now this happens.”

The scouts were called into emergency session to try to figure out a loan option – obviously, there was no money to buy a player, and certainly not one a player of Skarz’s caliber – and so, the phones began to ring at larger clubs.

First up was Bolton, who had defender Filip Twardzik sitting around their reserves doing nothing.

The Czech Republic u-21 with the Justin Bieber hair-do could play any position on the left and even play a little central midfield. Having made just five appearances for the Trotters, he was available and Bolton even agreed to keep paying him – a minor miracle in Phil Gartside’s cash-strapped world.

Only the player said no.

That wasn’t surprising, Kyle thought. Just his bloody luck.

Next up was a call to Malky Mackay at Wigan, who had his Latics in third place in the Championship and threatening to regain the Premier League.

He had Brazilian defender Moreno sitting in his reserves – 31 years old, not seeing time for the first team and quite happily affordable as well. Kyle had no problem getting Mackay to agree to loan the player.

And again, the player said no.

All that said, Kyle still had to field a team with a left full back. That meant a meeting with his new best friend, Meades, who was told in essence that this was his big chance.

Meades knew it. At that moment, he was the only healthy left back on the club’s books. It was either him or play with a three-man backline, so Kyle’s motivational speech was hardly necessary.

It seemed to be the same old bad luck. At first it was not having enough bodies available to have a decent backup option in the strike force. Then it was a key player suffering an injury that would not only harm his season, but potentially his career due to the chronic nature of hip problems.

As long as no one touches my midfield, Kyle thought as he looked through a list containing the next wave of potential loan players.

Touch wood.

# # #

[Cheesey1975]

loving the latest update

[tenthreeleader]

Management below the Premiership level isn’t a lot of fun if you like the idea of people actually wanting to come to your team.

Kyle sat, alone, at a table at the Folly Bridge Inn on Abingdon Road in south Oxford, trying to figure out his next course of action.

His top two loan choices just weren’t interested, though he repeated his offer to Wigan for Moreno offering the player a chance to be a key player instead of merely a first-team performer, but he didn’t hold out much hope. The Latics had accepted immediately, but the player, Kyle thought, wasn’t likely to be shifted by a simple change in semantics.

He sat drinking a Wadworth ale – Swordfish was his favorite – and went over a list given him by the scouts after training. Fazackerley had added his comments and Kyle had some decisions to make.

There were other players out there, as the list showed, but Kyle had his heart set on the Brazilian. He could do more things, and do them better, than anyone else out there.

Skarz was going to be very difficult to replace. The boy had shown up at training that morning on crutches and looking disconsolate, and it was all Kyle could do not to send him home.

But the player’s morale was such that he needed to be with his mates. Kyle’s job was to make sure Skarz’s gloom didn’t spread to the other players.

This was what a manager does. Kyle knew that. It was what he signed on to do. Yet, the decisions were now his, with the immediate future of a club playing brilliantly hanging in the balance.

Find the wrong man – damage that chemistry. Find the right man – keep succeeding but risk alienating the players already there, especially Meades.

Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t, but he had to do something.

He looked down to cross a name off his list. He looked up to see Victoria Young standing at the corner of his table, with another woman in tow.

“Hello, Kyle, what brings you out here?” she asked.

“Just trying to get some thinking done,” he responded, trying not to sound cross. “Sometimes I do my best thinking with a pint.”

“Don’t we all,” the reporter answered. She wasn’t carrying a notebook and didn’t appear to be recording anything – she was just out for a fun night on the town at a place regarded as among the city’s best pubs.

“That’s what I’d like,” he repeated, hinting he wanted to be left alone. The reporter didn’t sense that feeling.

“Pity about Skarz,” she said. She had seen the incident at training and as such had a story that couldn’t be missed.

“Yes,” Kyle answered, knowing full well that he could be held on the record. “We’ll need to hang in there without him.”

“I don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see what you’re probably doing, but don’t worry, I’m not writing,” Vic replied, taking a pull from her own glass of ale. “I really came over here to introduce you to a friend of mine who wanted to meet you.”

At that Kyle tried, and failed, to mask a look of surprise.

Vic motioned to her left.

“Kyle, this is my friend Allison Austin,” Young said. “Allison, meet Kyle Cain.”

The young lady extended her hand and Kyle shook it. Wherever reporters found their friends was a place Kyle would have loved to have visited in his younger days.

She was, in a word, stunning. Five-foot-six, with a head of long, curly blonde hair that spilled nearly to the middle of her back, with deep, electric blue eyes, high cheekbones, and an ever-so-slightly turned-up nose, Kyle supposed Miss Austin might turn heads wherever she went.

And that was just from the neck up. Kyle didn’t dare look any lower.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” Kyle responded. “I hope you’re enjoying your evening.”

“It’s not bad,” the blonde woman answered. “Kind of slow in here tonight but that’s how it goes sometimes. I just wanted to meet you and thank you for getting the team playing so well. I’m a lifelong fan.”

Kyle nodded and smiled – they all were, when they wanted to meet someone, in his experience – and he inquired as to where she usually sat.

“In the Mail stand, where else would I sit?” She looked at him with a wide, almost teasing smile. “I told you, I’m lifelong.”

With that, Kyle had to laugh. Of course she was.

# # #

[mark wilson27]

I know I don't comment much on your work which really is a disgraceful on my part. However your work not just on this story is brilliant and will be continuing to read

[dan_simmonds]

Trying to sign Twardzik twice? Not like you 10-3. Glad to see you're still here!

[edtheguy]

Such a good story, easy and engaging to read as always!

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks very much, gentlemen! Glad to have a bit of reserve built up again so more regular posting can happen.

Dan, yes, I made two loan requests for Filip Twardzik. He would have fit great and the second time I put in a better squad designation to entice the player.

Mark and ed, thank you for your kindness. Nice to still see comments after all this time writing

___

To make matters even more mortifying, Kyle got a request from Diana Moore to find out his plans for replacing Skarz.

“Team issue,” he responded to her e-mail. “Not for public discussion.” He copied the chairman on his message, so he could see she was already violating the terms of their compromise.

Like it was any of her bloody business. She had gotten her pound of flesh out of the manager, but Diana didn’t seem to know when to back off.

That seemed odd to him. Kyle knew, and he assumed Moore had to know, that she needed none of the information she was seeking. Commercial departments aren’t generally appraised of loan players. Or much else having to do with team selection, for that matter.

However, for the club’s Twitter feed, she did need information about the team on game day. And it was in that vein that he decided to test the younger woman’s loyalty to Oxford United.

In response to the inevitable e-mail request for the XI the day before the match, Kyle returned the note with the following information:

Ms. Moore:

Here is the planned XI for tomorrow.

Regards,

Kyle Cain

Ashdown, Bevans, Dunkley, Wright, Meades, Mullins, MacDonald, Maddison, O’Dowda, Hoban, Hoskins.

With that, he returned to his list of potential loanees, called Fazackerley to get his thoughts on a couple of potential players, and went to bed.

Sure enough, on the morning of the match, the club’s Twitter feed contained the XI printed in full.

“Hoban recalled to the eleven for Oxford,” the account read. “Get behind the team today for the match with the Grecians!”

Only, it wasn’t the actual XI he planned.

It finished an important opinion in his mind. He would have to tell the Irishman that he wasn’t actually in the starting team for the match, and he would apologize for that, but he had to know that the staff supporting the club was actually supporting the club.

It didn’t appear that Diana Moore was really doing that, if she was willing to publish what she thought was the team before the team sheet was turned in to the officials.

“We need to have a discussion about Diana,” Kyle e-mailed his chairman as he prepared to leave for the ground. “And this time it needs to be a serious one. She is taking a dispute and using it to hurt the team. I will explain after the match if you will meet me for a drink in the Christchurch Suite.”

Eales responded in the affirmative, and Kyle prepared to leave for the ground hoping for victory on more than one front.

It wasn’t nice. He hadn’t started the argument. But finally, he was determined to finish it.

Diana Moore would learn not to mess with Kyle Cain. In this case, when she messed with Oxford United’s bull, she would get the horns.

# # #

[displaced_seagull]

This, Sir, is a superb piece of work. Really enjoying it

[jdoyle9293]

Sneaky, sneaky Kyle - fantastic work here, 10-3. I wouldn't expect anything less from you.

[Maviarab.]

Excellent so far 10-3, really enjoying this one

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks, gentlemen ... it's a lot of fun to write and the results have been pretty good so far

___

24 January 2015 – Oxford United (10-6-10, 12^th place) v Exeter City (7-5-14, 21^st place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #27 – The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Referee: Lee Mason

The climb had been both dramatic and steady. But as the teams prepared to play on a cold, windy and rainy day at the Kassam, Kyle noted that continuing the team’s run would be a simple test of wills.

The Grecians were sliding down the table in to the area Oxford had occupied before Kyle’s arrival. The possibility of cracking the top ten in the league was not out of the question if results went right and he really didn’t have to tell the squad that.

They all knew it.

He arrived at the stadium in a good mood. He had already told the strikers of his change to the ‘published’ eleven on Twitter and thankfully, everyone understood.

For whatever reason, Hoban wasn’t terribly popular with the fans, even though he was joint top scorer at the club with Hylton, with both men on nine goals.

Besides, Kyle liked Hoban better off the bench in any event, and as such the Irishman wasn’t too bent out of shape when he heard he was not in the starting XI.

The team talk was all about continuing momentum and as the squad took the pitch, Kyle settled in for a good old-fashioned fistfight in the midfield.

But before he did, he bumped into Moore near the club offices.

“That wasn’t nice, what you did,” he said simply. “Please don’t publish my team selection before noon on a match day again.”

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize that would cause concern.”

Kyle looked at her and laughed. She really didn’t know what to make of that.

The real eleven had Hylton supporting Hoskins, which shouldn’t really have been much of a surprise. In fact, Kyle took a roasting on the team’s feed for supposedly omitting him from the team after scoring a hat trick in the prior match.

He’d have to have been daft to do such a thing. And though there was no shortage of people around League Two who thought it might have been a good description for Kyle, nobody was willing to seriously believe he’d go that far.

It took less than ten minutes to start the fur flying, as Exeter midfielder Alex Nicholls had to come off injured after a 50-50 challenge wit hMeades that had Kyle holding his breath. The team’s only capable left-back needed to be more careful than that, and as the Grecian came off, Kyle had a quiet word with Meades.

“You do know that if something happens to you the team is in a world of hurt,” Kyle said quietly. “Be careful with yourself, yeah?”

Meades toned it down after that, but a few moments later MacDonald was off on a searing run up the middle. His ball for Maddison got knocked straight back to him off a defender, so the Scot simply turned to his left and led O’Dowda beautifully down the flank.

The youngster got the ball to nearly the byline before pulling back into the box, where Hoskins met the ball flush on the instep of his right boot, volleying forcefully home past James Hamon in the Exeter goal.

The crowd – a bit bigger this time as well – was up and out of its seats in short order and that was just what the doctor ordered. For one thing, it kept everybody warm.

A cold, wet rain had started to fall just after kickoff and it felt like the chill cut right through down jackets, scarves or whatever else people used to try to stay warm.

At that point, both teams looked to switch off for a time. The players wore long sleeves and some even had light gloves on, so as Exeter tried to find a way back into the match, they were also trying to keep warm.

It was ugly stuff after Hoskins’ goal. Exeter didn’t manage a single shot on target in the entire first half and Oxford had only two – the goal and a drive from well outside the area by MacDonald that Hamon collected with ease, if not comfort.

Still, when referee Lee Mason blew for halftime, Kyle was satisfied.

“They’re so cold their pilot lights have gone out,” he said. “You did that to them by getting an early goal. Play the kind of defense you can play and you’ll take the life right out of these guys. I don’t want to see Mr. Ashdown have to make a save today. See if you can do that.”

With that, Kyle retreated into the home manager’s office for a cup of hot coffee. He didn’t want his team to see he was just as frozen as they were. But he really needed a pick-me-up and that was the best way.

“A touch of whisky in this wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world,” he laughed to himself as he finished the cup and prepared to head back into the elements with the players.

He would have preferred to see a bit more high pressure from his team – his half-serious imitation of Barcelona in that regard – but Exeter hadn’t really gotten near the Us goal and that was the end objective.

As the second half began, Oxford picked up where they had left off in the defensive side of the game. This was a great day not to have to chase the game and Ashdown simply pointed where he wanted his defenders to go. The Grecians couldn’t get going and that was just fine with Kyle.

They were a bit brighter, mind you, but nothing was getting on target. Captain Scot Bennett blazed over from twenty yards ten minutes after the restart but that was their best change in the opening fifteen minutes of the session.

For his part, Kyle knew that the team’s usual pressure and passing alignment wasn’t optimal for the conditions and as the match ticked over seventy minutes, he figured his team had done all they were going to do with their 4-1-3-2 alignment.

He called Whing and Sswenkambo to him, giving the loan player his debut and issuing instructions to his veteran defender.

“You’re in for Dunkley,” he told Whing, “but I want 4-2-3-1.”

He turned to Ssewankambo.

“Slot in beside Mullins, support the defenders and look for the outlet ball to the wings,” Kyle instructed. “You saw this in training. Show me what you can do but remember, think defense first.”

The double swap was made, with the ineffective Hylton sacrificed to make way for Ssewankambo, and the match went on.

It was hardly better, but Kyle was watching his team’s shape. They had used the formation a few times late on in matches and were only now getting more training time with the alignment. It was time to see how much the players had learned with a one-goal lead to protect.

Ryan Harley had an effort from distance in eighty minutes but Ashdown simply waved it wide. The holding midfielders were able to close down the supply through the middle and on a cold, wet day, direct play was always going to be the order of the day.

Exeter responded with Ssewankambo following instructions and feeding O’Dowda out wide on the left to give the Irishman time to lead a counterattack, with the resulting shot forcing Hamon into action once again.

But then the injury bug hit again, as both Bevans and Mullins went down in the last ten minutes of the match. Mullins came off for Rose but Bevans soldiered on, and that was big of the young man.

Mason blew the whistle so everyone could go get warm and dry, but the Us were once again in injury trouble. When it rains, it pours.

Oxford United: Ashdown: Bevans, Dunkley (Whing 72), Wright (captain), Meades, Mullins (Rose 88), MacDonald, Maddison, O’Dowda, Hylton (Sswenkambo 72), Hoskins. Unused subs: Clarke, Ashby, Hoban, Godden.

Oxford United 1 (Hoskins 13)

Exeter City 0

H/T: 1-0

A – 5,130, Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Man of the Match – Will Hoskins, Oxford (MR 8.3)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

“I’ll take a brandy, please,” Kyle said with a smile.

The waitress in the Christchurch Suite did as the manager asked, and soon he was cradling a snifter filled slightly higher than usual so he could warm up. The liquid burned its way down his throat and Kyle took a deep breath to let the effect of the alcohol settle in.

Eales approached, hand extended.

“Pending other results, we are now top ten,” he said, with a wide smile. “This is great stuff we’re seeing from the club.”

“Same as before,” Kyle said. “The players are doing what they are told, finding confidence and taking their chances. I’m very pleased.”

“So are the board,” Eales responded. His glasses bore a few telltale signs of where he had been – dried water drops had left small circles at the corners of the chairman’s spectacles. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket to fix the minor mar to his appearance, and finally looked at Kyle with new eyes.

“So, what do you need to tell me that’s so secret you can’t e-mail?”

“I gave her a team sheet at her request and she put it on social media – at seven o’clock this morning.”

Eales knew immediately what that meant. Even though one of the first rules of the internet was not to believe everything you read there, that was basic stuff. Anyone could read it. That was far too early for someone to be publishing a starting XI.

“Was it the right eleven?” the chairman asked.

Kyle took a second sip of his brandy.

“No, sir, it was not,” he said. “I wanted to see if she would go public with confidential information. It seems, sadly, that the answer was yes.”

“Maybe she didn’t know any better,” Eales said.

“That’s what she claimed,” Kyle said. “I’m not accusing her of sabotage. I am accusing her of stupidity.”

“I’ll speak with her,” Eales said. “Are you getting along better with her?”

“I’m not speaking with her unless I have to,” Kyle said. “I don’t think there is a way back in that sense. She made her bed, now she needs to lay in it.”

“Why are you holding such a grudge, Kyle?” Eales asked. “Seriously. You both have jobs, you aren’t unemployed any more, why hold this over her head?”

“She made it personal,” Kyle shrugged, taking another sip of his drink. As he did, Jenna entered the suite, her all-access pass hanging around her neck.

Daughter hugged father, and Kyle continued to speak.

“She was out of bounds in reference to my personal life,” he added. “I suspect you might feel differently if she was talking about your family.”

Eales, unlike on the occasion of their last meeting, seemed more willing to listen to reason.

“Frankly, I am glad you decided not to make a complaint,” he said. “That could have been very messy and it would have made the papers.”

As important as what Eales had said was what he hadn’t said – in reference to Moore’s doing the same thing.

“I’m not out to hurt the club,” Kyle said, meaning it sincerely. “I am out to get a certain individual off my back. That’s important to me. She hurt me, badly as it turned out. I can’t control how she behaves, but I can do my best to see that she never repeats that hurt in my presence.”

He hugged Jenna with one arm while holding his snifter with the opposite hand.

“Jenna is all I have at the moment, Mr. Eales,” Kyle said. “I do not need that woman reminding me about my past, and it’s as simple as that. Especially not on company time.”

The fact that he could no longer refer to Moore by her name – instead referring to her as simply that woman – was not lost on the chairman.

“I see she hurt you more deeply than I had previously thought,” he said. “But I’m not going to terminate her. I trust you understand that.”

Inside, Kyle’s heart fell. Deep down, in the depths of his revenge-minded soul, he wouldn’t have minded seeing that. But the reaction wasn’t appropriate, so he didn’t make it. A more pragmatic Kyle Cain answered now.

“I understand,” he said, taking another sip from the glass. “Nobody wants to see someone else get their P45. I know how that feels.”

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

The Sunday after the Exeter match, Kyle spent his day on the internet looking for information. And for a change, it wasn’t about football.

He wanted to try to track down where Stacy was staying. He didn’t expect to find anything – and he didn’t – but he felt better for having made the effort.

That guy in the library, whoever he was, had really frosted Kyle’s cookies.

And speaking of frosted cookies, there was more. Bevans’ injury wasn’t one he could just walk off – it was a thigh strain and it would put him out at least three weeks.

After having survived the wave of injuries to the strike force early in his tenure, another string was the last thing he wanted. The club was playing brilliantly and fresh legs were more important than running players ragged.

He wanted tactical training, though, so of late the sessions had been more about positioning, especially when not in possession, and learning the ‘second’ tactic, the 4-2-3-1.

He also noted, while on the internet, that his old club was looking for a new boss.

Leyton Orient had dismissed Fabio Liverani, with the club sitting 17^th in League One. Brisbane Road had become a pretty grim place of late, with just one win in eleven including a setback in the FA Cup First Round against Preston.

Yet as he read the Mail and Vic’s comments about the team’s latest triumph, he derived one particular measure of satisfaction.

When he arrived two months before, Oxford United had two wins and was in 22^nd place. After other results knocked the club down one place on that Sunday, the club had still gained eleven places in the table since his arrival – and now had more wins (11) than losses (10).

That was frankly amazing. The purple patch was among the best in the history of the club and when he went out on the town with Jenna now, he was given a respectful amount of space.

Gone was the loudmouth who had badmouthed both he and Ashdown earlier in the season – and now with the goalkeeper starting to come right after a slow start, that problem was starting to sort itself out as well.

In short, Kyle Cain could hardly ask for better. He couldn’t remember the last time he had thought that about himself, and it made him feel good.

If only he could find his wife. That would make things better still.

He was trying to decide whether he still loved her. The thought he had when he saw that guy handling her in public was one of anger, so that told him something.

He took Jenna out for dinner on that Sunday night, since it was fun to go out when the team was doing so well. He decided to talk with his daughter about her mother while they went back to the Spice Lounge for another crack at some of that great Indian food.

“Do you ever text your mother?” Kyle asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Do you know where she lives?” That was a horrible question to have to ask and he knew it.

Jenna couldn’t look her father in the eye, which was rare for her. She didn’t answer the question at first.

“I’m guessing that means you do,” Kyle added, not sure where to turn next for an answer.

“She did tell me, but she also made me promise not to tell you,” she said. “She wanted me to know she was all right. She didn’t think you’d really care.”

That hurt, but as recently as ten days before, it would also probably have been accurate for her to say.

“So she made you choose between us.”

Jenna didn’t look happy.

“Yes.”

“And you chose her.”

Now she looked even more unhappy.

“Yes, to try and keep peace,” she said. “You two have really put me in a horrible position.”

“I’m sorry for what I did,” Kyle said. “You know that. What I want to know is what your mother is doing.”

“I know, Dad,” she said. “But she did make me promise and I want to keep it.”

“Even though it hurts me?” Kyle genuinely could not understand his daughter’s motivation.

She looked at him sadly, and immediately he wished he hadn’t asked the question.

“Dad, you know I love you but you have to admit, when someone wrongs you, all you think about is revenge,” she began. “I don’t want you chasing after Mum like that. Really, I don’t. It isn’t good for you and I think it’s just going to hurt you more.”

Kyle thought Jenna’s words through. His anger at Diana Moore had only served to get him into trouble, and that woman had started everything. Now he wanted to track down someone in Stacy’s life, and God only knew where that might lead.

Yet, there was a difference. He could have risen above Diana’s slights. He had a right to be upset over Stacy. They were still married, after all.

At least, in name.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Moreno once again turned down a loan offer, even with the assurance of a key place in the squad. That didn’t surprise Kyle, but as the transfer deadline approached, he wasn’t through trying.

At the rate players were getting injured, he had to try.

Dionatan Teixiera, a defender and midfielder for Stoke City, was on the short list and Kyle put in a season-long loan bid that was immediately accepted by the Potters.

He decided to double down on his luck – hoping it would be twice good instead of twice bad – by offering for Danny Potts of West Ham, who played left back as well as the holding position. He would finally have enough defenders if both moves went through, and that was wonderful.

Sadly, the injuries continued to mount. Youth striker James Roberts wound up in the hospital with ankle damage in a match against Liverpool u-18s – but he was taken out on a hard slide by no less a luminary than Rickie Lambert, one of three senior Reds players Kyle’s younglings got to face in a 5-1 setback. Lambert had made only three appearances for Brendan Rodgers all season, but what he was doing in the u-18s was anyone’s guess.

It was certainly Lambert’s guess too, as by all accounts the player ran around with reckless abandon and tried to take on the whole defense by himself. He didn’t score, but enough of his mates did to make the event a learning experience and a mild embarrassment at the same time.

Kyle went over the video with his youngsters, and that meant a lot to get the senior manager’s time to show the players where they could improve. There was plenty to look at.

Then, it was just a matter of waiting for the loan players to make up their minds. The deadline was pushed to the 2^nd February this year but all that meant was a couple of extra days to sit and worry.

The night before the next match, away to Stevenage, Kyle went out to dinner before rising early the next morning to take the team coach to Broadhall Way. Jenna had started to make some friends in town and was away with them on the Thursday evening – with strict instructions to be back by ten.

He wanted to think. Mostly, though, he was just worried.

Moreno had gotten to him. He had done everything he could to bring the player and he just wouldn’t make the move. It would have been easy to simply say “that’s football”, but what angered Kyle was that he felt he had failed again.

Some things you just can’t control, he reminded himself as he ate. But being alone when he had these thoughts seemed to suit him.

He lost himself in thought instead of his linguini and that seemed just fine to him. He looked up to see a woman standing over his table.

“Mind if I join you?”

Allison Austin was back. Like a bad check, she seemed to keep coming back.

“What if I said yes?” Kyle asked.

“I’d just keep asking,” she replied.

“I’m a married man,” Kyle answered, looking her straight in the eyes.

“There’s no law says a woman can’t sit with a man if he’s married,” she answered. “Besides, I know that feeling.” She flashed her left hand at him, which showed imprints from a ring that had more than likely been worn for a long time.

“Just final,” she said. “He slept around on me. I’ve no wish to do that to another relationship.”

Kyle nodded. That was something he could understand.

“All right, then,” he said, motioning to her to sit across the table from him.

Maybe being alone wasn’t the best idea after all. And Kyle needed a friend.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

31 January 2015 – Stevenage (12-6-9 , 9^th place) v Oxford United (11-6-10, 11^th place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #28 – Broadhall Way, Stevenage

Referee: Mark Heywood

With Broadhall Way (or the Lamex Stadium for the more corporately-minded) just over an hour away, no overnight stay was necessary so Kyle boarded the team onto the coach at 8 am for the trip that was 70 miles on the M40 and M25 but was only fifty airline miles away.

Ssewankambo was going to get his first start in the shirt and the player took the news as well as you might have expected, sitting quietly in his coach seat on the way to the ground. Hoban and Hoskins would get the start up front for the Us and Kyle felt good about his team’s chances.

But then he was always thinking that way on match day, even if his inner demons didn’t always let him enjoy the success his players were having.

This was quite a clash. The Boro were two places above Oxford in the table and victory would really help assert the team’s claim on the fringes of the playoff race.

And, Kyle had to admit, that thought was a lot of fun.

The team still hadn’t been defeated in League Two in Kyle’s tenure, and only the blemish in the FA Cup stood between him and an unbeaten record in eleven matches in charge.

They had been much better defensively as well, keeping consecutive clean sheets for the first time all season. Ashdown was getting better each time he played and the only thing Kyle felt could derail his team now was injuries. Touch wood.

He listened to his music on the coach – today’s selection was some Wagner to give him a sense of dramatic purpose – and tried to close his eyes.

The Entry of the Guests, however, would not allow such things, and Kyle allowed his mind to race as the miles chugged underneath the coach tires. He thought back to his playing days and some of the better goals he had scored for Orient, and that was a pleasant thought.

He allowed himself to daydream, and remembered a particular effort against Millwall in a Cup match where he had weaved around and through half the defense before placing a shot over the despairing dive of the keeper and running off to the corner flag like a crazy man.

When he got there that day, Charlotte had been waiting for him, and this time he went to her as part of greeting the fans, as he liked to do when scoring in front of the Tommy Johnston Stand.

This time, though, as he arrived in the corner, it wasn’t Charlotte’s face he saw. It was Allison’s, and that brought him out of his trance with a start.

“Good Lord, Cain, don’t even go there,” he thought to himself. “Just … don’t.”

He had had enough trouble with women in his past – and his present, for that matter – and he didn’t need any more entanglements, especially with both of them married. It was just not on.

She had been pleasant enough, but to see her face in that situation was a real shock.

He tried to clear his mind of the thought as the team dressed for the match and as it began to rain – again – he put them onto the pitch to do battle with Stevenage.

Rain seemed to be hard-wired into Southeast England these days, and the thought of another frozen day wasn’t exactly appealing. It didn’t seem to appeal to the players either, and Kyle’s players made their feelings known in the wrong way.

Two players – MacDonald and Wright – found themselves in referee Mark Haywood’s book within the first seven minutes of the match. That was alarming.

Haywood had a reputation for strictness, but that seemed a bit much. MacDonald had had a habit of finding the referee’s book with far too much ease in recent matches, and Kyle wanted to note that since he was nearing a yellow cards suspension, and Wright was the captain who should have known better.

That said, it was pretty clear that whoever was first into the match would get a huge advantage. Thankfully for Oxford, it was Hoskins who made the first move.

It came thanks to Ssewankambo, who won a 50-50 ball from defender Kortney House just outside the Stevenage penalty area and, seeing no one open in front of him, recycled possession back to Mullins, who had ghosted in from his right full back position.

He lofted a ball into the middle of the penalty area onto the end of a wonderfully intelligent run from Hoskins, who volleyed powerfully home past Chris Day to get Oxford off to a flyer.

But after that flyer, the “plane” found itself grounded very quickly. After Hoskins’ seventh goal of the season, Kyle had called both MacDonald and Wright to him with instructions to stay in the match. He had a sick feeling about the way the cards were going and didn’t want to tempt fate.

Tom Pett took advantage of Oxford’s slightly relaxed defense by finding space in the penalty area but shooting over the bar in 24 minutes. The teams were playing in a more full-blooded way now and the home team was fouling freely – but without going into the book.

That puzzled Kyle a bit but his attention was diverted when Hoban shook free of the defense after a great ball from Maddison and was only denied from making it 2-0 by a great sliding tackle from defender Bira Dembélé, the Malian making the perfect challenge at the perfect moment, dispossessing Hoban at the last possible moment.

Hearts went to throats moments later as Bradley Fewster cranked a drive squarely off Ashdown’s right goal post, the ping audible all over the ground on the cold, wet day, with Whing pounding the ball into touch to relieve some of the pressure, only for the same player to force Ashdown into a save at feet just moments later in what was undoubtedly Stevenage’s best moments of the match to that point.

David McAllister was next, rattling Ashdown’s crossbar in 41 minutes with a great-looking drive from twenty yards that Kyle tried to will over the bar. Instead, it was just another metallurgy save for Ashdown and once again Oxford got their lines cleared.

Now Kyle was on the touchline, urging concentration until halftime, and when Heywood blew the whistle for halftime, he was surprisingly full of praise for his team.

“You got a goal and you survived the early cardings,” he told them. “More of the same in that way, please, but let’s watch for chances to counter them. When they get forward, they’re vulnerable at the back because they are looking for the overlap. Let’s hit them with numbers on the break and make them sorry.”

Maddison got an immediate chance after the restart but couldn’t find the range, and a moment later Charlie Lee wound up in the book for a late challenge on the Oxford teenager.

In 56 minutes, Fewster got another chance but was denied by the diving Ashdown, who put the rebound right back to the shooter. Fewster never got a second chance thanks to a strong and beautifully timed challenge from Ssewankambo.

Michael Richens got himself booked just before the hour for hacking down Hoskins and Wright missed a free header off the ensuing free kick to annoy Kyle as well as himself.

Josh Doherty went to ground under a hard challenge from the already-booked MacDonald in 64 minutes and as referee Haywood ticked off the winger and gave him the ever-popular “washout” signal to indicate he was on his last chance, Kyle hauled him off in favor of Hylton.

That proved to be a mistake. Playing in his first match of Kyle’s tenure at right midfield, he was off less than three minutes later – on a stretcher – under a hard challenge from Chris Whelpdale. He fell very hard on his right hip and immediately grabbed the joint and started rolling on the ground.

“You’re kidding,” Kyle fumed. “Not another one.”

The manager patted his joint leading scorer on the shoulder as he was carried off and brought Rose on, shifting to 4-2-3-1 and hoping nobody else would get hurt.

No such luck. Before long, Richens was at it again, felling Meades with a hard challenge and earning a richly deserved second yellow card in the process. With Stevenage down to ten, Meades wouldn’t come off because he wanted his team to keep a numerical advantage. Yet since he could hardly run, it wasn’t much of an advantage at all.

The whistle blew, the run continued, and Kyle’s mood was dark as he headed to the changing room. Two more injuries, and no end in sight.

Oxford United: Ashdown: Mullins, Whing, Wright (captain) (Dunkley 90), Meades, Ssewankambo, MacDonald (Hylton 64, inj, Rose 67), Maddison, O’Dowda, Hoban, Hoskins. Unused subs: Clarke, Long, Ashby, Godden.

Stevenage 0 (Michael Richens s/o 80)

Oxford United 1 (Hoskins 11)

H/T: 0-1

A – 2,607, Broadhall Way, Stevenage

Man of the Match: Johnny Mullins, Oxford (MR 7.9)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

“I’m not happy. At the moment I do not have a single healthy left back at the club. Would you be happy?”

The word from Andy Lord was dire. Meades would miss a month with an ankle that was mildly sprained and thankfully a low sprain rather than a high one. Hylton would need to see a specialist. That would put him out for at least two months.

That brought the injury list to five, and Kyle knew that without substantial help on the loan wire, further success would be problematic if not impossible.

Yet nobody wanted to come to Oxford.

“I keep crediting the players, but right now our team is being held together with duct tape and baling wire,” Kyle said. “I don’t know if I’ve seen an injury stretch quite this bad before.”

“You did win today, didn’t you?” Vic asked.

“I think we did,” Kyle replied. “But we’re going to need a special effort over the next few weeks to keep this going, and we’re going to need help on the loan wires. Right now we don’t have any margin for error and we don’t have a healthy left full back.”

“Might we see a change in alignment?” she followed. It was the natural question.

“I won’t say anything about that now,” Kyle snapped. “Right now I’m down two more players thanks to two hard challenges from a team that committed twenty fouls in ninety minutes against us. We’re banged up, we’re beat up and we have to get healthy. Then I worry about tactics.”

“Have you worked with a three-man backline?”

“No comment.”

Kyle really didn’t like Vic’s line of questioning, even though he knew she had to ask the questions she was asking.

He wasn’t about to divulge his plans – but the fact of the matter was that even he didn’t know what those plans might be. That was bad.

His plans were dependent on the actions of others, and that made it worse.

The next day, Texiera turned down a loan move, and Kyle wasn’t surprised. That would have been good for his team, so naturally it wasn’t going to happen.

He wondered when United would come through with a loan player. As a senior club, weren’t they supposed to loan players? Every approach he had made to Carrington had been shot down and he was wondering whether the arrangement had any real value other than financial.

But as the deadline day dawned, there was finally some good news.

Danny Potts agreed to come to Oxford for the remainder of the season, and that was a great start. It also gave Kyle a left back again.

Potts had played for Portsmouth earlier in the season on a short-term loan, and was a reason Pompey led the league. He was a good player and Kyle was very glad to have him aboard.

The other move Kyle was able to make was a surprise.

Liam Grimshaw agreed to stay the rest of the campaign from Manchester United. The u-21 player could play the holding position as well as right back and right midfield, making him a solid alternative at three different positions.

And with Hylton hurt, the loanee Godden was going to have to be in the match squad too. League rules said he could only have five, and that’s what he now had, with Potts, Grimshaw, Godden, Maddison and Ssewankambo all owned by other clubs.

But Kyle liked the look of his backline a lot more now. It was highly loan-heavy due to all the injuries, but really, what other option was there? The senior squad wasn’t deep enough to handle a stretch of injured players like the one currently being experienced and so loans were the only way.

The other news of the day was Burnley coaxing 68-year old Harry Redknapp out of retirement for one more crack at the Premier League wars. The challenge of saving yet another club from relegation was one the old master couldn’t resist and so that news took over the headlines for a time on deadline day.

The other bit of fun came in a news story on football365.com about Crawley Town.

The side had moved to the final of the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy competition by playing six straight draws, advancing on penalties after the second leg each time. That meant Crawley held all-time competition records for longest unbeaten streak and longest winless streak, at the same time.

Yet the highlight of the day was a visit from none other than Diana Moore.

Kyle was preparing to leave for the day when the marketer approached him from down the hall.

“Kyle, I need a word with you, please,” she said, and the manager stopped near her office door.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

He didn’t care for her familiarity, but then, only his players called Kyle “boss”. That was pretty clear, now that Eales had backed down from his earlier statement about his authority within the club.

“Of course, Ms. Moore,” he said, leaning against the frame of her office door as the woman sat behind her desk.

“First, I want to apologize to you for the issue surrounding Twitter and the last match,” she said. “I shouldn’t have posted the team sheet that far ahead of the match and I know you had to make changes to the team because of it.”

Kyle decided to let Moore get away with that statement – he had never intended to use the XI he had given her for that that reason – and he decided to be magnanimous.

“Apology accepted,” he said simply. “Will that be all?”

“No, there’s something else,” she said, handing Kyle a piece of paper. The information it contained raised his eyebrows.

It was from the business office and contained the advance ticket sale for the weekend match against Luton Town.

The team had averaged just under 5,000 fans per match since Kyle’s arrival and less than that in the early going. But now, over 9,500 advance tickets had been sold for Luton and that made everyone at the club happy.

“We would like a special statement from you for the match program,” Moore said. “We’d like you to thank the fans for coming out and for supporting the team, even though they really haven’t to this point. We think it would be good if they heard it from the manager.”

“I can use my program notes section to this,” Kyle said, but Moore shook her head.

“I said, a special statement,” she repeated. “Outside your usual comments. Mr. Eales thinks that is best too.”

He didn’t care for her tone, but then he never really had.

“Very well,” he finally said. “I’ll have something for you on Thursday morning, which is when I’m told the program goes to press.”

“Very good,” she answered. “Thank you for understanding.”

With that, he left, apology in his pocket. That much felt nice, at least.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

7 February 2015 – Oxford United (12-7-10, 10^th place) v Luton Town (15-4-9, 5^th place)

Sky Bet League Two Match Day #30 – The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Referee: Nigel Miller

It had been a good week.

Will Hoskins won the Player of the Month award for January and Maddison came in second for Young Player of the Month. And for the second straight month, Kyle Cain was honored for his managerial excellence.

He liked that. He liked too that there was a special event before the Luton match, before the largest home crowd for nearly two years, to give him the trophy.

Eales and some guy representing Sky Bet made the presentation and what he liked the very best was watching Diana Moore having to take pictures of the whole thing.

He figured that really had to frost her behind, and that made it even more special.

Never really a movie fan, Kyle still liked the line from Star Trek II in which Khan Noonian Singh quoted the Klingon proverb that “revenge is a dish best served cold”. As far as he was concerned, his revenge on that woman was only just beginning. And, in time, it would be cold.

His team had gained 31 of 33 points on offer since he had arrived, which was actually the best record in England over that same time frame, and it was nice to be recognized for it.

Yet as the crowd filed in and saw the local manager being honored for the second consecutive month, some of them took notice. That was nice too. His words in the match program had been kind and positive, and even though that was against his nature, it seemed a natural thing for him to write.

All he had ever wanted was acceptance that he could do a job. Now Kyle was getting that and he sent his team onto the pitch with a difference in his step and his outlook.

So it shouldn’t have been terribly surprising that the ‘new’ Oxford struggled out of the gate in front of that huge crowd.

Denzel Slager got the first corner of the match for Luton ten minutes into the contest as the teams tried to find their footing on a slick pitch, and after Whing headed the effort over the bar, Ryan Hall took the second.

Abdoulaye Faye, who had fallen all the way from Premiership Hull to League Two Luton on a free in the close-season, got the next chance 13 minutes in, perhaps showing why he fell so far after putting a long-range effort nearly over the car park behind the west goal.

But one thing couldn’t be argued: Luton were the better team.

Hoban beat keeper Arran Lee-Barrett in nineteen minutes from an offside position and that was as good as the Us got for most of the first half. From there it was virtually one-way traffic and Kyle came to the touchline in a state of consternation that he tried not to show.

Ashdown saved twice from Nathan Oduwa within the following five minutes before Hoban finally got a shot on target, a weak effort Lee-Barrett claimed easily.

It looked like the teams might still get to halftime scoreless – until Dunkley changed the game.

With the ball in the Oxford third, Whing squared from the right to find his central defender standing to his left. Dunkley immediately lofted a fifty-yard ball straight up Route One and just over the leap of Luton defender Luke Wilkinson. Waiting on the other side of that leap was Hoban, who raced onto the ball, controlled it with a deft first touch, and slotted past Lee-Barrett to get the home team on the board very much against the run of play.

But then disaster struck again.

Mullins was chasing after a 50-50 ball with Luton’s Nathan Doyle near the touchline just before half and the players collided. They both fell heavily, but the Oxford man fell with his arm beneath him and came up screaming.

“Good Lord, what now?” Kyle thought to himself as the physios gently led the player to the touchline. The halftime whistle blew, but for Kyle it had gone about thirty seconds too late.

Sometimes things happen that change a halftime team talk and this was definitely one of those days where it had. Kyle’s initial plan was to light a fire under his team, but going into the changing room with the lead changed his talk to one of preservation.

“Sometimes teams don’t win on their best days and sometimes teams win on days that aren’t their best,” he said. “You’ve hung in there and taken the lead. It’s up to you to hold it.”

They ‘held it’ for a total of forty-six seconds after the restart, when Oduwa shook loose between Whing and Dunkley and scored on a free header from substitute Paul Benson’s cross.

“Lesson learnt,” Kyle fumed to himself, and Fazackerley didn’t even look at him in reply. He was thinking the same thing.

After a few moments, assistant manager turned to manager and spoke.

“I’d have told them the same thing, Kyle,” he said simply. “Let’s see if we can find a winner.”

Lord then passed Kyle a note and the manager nearly threw his head back in frustration. It simply read: Broken wrist. X-rays positive.”

That made six on the injury list and since there was nothing else for it but to get on and play, Kyle did his best to encourage those Oxford players not yet in intensive care.

To their credit, the remaining Us tried to raise their game, to the delight of the large crowd. The Hatters were on the back foot for much of the second half.

One player who didn’t seem terribly interested in participating was the formerly in-form Hoskins, which Kyle found more than a bit surprising. O’Dowda, who had also enjoyed a run of good form in the team’s recent string of success, was also not having his best day and in search of a late winner, Kyle pulled both players in 77 minutes.

On came Godden, who hadn’t been any great shakes in his previous appearances but who was itching to get out there and prove himself, and Rose, who looked a better option than the pedestrian O’Dowda on the left flank.

But even that didn’t help. Luton were a strong and resilient side and the large crowd left mumbling – not dissatisfied by any stretch with the draw against higher-placed opposition, but still some ways short of the five-star performance Kyle knew was more likely to bring them back in the future.

Oxford United: Ashdown: Whing, Dunkley, Wright (captain), Potts, Mullins (inj, Ssewankambo 45), MacDonald, Maddison, O’Dowda (Rose 77), Hoban, Hoskins (Godden 77). Unused subs: Clarke, Grimshaw, Long, Collins.

Oxford United 1 (Hoban 37)

Luton Town 1 (Nathan Oduwa 46)

H/T: 1-0

A – 9,332, The Kassam Stadium, Oxford

Man of the Match: Cheyenne Dunkley, Oxford (MR 8.3)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

“Injuries are part of the game. How you deal with them determines whether you’re a team or just a mob.”

Kyle was trying to be brave, but he was having a hard time hiding his frustration.

These weren’t just injuries, they were long-term injuries to key players. Mulins, Hylton, Skarz and Meades all meant something to the team in very important ways and all four of them were out for at least a month – and longer in the case of the first three.

“You have to be proud of the way the other players held things together against a good opponent,” Vic said in a moment of prescience.

“I’m very proud,” Kyle responded. “From the beginning I’ve said that the players have bought into what we are teaching tactically and they have done a wonderful job. I’m disappointed that we couldn’t find three points for the fans today but given the adversity we are facing we have to be happy with the point we got.”

“You’re starting to sound like a diplomat,” Vic said.

“Mind your tongue,” Kyle responded, with just the hint of a smile.

The injury list was daunting:

Matt Bevans (thigh strain, one week)

Jeremy Balmy (knee strain, two weeks)

Jon Meades (ankle, one month)

Johnny Mullins (broken wrist, two months)

Danny Hylton (hip injury, two months)

Joe Skarz (hip injury, two to three months)

Things were so bad that Kyle had to cancel a planned loan of striker John Campbell, who was rotting in the reserves while making £41,000 a season, to Barnet because he was now needed for squad cover and Godden’s loan was going to expire in a few weeks. Kyle hadn’t decided whether to keep Godden or not so he needed warm bodies.

Calling the Us ‘paper thin’ would have been kind.

As Kyle met Eales and a few selected fans and board members in the Christchurch Suite after the match for a drink, he received another great surprise. This was much less welcome.

While discussing the match, Kyle enjoyed that usual pleasant moment when Jenna arrived to spend some time with her dad. But this time, she was in the company of a young man.

They entered holding hands, and Kyle reacted when he saw the boy’s identity.

Kyle recognized him.

His name was Miles Booth, and he was a defender on Oxford’s u-18 team.

# # #