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[FM17] Out Of His League


tenthreeleader

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Chance Morrison was a happy-go-lucky sort of fellow. With a name like his, how could he be anything else?

Only 33 years of age, he was a player of little reputation – deservedly, he’d have told you – but had a good mind for the game. He had spent his career in the very low leagues.

“Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the League League,” he would say to friends who asked him about where he’d played. In reality, it was the North West Counties League – for Irlam, which played its home matches at Silver Street in his home of Salford.

He had been happy with the semi-professional club, if not especially skilled. He had been a midfielder and he wasn’t likely to make anyone forget Roy Keane, or even Eric Djemba-Djemba. Or, if you preferred, Yaya Toure or Stephen Ireland.

He was a Salford lad, though, and that meant two things to him: Manchester United and Salford City, and in some weeks not necessarily in that order.

After his career, such as it was, came to a close at age 30 after his release by the Mitchells, he wanted to try to stay close to the game. So it was that he ventured to Salford City – where he bought a season ticket. This put him in a distinct minority among residents, because the club didn’t have many season-ticket holders.

Irlam’s club crest contained the motto of Irlam and Cadishead College. Ingenio et Consilio¸it read: By natural ability and council.

Chance Morrison had possessed neither. But he loved the game, and managed to worm his way onto manager Phil Power’s team as a volunteer coach. That in itself wasn’t a big deal – nearly everyone at Salford City, which was in the eighth tier of the English game at the time, was a volunteer – but he made some friends, enjoyed his time there, and tried his best to help his club succeed.

That was enough for him during his evenings and alternate Saturdays when the club played at home. During the week, he made ends meet by working as a roofer. It was a good life, if not an especially good-paying life, but on the whole he couldn’t complain.

Business was good. But then something highly unusual happened.

Salford City was bought, lock, stock and barrel, by five members of Manchester United’s famed “Class of ‘92”. Phil and Gary Neville, Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs bought in, and completely changed the culture of a local club.

They changed the logo. They changed the club colors from orange to red. Most importantly, they changed expectations.

The new owners said their goal was Championship football within 15 years. That was rather amazing, for a club that drew about 100 hard-core fans a match to Moor Lane.

But then the club started to play real matches, and the owners came to the realization that simply wishing something into existence didn’t always make it so. After a strong start, the players stopped performing for Power, and the owners made a change.

Enter Anthony Johnson and Bernard Morley, non-league legends for either the wrong or the right reasons depending on who you talked to. They had led Ramsbottom United to promotion from the Northern Premier League Division One North the previous season but were known as taskmasters. The owners installed them as co-managers.

Johnson, known as “Johnno” and a former British Army squaddie, was involved in a touchline fight shortly after his arrival, showing one and all that his tenure would be an interesting one.

And one of the first things they did was clean house. That meant about 75 percent of the part-time playing squad – and a coach named Chance Morrison.

That hurt. Why you’d sack volunteers was anybody’s guess, but the new men wanted their own new men in place and so Chance was asked – well, not asked, but told – to watch future contests from the stand if he cared to attend at all.

As much as that stung, the new managers led Salford City to 15 wins from their last 17 matches and promotion. So they were doing something right.

They did it again the following season, earning promotion to the Vanarama Conference North through the playoffs – the highest place on the tiers that the club had ever held in its 76-year history.

But then, Johnno pushed too hard.

A story published in the Mail said that the two had told the owners they knew they were under pressure to perform. “We made sure we told the owners that we knew that if we were underachieving we knew our fate,” Morley said. “Johnno sent that message, and I don't think they took it very well, did they?”

They sure didn’t. The Class of ’92 had gone out of its way to try to avoid interfering, but being told their business didn’t sit well.

So it was that the partnership was split. The owners, which now included Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim – yes, that Peter Lim – had seen enough.

More than a bit oddly, Lim had hired the Nevilles to manage the other sporting interest in his life – Valencia. In 2015, he both hired and fired Gary Neville, his Salford co-owner, who had assistance from Phil along the way.

Phil had learned the hard way about management and returned to his punditry at Sky Sports now needing to find a new boss for his team.

He was a bit surprised to find Chance’s CV waiting for him. He had gone through licensure and now owned the National A license, the same as Morley. And he had a good reputation, which one-half of the departing management team couldn’t exactly say.

So the Class of '92 made the move. Chance got the job. For good or bad.

Author’s note: FM 17. English Leagues to Tier 9 and Home Nations loaded. This will teach me to watch television.

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A new tenthreeleader story is always something to look forward to, so obviously I can't wait to see how this one goes.

The National League North - or the Conference North, if you prefer - is the one English league in the main FM game (i.e. without extra custom leagues) where I have never managed, so this should be a real eye-opener.

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Thank you, gentlemen ... I think this is going to be an interesting save. After watching "Class of '92: Out of Their League" on Netflix, I just couldn't resist.

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“I don’t expect this to go well.”

Bernard Morley was smiling but it looked forced. That wasn’t surprising. He and Johnno had sacked Chance two years previously but now the season-ticket holder was running the club and getting paid a bit of dosh to do so.

“Bernard,” Chance said coolly. So far, Morley was right.

Last time it had been “boss”. Now the shoe was on the other foot.

“I’ll go,” Morley said immediately.

“No,” Chance replied, to Morley’s considerable surprise. “That won’t happen. Right now the club can’t afford to buy out contracts. So we’re stuck with each other.”

If Morley resigned, of course, that would be avoided, but he had no such intention. So the two men would have form an uneasy alliance.

Chance wasn’t thrilled about working with Morley. Nobody should have expected him to be. But the club had priorities and sacking an existing staff member wasn’t one of them. He didn’t dislike his deputy, but he didn’t think he had been given a fair shake the first time around. That was enough for both of them.

He also thought he had bigger fish to fry.

Chance needed at least one more coach, a physio, a scout and, after he had placed the necessary ads, an Ibuprofen. All the figuring and budgeting made his head hurt.

A Director of Football would help with the details, though, and he had permission to see who might want to try their hand. So there were plenty of positions open and about £30,000 to pay them all. Not exactly chump change for the Conference North, but he still wasn’t going to get a whole lot for less than Wayne Rooney’s weekly wage packet.

He had a (very) modest transfer budget but also more pressing needs, such as a right full back. The rest of the squad was small but more or less fit for purpose, or so he thought. With limited resources, it would be a challenge to meet needs.

The board gave Chance an extra £10,000 for payroll when he told them he thought he could finish mid-table. At the same time, he hoped they didn’t read the newspapers, which said they thought Salford could finish third.

They were a ways away from that, Chance thought. Getting promoted twice in three years is good, but at some time a team needs to consolidate. From the matches he had seen the previous year, he wondered how many players would be up to standard for the new league.

One gave him no doubt. Midfielder George Green was on loan from Premier League club Burnley and from the first training sessions Chance thought he could be the best player in the league.

But he needed more. He needed fullbacks. Salford City had clearly been set up to play with three at the back, and Chance wasn’t a fan. But if you play with three at the back, it’s also a good idea to have depth in wing backs, and Salford didn’t have that either.

The club also had only one pure striker on its books. In short, it didn’t look like a team with much of a plan. It was going to be a challenge.

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Those who weren’t on the senior squad either had youth contracts or were transfer listed. Some of them were players Chance knew fairly well from his volunteer days – but more of them were new to the club after its promotions and subsequent semi-professional status.

They didn’t make a lot of money in the sixth tier. But it was better than part-time or playing for love of the game. You had to really love the game to pay in some of the places Chance had during his career, and he had never had a contract that paid him any money to play football.

So his very first actual contract in the game was to manage. That seemed a bit odd at first but he quickly got used to two things: first, drawing a paycheck that allowed him to earn a decent living and second, to frame the front page of his contract and hang it on the wall of his apartment.

But they were still only semi-professional. That meant they could only train three days a week, which would place them at a disadvantage against certain clubs. The roofing business was of course at its best in the summer, so Chance wasn’t lacking for work, but as he started to spend more and more time at the ground, he wondered when his other employers would ask him to make a choice.

Training began and the first friendly for Chance’s team would be against his own U-23s. He saw several areas where battles would be held for the available shirts:

In goal, former Bolton trainee Jay Lynch was the two-year incumbent but would be competing against his mentor, goalkeeping coach Craig Dootson. Salford was his 16th club in 17 seasons, which took some doing, but the 37-year old could still do a job when called upon. Sadly for him, that job had only come up twice in the last three seasons.

The club only had one senior right back, 27-year old Michael Nottingham. A free transfer arrival from Solihull Moors, he figured to walk straight into the eleven as his only opposition was youth teamer Matt Webb.  But Nottingham had already played for six teams in seven years as well.

One of the more interesting positional scraps was in the number ten role. With only one senior striker on the club’s books, it obviously didn’t make sense to play with two strikers.

The day after he was hired, Chance faced something more or less like a news conference. That only Joe Bailey from the Non-League Paper showed up was a bit disquieting, but he did the deed while trying not to sound sarcastic.

Bailey was an interesting sort. He sort of looked like the comedian Steven Wright. He wore a frilly Afro-type hairdo with what Chance liked to call a five-head – too big for a four-head, if you will.

And he wrote what he saw, which was not much.

Jessica Granger, the club’s volunteer press officer, tapped at the door to Chance’s office the following day. She held a copy of the paper in one hand.

“See what your friend wrote,” she smiled, handing him the paper, opened to a brief piece on how little people cared about Salford’s new boss.

Chance shook his head. “Who cares what Bailey thinks?” he asked, tossing the paper onto his desk. It slid apart as it landed because it wasn’t stapled, so the non-league scene was covered comprehensively, if you will.

“Well, I do, since I need to get him back here,” Granger replied.

“Jess, maybe we don’t need plonkers like him poking around,” Chance smiled.

“Why, then I’d have nowt to do,” she grinned.

They traded smiles, and the young lady left for home. After performing that task, she really did have nowt to do.

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“That guy” called again the very next day, with a rumor that Chance’s chief scout (and since he was also the only one, that made sense) Gareth McClelland had been linked with the manager’s job at Northern League Division One’s West Auckland Town. Chance said he was proud of McClelland, but he had other fish to fry with the caller.

“If I’m honest, I’m a bit narky with what you wrote yesterday,” Chance added, but Bailey just laughed. He knew what Chance meant, though, which was both good and not good at the same time.

“What do you want me to say, Chance? That you’re the next coming of Pep and people should bust down doors to see your team?”

“Cute. No, I’d just appreciate it if you wouldn’t off my chances when you haven’t even seen us play.”

“I didn’t do anything of the sort,” the reporter said.

“Well, telling the people that nobody cares about us wasn’t exactly fair dos, was it? I can’t get people excited about being here without you telling them first?”

“That wasn’t about you, it was about your fans,” Bailey said, and Chance frowned.

“Why would you take sides?” he asked, and the reporter quickly backpedaled, since that was exactly what he wasn’t supposed to do, at least not in print.

“Well, I didn’t mean it exactly like that,” Bailey said. “But you know the reputation you ‘ave now that you’ve got those moneybags owners.”

Chance knew it all too well. For this level, Salford City was nouveau-riche, taking the same kind of flak Manchester City got when it was first bought out and turned into a free-spending cash machine, only on a much smaller scale.

“All they care about is being seen,” Bailey added. Now, since Chance had been one of those fans as recently as a week before, that stuck in his craw.

“I had a season pass,” he snapped. “So I was one of those fans. I didn’t care if I was seen or not. I love the club.”

“I didn’t mean you,” Bailey protested.

“Why don’t you get your story straight the next time you call?” Chance suggested, before hanging up his phone.

He shook his head and cleaned up the copy of the paper strewn across his desk.

“Bellend,” Chance said.

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Chance wasn’t sure whether he should be laughing or crying.

As the first order of business he had ordered a match between his would-be senior side and the u-23s, to see who could play and more importantly, who couldn’t. One he wasn’t going to get to look at was 17-year old midfielder Richard Roberts.

Calling in a favor, the Nevilles had managed to persuade Premiership referee Lee Probert to make the trek to Salford to take charge of the glorified scrimmage, and now the big-time official had a friendly hand on the lad’s shoulder, telling him exactly why he was being sent off in a practice match with only four minutes played.

Roberts had hit Josh Hine, the only true striker on the senior squad, with a two-footed tackle. So he had to go.

Chance looked on sadly, as Hine was helped to his feet. He could continue – thankfully for Roberts, but the boy wasn’t happy and neither was Morley, who had taken charge of the reserves for the match.

Morley had set up his young team in 4-5-1, which was fine with Chance. He wanted to see if his team could break through a packed midfield, but now the opposition was down to ten and he couldn’t.

Hine showed he was just fine by scoring 12 minutes into the match, with the loanee George Green and makeshift striker Mike Phenix finding the range in 21 and 24 minutes.

But then the ten men scored not once but twice. Ian Morris did it first, when Probert correctly gave a penalty when on-loan defender Patrick Brough brought down 16-year old Ian Morris in the area. Craig King then scored two minutes after the break and suddenly the seniors were breathing hard, their lead reduced to 3-2 through the most comical of sequences.

Green restored order in 56 minutes, and Simon Grand did it again in 68, before Chance let the young players finish up. It had finished 5-2 and he had reason to be upset with nearly everyone except George Green.

He walked onto the field to thank Probert for making the trip and the referee was kind. “It’s mid-summer, Chance,” he said, as they shook hands. “Give them some time.”

“Not like I have a choice,” he replied glumly. “We’ve arsed about for half this match and we need to be better.”

He gave a post-match talk that was the only one he could give – when you score five and win, it’s hard to be critical – but he had seen areas that surely needed shoring up.

As such, he and Morley retreated to the manager’s office area for a post-match discussion.

“I saw a lot I didn’t like,” Morley began.

“Me too,” Chance replied. “When we don’t get it right on the back line we’re bobbins.”

It’s not as bad as that,” Morley replied. “I think you know that.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Chance said. “But let’s not talk about it here. You up for a bite? Curry Mile, maybe?”

Morley saw what Chance was trying to do. He knew that someone had to try to break the ice between them.

“That’ll do,” he said simply. The two men rose and headed to the car park, and then to Rusholme for dinner.

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Shere Khan was waiting for them, but then it had been waiting for Mancunians for thirty years.

Recognized as one of the best Indian restaurants not only on the Curry Mile but in England, it was a bit pricy but a good place to talk. And since they were talking about club business, the club could pay for the meal.

Chance liked Dhansak, and as he ate the curry alongside his Chicken Tikka he listened to Morley expound on the virtues of the first team and the U-23s. He was nearly done with his first course before Morley was finished.

“Just some thoughts,” he concluded, starting to eat his own first course before it got cold.

This much Chance knew: Bernard Morley might have been responsible for his departure, but he cared about the players as much as Chance did. His methods of motivation were different from those Chance preferred – he was the boss and he made sure everyone knew it – but his view on the players was important to have while Chance made up his own mind.

Finally, though, Morley turned the conversation 90 degrees. “So I’ve been curious, Chance,” he finally said. “Why are you called Chance?”

It seemed an odd question to ask, but the manager knew what his deputy was trying to do. It was the same thing Chance had done.

“Well, it’s a bit embarrassing,” he began, “but if you want to know, I’ll tell you. I’m called Chance because I was conceived in the back seat of an Aston-Martin. I was an accident, as they say.”

Morley tried very hard not to smile. He failed, and the relationship between the two men hung on the knife’s edge as he waited for Chance to react.

Finally, the manager smiled in return. “Can’t be changed,” he said.

“’Course it can,” Morley replied. “People change their names all the time.”

“I sort of fancied the name,” Chance admitted. “It wasn’t like mum and dad treated me like an accident, they brought me up just fine. I used my name to help me decide how to live. I try not to let too much get me down.”

“Well, to be fair, that’s what me and Johnno noticed about you,” Morley said, turning the conversation 90 more degrees in an awfully big hurry. “We saw a happy guy and what we didn’t see was a hard guy, like what owners wanted.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not there,” Chance said immediately. “Now I work with my hands for a living, and I know how to use a hammer.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Morley said. “But you didn’t use your hammer on me, and I was expecting you to. The lads were expecting you to. You’re already coming across as a nice guy and that isn’t what the players need.”

Chance thought it over for a long moment. He looked down into his drink and finally replied.

“I’m here because the way you and Johnno did it didn’t appeal to the owners,” he said. “Now, if you want us to play good cop, bad cop with the players I’m good with that, but I also believe in not showing my teeth until I have a reason to. But I’ll tell you something else – I learned from being told to leave.”

He didn’t elaborate, so Morley wondered just what it was that his new boss had picked up the last time he was with the club.

Clearly the Class of ’92 had seen it, but Chance was leaving Morley to figure it out for himself.

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Sweat ran down Chance’s face, and the salt it contained stung his eyes.

He was sitting atop a roof in Manchester, installing shingles. It was miserable work on cold days, but even worse on hot ones, and this certainly was. The temperature was over thirty degrees and as such, he knew it would be a day where he would have to stay hydrated.

With the team’s first friendly still over a week away, he took on a part-time job to boost his income after training. It felt a bit odd because he had gone from a place where he was the boss to a place where he most certainly wasn’t, on the roof of the house in Hale.

He had to be on someone else’s time schedule, working at someone else’s pleasure, and that felt a bit strange as well.

But it was what he knew outside of football, and he knew he’d do a good job because he always did. And it was certainly a way to keep his waistline under control.

This particular house had over 3,000 square feet inside so its roof was pretty big as well. And as the July sun beat down on him, Chance stopped for a moment to take a long pull from a canteen he held on his back. He also wiped the sweat from his brow and eyes and put on a dry bandana.

There had to be easier ways to make a living. Neither of his jobs were especially secure in that regard. The housing industry was still showing signs of hangover from the financial crisis and of course, being a football manager was life on a high wire on the best of days.

He resumed work, shifting his weight from one leg to the other to save his left leg from cramp. One after another, the nails went in and the shingles took over the roof as they were designed to do.

It gave him time to think. The club had offered a contract to its first target, North Ferriby’s Sam Topliss, and offered a trial to Australian striker Peter Skapetis, recently released by Stoke but who could sure do a job in Salford’s league.

His request for a parent club had also been approved by the board, but even there Chance had to be careful. The Class of ’92 would surely have a say in which club was selected and Chance dared not err on that account.

With each shingle, it seemed as though Chance was thinking about a different variable for his eleven. There were upgrades which needed to be made. The team was woefully short in depth in certain areas. It was more than simply taking whatever fell off bigger clubs, of course, but an injury crisis would really harm the team’s chances to reach its goals.

The row of shingles was done. He prepared to start the next. His foreman called up to him from street level.

“Come on, Morrison, you can’t lay about like you’re on training ground,” he snapped. “Get your arse in gear.”

It was funny in a way. During the last two seasons, Morley had been a ceiling fixer working with his dad, so the two had that much in common. But Chance suspected that nobody would talk to him in that way. Morley would have told his boss where he could get off, and some people would have thought him right to do so.

Chance smiled to himself, and tried to work faster. He wanted the job done right. His boss wanted it done fast and right. That was why his boss was the boss, at least in this case. On the pitch, Chance’s hammer could wait, but on the roof, it couldn’t.

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It turned out Chance didn’t have to worry. Peterborough was the choice for a parent club. It wasn’t exactly Man United, but the club could provide Salford with warm bodies, fit for purpose at Salford’s level.

He also didn’t have to worry about Topliss, who signed for Kidderminster shortly after receiving Salford’s offer.

As such, the team prepared for its first friendly against Goole of the Northern Premier League Division One North at their home, eyebrow-raisingly named the Victoria Pleasure Grounds.

On the positive side, Chance derived some pleasure when Skapetis agreed to come to Salford on trial. At age 21, he could have been a player either for the present or the future and once he found fitness, could do a job. The only problem was that Skapetis didn’t appear to have a lot of staying power, which explained why he had yet to make a senior appearance in English football with his two prior clubs – QPR and Stoke.

But if he figured that out, he had the talent to score for fun in the Conference North. He was also recovering from doing his ACL with Stoke, which had led to his release.

“Look at him,” Morley said as Skapetis bent over for his breath after a series of wind sprints the other players seemed to handle with ease. “Shattered.”

“Well, that’s the trouble, innit?” Chance replied. “I can put him on cardio but he has to want to do it. Otherwise I like what I see.”

“You’re right there,” Morley replied. “Some good skill on him.”

That was how conversations had been going between manager and assistant – point-form and short. They weren’t friends, but they weren’t circling each other like Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo in Tombstone.

“I’m your Huckleberry,” Chance thought to himself with a smile. He didn’t share the reference with Morley, but then, to say anything would have gone against everything Chance claimed to be.

As they watched training, Jessica Granger approached. “We put out the word on Skapetis,” she said. “Bailey was the only one to respond.”

“Well, you gave it a bash, good job,” Chance said. “What did you tell him?”

“Same as everyone, we want to see him succeed and we’ll consider offering a deal if he does.”

Chance nodded. He smiled at the young lady, who seemed to know her business fairly well. So did her boyfriend, a fellow called Kieran Wolfe who seemed to be a decent bloke. “Well done,” he said, turning back to training.

“Thanks, Chance,” she replied, smoothing her long blonde hair back behind her ears. A slight summer breeze had kicked up her hairdo and this seemed to annoy her. “I’m off to get Kieran from work and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Chance nodded and the press officer left.

“Don’t know what she sees in that Kieran,” Morley offered.

“Don’t even go there,” Chance said, without looking at his deputy.

“Well, it’s true,” he replied. “He’s a good lad, mind, but he’s on the dole as often as not.”

“Maybe she loves him,” Chance replied, going there. “In the meantime, we’ve both got better things to do.”

“True,” Morley said, watching the defenders.

Chance shook his head. “If I’m spending time worrying about a bit of all right, I won’t last long,” he sighed.

At that moment, defender Chris Lynch fell to the ground heavily, grabbing at his face. He had been struck by a ball in a drill and he was rolling back and forth, a small stream of blood running from between his fingers.

The physios arrived and quickly confirmed a broken nose. It wasn’t that difficult. Lynch was going to have a couple of really beautiful shiners and, in the coming days, a plastic mask to guard the injury, but for now he was just a bloody mess.

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Goole’s biggest problem for the upcoming season wasn’t likely to be youth or inexperience. It was likely to be diaper rash.

As Salford arrived at the Pleasure Grounds for what they hoped would be some truly sexy football in their first friendly, they were greeted by Vikings player-manager David Taylor.

He was twenty-three years old and looked like he hadn’t even started his A-levels yet. Talk about boyish.

That said, he had scored four professional goals – two with Buxton and two more with Goole, though it had been over two years since he had last played. Chance had scored seven goals in his career at Irlam, which gave him a slight sense of superiority.

He showed the Salford players to the visiting changing rooms, which were essentially clothes hooks drilled into the wooden walls of a small shed on one end of the pitch. Since Chance had brought 22 players, that posed special challenges.

“Some of you will have to double up,” he said. “Sorry.”

That was life in the Northern Premier League Division One. It was a bit sad for a player to have to make the right to his own clothes hook a sign of his professional status, but goals have to start somewhere.

On the way to the ground, the club had tendered offers to onetime Forest Green manager Gary Seward to act as a scout and to former Wales captain Barry Horne, 59 times capped and top flight midfielder for Portsmouth, Southampton, Everton and Sheffield Wednesday, to be Director of Football.

Chance was a bit intimidated by the thought of Horne, who had forgotten more football than Chance reckoned he knew, being on his team. Yet, he would be a fabulous acquisition for a club Salford’s size and Chance would have to grow up quickly to have a good relationship with him if he signed.

The day before, he had attended the England trialists matches, which to him were confusing since both the sides he saw had a player called Aleksandar Gogic.

The match also helped place Yvan Wassi into Salford’s colors, as Chance’s first signing. The former Man City and Bolton trainee could play any position on the back line as well as both sides of midfield and his arrival was greeted with enthusiasm. The depth issue at the back was therefore solved, and Chance could turn his attention to his backroom staff.

Short a physio in addition to everything else, he offered a position to former Exeter man Graham McAnuff. So it had been a busy day and Salford hadn’t even kicked off yet.

Once they did, however, Chance had his first chance to look at his ‘new’ team in his preferred alignment of 4-3-1-2. They didn’t look like much, which was to be expected for a club on a part-time training schedule learning a new way to play. Goole presented very little in the way of attacking threat so for the first half hour the players simply had a kickabout and tried to put their training application into practice.

Hine was the first to break through, finding the range in 37 minutes after picking up a bounding ball near the top of the penalty area and beating keeper Max Dearnley from range.

That was the half, and though Salford hadn’t played especially well in the attacking third, they had been air tight in front of Jay Lynch. Chance boosted the team at half and watched George Green hammer home a sublime second ball from a Salford corner in 63 minutes. Dearnley had been beaten from fully 25 yards and that got the Ammies traveling support happy.

Then Lynch gifted a goal back through a rather stupendous howler six minutes later. Joel Dixon’s long punt forward bounced outside the area and Lynch came to collect it – too late. On the way up, attacker Graham Williams got a head to the ball, popping it over Lynch’s outstretched arms where it bounced into the goal.

“Ace goalkeeping, that,” Chance moaned, as he prepared to make a wave of substitutions.

One of them was the new striker, Skapetis, who scored in 71 minutes with a superb little turn-and-shoot which showed that the striker liked playing with his back to goal.

It was enough. It wasn’t spectacular but then first friendlies rarely are. It provided only a moderate amount of pleasure.

Goole 1 (Graham Williams 68)
Salford City 3 (Josh Hine 37, George Green 63, Peter Skapetis 71)
H/T: 0-1
A – 126 (34 away), Victoria Pleasure Grounds, Goole
Man of the Match – George Green, Salford (MR 8.3)

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The scouts haven't found anyone better, and if his trial goes well he'll be offered a deal. A bit surprising that a club owned by the star power of Salford would have budget issues, but it does...

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Barry Horne was sat opposite Chance in the small manager’s office at the ground. The office was small. Either Horne was larger than life, or the walls needed to be moved.

The former Wales captain pronounced himself delighted to be at Moor Lane after spending time two years in the same role at Wrexham, where he had also been a board member. Chance couldn’t see the attraction to Salford for the older man but as long as he was there, he wasn’t about to look that gift horse in the mouth.

He had been part of the 1995 Everton squad which had beaten the Class of ’92 in the FA Cup Final at Wembley, which made for some interesting introductions when the co-owners showed up at training. Phil Neville had been the only member of the group who hadn’t played in that match, so the banter was playful, if a bit stilted.

Giggs had once said that losing that final had ruined not only his day but his entire summer every time he thought about it. That was understandable to Chance, even if he had never played in a match anywhere near that important.

Now, though, Horne’s pay packet was authorized by his former adversaries, but for the most part the owners were well pleased with Chance’s hiring decision. He got a chance to pick Horne’s brain for the week after the Goole match and hoped the former Everton man’s connections might eventually help bring a better standard of player to Salford City.

But if connections alone were all that was needed, how could anyone at this level not want to play for Salford?

The problem had been with the Class of ‘92’s influence on the club’s ethos. Overnight, Salford went from a neighborhood club with a few passionate, volunteer fans, to a growing business, especially when Lim bought in for 50 percent.

Yes, the new owners fixed up and expanded the ground, but it wasn’t the same Salford City in a lot of ways. Word did get around.

So it was that Horne’s first act was to offer a trial to goalkeeper Rich Searle, a former Nottingham Forest trainee, to help with the goalkeeping situation. Behind Lynch, whose howler in the first friendly had been duly noted, there was only 37-year old goalkeeping coach Craig Dootson who had the ability to hold the senior squad in anything like a real match.

The second friendly would be much more difficult than the first – Lincoln at home. The Conference National opposition would be made of sterner stuff.

The preseason odds had been released and it seemed that some people thought Salford had a shot at double promotion. Their odds were comparatively short at 6-1, 35-1 to go down, and those odds were fourth best in the league.

AFC Fylde were installed as favorites to earn automatic promotion at 11-4, followed by Kidderminster at 7-2, FC Halifax at 11-2 and then Salford.  At the other end of the table, Gainsborough and Stalybridge Celtic were listed at 1000-1 with Stalybridge also suffering the slap in the face of being posted at 3-5 to go down.

On the positive side, Skapetis had been excellent in his first match and looked like someone the club would want to keep around. But it also needed another goalkeeper, and it was soon obvious that budgets wouldn’t permit both.

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Bern and Johnno. Johnno and Bern. They were inseparable.

Best mates, they had done a good job getting Salford promoted in successive years. And now that Johnno was no longer part of the team at Salford, that didn’t mean he wasn’t still around.

Chance’s roles had reversed with the former squaddie. No doubt about it – Johnno was a very tough bloke. When he was with Bernard, they were even tougher. But now, the boots were on the other feet.

That was a secret to their success. They could make any discussion with a player a two-against-one argument because they always communicated, they always spoke to each other and after a time they could almost represent each other. It was uncanny.

However, there was one thing missing from their two-man touchline act. In most situations where two people have equal authority, one would play good cop and the other would play bad cop, as it were.

In this relationship there were usually no good cops. Only bad ones.

That was great if you wanted discipline in a squad, but if you wanted to lose a room, all you needed to do was hammer away at your players long enough and it was virtually guaranteed.

That was what had nearly happened midway through the prior season. During a mid-season run of poor form, the players would be rollicked by both managers for every poor performance, and finally, the team lost its cohesion. The managers had to dial back their pressure and when they did, the team started to perform.

Chance was sat at his desk when Gary Neville poked his head in. “How you gettin’ along, Chance?” he asked, entering and having a seat opposite from the field boss.

“Early doors, yeah?” Chance smiled, not knowing the team’s most visible owner was even on the grounds. “But I think it’s all right.”

“I think you’ll get it soon enough,” the Sky Sports pundit said. “How’s your interaction with the players?”

“They know me, and that’s good,” Chance replied. “I think they also like the idea of not having their bollocks roasted when they miss a pass in training.”

Johnno had famously boasted about the size of his during one of those late-season collapses the season prior. Nobody was going to outwork or out-passion him, that was for certain. Yet most people don’t make scrotal endowment a topic for casual conversation, and it simply showed the man’s volatility that Johnno had tried.

But there had to be a different arrangement in the coaching team. You can’t just scream at players and expect it to work over the long term. It’s great for a short spurt when a team needs a kick up the backside, such as in 2014-15 when Phil Power had the team going nowhere after a brilliant start.

However, in the lower leagues, and especially with players on either part-time or non-contract arrangements, the club did have a lot of leverage. Phil Neville had once called it the “ruthless end” of football. If the players don’t do enough to get in the team, they don’t get paid, or they get released.

But the middle ground was where the owners wanted to be. “Motivate positively and negatively,” Gary said. “Sir Alex did that and everyone knows about the negative part, but he could make you want to go out and run through a wall for him and he didn’t do that by telling you that you were s**t all the time.”

Chance nodded. “We need a stronger personality in the room and that needs to go for all the team’s moods,” the co-owner continued. “Bernard’s wonderful for when you need to roast them but the first time you do it, you’ll grab their attention in a way he and Johnno couldn’t.”

For his part, Chance wasn’t going to restrict Johnno’s time around his friend – he couldn’t – but he wasn’t the boss anymore and that was something Chance had to control. He was a good bloke off the pitch but on it, he knew how to wear out his welcome.

Johnno had been best man at Morley’s wedding over the summer and understandably so. But the former manager’s personality had been so strong, so severe, that he had to be given a short leash. In one incident in the television series done on the club, he stood in the middle of the room and demanded instant obedience to his direction from his players. “Do it immediately, or f**k off,” he said.

He was better to staff, and he was better to Chance, but the sting of his words could hurt nearly anyone below board level. When it was time to tell Chance he was done, they both did it. Two against one.

So when he went to the papers sounding like he was telling the owners their business, they had the opportunity to make a clean start. Chance wasn’t sorry to see him go from a professional standpoint.

That seemed a bit odd for a team that had earned successive promotions, but the Class of ’92 was nothing if not a group of hard-workers and, when the occasion merited, swashbucklers. That was what they felt Salford needed – someone who could relate to players but vary his mood to get the best out of them.

And that was why Chance was sat across from Gary Neville instead of someone else.

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Chance was well pleased.

Josh Hine had scored only two minutes into the team’s only home friendly, against Conference National side Lincoln City.

The breakthrough had been incisive, Hine’s finish clinical. The team seemed to be adapting fairly well to 4-1-3-2 and scoring so quickly against higher level opposition only proved it.

The Salford fans had turned out in their hundreds for the match, with a strong away contingent cheering for the visitors, and the chants of “Go on, Salford!” rang around the grand old ground a bit earlier than expected.

Stung, Lincoln quickly climbed back into the match. Yvan Wassi made the only mistake of his day in the 32nd minute and it turned out to be a big one, as the fullback didn’t stay with the back line on a Lincoln counter, playing both Adam Marriott and Matt Rhead onside about thirty yards from goal. Simon Grand was hung out to dry, with Marriott feeding Rhead for a tap-in goal that restored some order to the scoreline.

Chance faced a decision at half. He could shout, as Morley and Johnno probably would have done last season, or he could show the ‘new broom’.

He chose to be different. “Well done,” he said. “Let’s stay with each other at the back – and we will work on that because we can’t have it happening – but you’ve done very well against a team a league up. Now go out and get something for yourselves in the second half.”

The second half was more tactical, in its way. Salford dominated possession, but used it like you might expect a young and jelling team to use its possession, which is to say in a ragged fashion. The through balls mounted and so did the interceptions, as the home team gave away possession far too easily.

That is, until 68 minutes, when Hine made a great play just as Chance was about to substitute him. He won the ball on the touchline in the attacking third, worked around two defenders and laid off for David Norris. The least-fancied member of the first-choice midfield produced a strike that could only be called sublime, a twenty-five yard rising rocket that found the top left corner of Rob Watson’s goal. It was fit to win any football match, and it won this one.

One reason Norris’ goal was the match winner was because of the inspired play of trialist Rich Dearle in goals. Invited by Horne for two weeks’ trial, the ex-Nottingham Forest trainee made three dazzling saves in the last five minutes to secure his team’s win, including hacking a goal-bound effort off the line with the ball behind his body in the first minute of added time.

Not bad at all.

Salford City 2 (Josh Hine 2, David Norris 68)
Lincoln City 1 (Matt Rhead 32)
H/T: 1-1
A – 538 (101 away)
Man of the Match: David Norris, Salford City (MR 8.3)

“That kind of play is going to win you matches,” Chance crowed. “I don’t give a toss if it’s a friendly, that were a belting match you just played.”

The players looked at their new boss with muted enthusiasm. They seemed pleased but there seemed to be something better in them that wouldn’t allow them to celebrate. Eventually, Chance dialed his joy down a bit, and sent them home.

“Lesson learnt,” Morley smiled. “You didn’t yell at them at half but you gave them big ups at the end and they didn’t like that.”

Chance reacted defensively. “I’ll praise them when they deserve it,” he said.

“I know you will,” Morley replied. “Just don’t be surprised if sometimes that’s the reaction you get.”

# # #

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  • 2 weeks later...

Chance would spend evenings playing around with a wipeboard with a football pitch superimposed, thinking about tactics and how he would play his team when the matches started for real.

It was a great way for him to get away from it all. He wasn’t a movie fan, he didn’t like to listen to live music, and when there was nothing on telly he was only too happy to take up his dry erase marker and think up all manner of teams in all manner of alignments.

“You need to get out more,” Morley advised when he saw Chance’s wipeboard one day at training. He liked to use purple marker for whatever reason, and so many names had been written and erased on his previously white board that it had nearly turned lavender. He carried it with him most everywhere he went.

“I’m happy how I am,” Chance countered. “But married life agrees with you.”

Morley was a newlywed, one reason he hadn’t gone with Johnno when the owners made the change. He loved football almost as much as life – he might even say more – and the sure thing of an assistant’s income was what he needed while starting his family.

He still talked with his old mate, which was a bit of a worry to Chance at times, but it didn’t appear as though undermining the new boss was part of anyone’s plan. The Nevilles had seen a managerial job go down in flames at Valencia, and they understood a manager’s need to have someone watching his back.

“Aye, that it does,” Morley smiled. Like Johnno, he could be a good bloke when he was on the right subject, and his family was definitely that right subject.

Chance admired that feature in his assistant, but for the time being at least, he was happy alone. He wanted to go back to school sometime, both to improve his coaching badges as well as to complete his formal education, and he didn’t want to have to worry about women while he was at that stage of his life.

Not that they had come calling anyway. At the level where Chance played his football, there weren’t exactly a lot of groupies. There weren’t exactly a lot of fans, and that’s what you generally need to have groupies in the first place.

So yes, he was pleased to be where he was. He also needed to work an extra job – his roofing – to avoid needing a flatmate. With the hours he kept, he’d drive a flatmate crazy because after work was the only time to watch video.

His hours were long. An average day would start at 6am and end at midnight if he was lucky. He didn’t have time for women.

All he had time for was his football and whatever else his life required.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Charlie Albinson was the next new face in training. Rich Dearle wasn’t best pleased, but then the idea was to put out the best team possible and Salford needed to find strength in goal.

The former Man City trainee had been released by the Citizens and had been only too happy to stay near the city proper, signing for £15,000 for one season.

That meant that to sign Skapetis, if he worked out, Chance would have to break the wage bank. There were players on the transfer list – but there were no offers. The manager knew the payroll was too high for a club at this level, even with moneybags owners, and it made his job harder as the friendlies rolled on.

Albinson showed his gratitude by agreeing to play the second half at Ruthin Town the day after his arrival at the club – and promptly endeared himself to the fans by getting caught off his line in the 51st minute and gifting Rob Morgan a lobbed goal that his team’s play hardly deserved.

The majority of the match was played by Chance’s squad players, who needed to play their way into match shape, and who certainly looked like they needed to play their way into match shape. They were not very good, but still dominated the match in terms of chances and possession.

After that, the very small club held the small club at bay for a galling loss, even if it was a friendly.

Ruthin Town 1 (Rob Morgan 51)
Salford City 0
H/T: 0-0
A – 127 (41 away), Memorial Playing Fields, Ruthin
Man of the Match – Rob Morgan, Ruthin Town (MR 8.2)

And that meant Chance had a decision to make.

The team entered the changing room and sat for the post-match team talk. Morley was interested in how Chance would behave, too.

He wasted no time. “You know, I’m a nice man,” he said, “but I will be buggered with a pitchfork if I’ll stand for that sort of sh**e one minute longer.”

The players looked at Chance in disbelief. Red-faced, he lit into his team.

“I ought to let Bernard do this but you lot need to hear it from me,” he said. “I don’t give a hang if that’s a friendly you just played, there’s no f***ing way we should lose to that mob. And if I see performances like those again, people are going to reserves or worse.”

Morley was smiling, knowing that the “good cop” had been caught out. Chance caught him instead.

Chance shot him a glare that would have peeled paint off the changing room walls if they hadn’t been made of cinderblock. “We’ve just lost a bloody football match,” he yelled in the direction of his assistant, though everyone knew who he was talking to. “Maybe we think that’s funny? Maybe we bloody don’t.”

There was complete silence in the Salford rooms. Morley had wanted to see how Chance would react, and he knew the rollicking wasn’t meant entirely for him, but he had unintentionally committed a cardinal sin – smiling after a match lost.

“Get showered,” Chance said to his players, waving his hand in dismissal. George Green tried to clap.

“Belt it,” Chance snapped. “We were rank rotten.” The clapping stopped.

Morley followed Chance into the visiting manager’s office.

“That is what my hammer feels like,” the manager said, wheeling to face his number two. “Even though I know why you were smiling, don’t laugh after we’ve lost – ever again.”

Morley looked back at Chance. This time, he was not smiling.

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It was a bit awkward at training the next Tuesday. Chance had really laid down a marker both for his team as well as for his staff.

He had reviewed some rather poor quality video of the Ruthin Town match. Since the match had been so poor, it was only fitting that the video matched it. When he was done, he watched it again. And then, again.

It didn’t look any better the third time than it had the second, so Chance showed up at the next training session with a choice to make.

He chose to get back to business. “We’re bloody lucky that match didn’t count for anything,” he announced. “Because if it had, you lot would be running sprints until you puked.”

He showed some video and then let the players get back to work. “We won’t sit here and think about this because it’s a complete s**t show,” he said. “Instead we will learn from it. Today we’re going to work on second balls in drills because none of you really seemed acquainted with one last weekend.”

If there was one thing Chance couldn’t have been accused of when he played, it was being timid. He had a reputation as a hard-nosed player even in the lower leagues, who used graft and hard work to make up for the fact that natural talent had largely passed him by.

But what he had seen in the video was a timid team. That would never do at this level, where often the old adage of “who wants it more” is what separates wins from draws and draws from defeats.

His team hadn’t worked hard, and it had lost. That wasn’t acceptable.

“Again,” he called after he hadn’t liked what he had seen in the second ball drill. “If you lot aren’t willing to get stuck in, I’ll find people who are.”

“Again,” he called, after the repeat was less than he had expected.

Finally, after a third try, and after an hour of hard workout, he called the squad to the center circle.

“We’re done for the evening,” he said. “I know you’re a proud bunch and I get that, but if you’re proud, you’ll think about what happened and about how you played last weekend and tonight. There has to be better in there someplace because I’m sure not seeing it now. Get showered and go home.”

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He had been hard on them, but Chance was also being hard on himself.

A leader leads, he thought, and he hadn’t found a way to motivate his players. Yes, it was only a friendly and yes, some of the players were switched off but whose job was it to switch them on? You could argue that it was the player’s task, but in the end, the boss has to be the one in charge. He felt he wasn’t that person.

Gary Neville had called him after the friendly and reminded him that players have to learn a new manager just like a manager has to learn new players. “Remember why we hired you,” he heard through his earpiece. “Because you wouldn’t react like you’re doing now.”

Chance shook his head at that, remembering that he was there because his personality was different from the last peoples’, and calmed down a bit.

Four days later, the team played its final friendly against Buckley Town at Globe Way, and it was another match his men were expected to have little trouble winning. It was a chance for the team to rebound from a setback and more importantly it was a chance for Chance to be Chance.

The team played little better than it had against Ruthin, but at least it held possession better and made the attempt to appear dangerous in front of goal. This time they weren’t bad, they were simply wasteful.

Some of that was to be expected – truly polished players wouldn’t be in this league – but like a lot of games at this level, someone needed to grab it by the scruff of the neck.

That someone turned out to be Green, who took Sam Walker’s through ball and lashed home from fifteen yards past Danny Leek in first half added time. That put Salford ahead and given the way Buckley appeared inable to string three passes together, the lead looked fairly safe.

Unfortunately, just before Green’s goal, Hine was upended going after a cross and landed hard on his shoulder, his neck bending at an awkward angle. He rolled to a sitting position, tried to get up, found that wasn’t an especially good idea, and sat back down. He was stretchered off with his neck in a brace.

He insisted on giving a thumbs-up gesture to the (small) crowd as he was leaving, though, and the physios said the brace was simply a precaution.

“He can move everything just fine,” Chance was told. “We’ll get him a scan and see what’s happened in there. Any road, it’s not likely to be anything major.”

That was welcome news, but it surely meant time on the training table instead of time in the XI, and that meant allowances had to be made.

Buckley didn’t come near the Salford goal in the second half so instead of fuming because his boys had scraped a one-nil win over inferior opposition, he chose to stay positive.

“No goals conceded will get us some points,” he said with a smile as the team sat for the post-match team talk. “More of that, please. But we’re out of friendlies – so the next time you do this, it’ll matter a lot more. Shower off and enjoy your evenings.”

This time, he let the players clap. There was a good reason for that.


Buckley Town 0
Salford City 1 (Green 45+1)
H/T: 0-1
A – 113 (41 away), Globe Way, Buckley
Man of the Match – George Green, Salford City (MR 8.3)

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There wasn’t a lot he could do.

The work had been done, and for a part-time team, the players were in as good a match condition as Chance could put them in. The rest, they’d have to do on their own time.

So he spent the week before the opening league match against Gloucester thinking about how he could squeeze a bit more out of the team and out of himself as well.

Morley had apologized for his laughing after the Ruthin match and Chance had forgiven him. “How would you have reacted if I had been laughing after that gong show?” he had asked, and Morley had no option but to be honest.

“I’d have climbed the bloody walls,” he admitted.

Chance would have liked to think he had heard the last of that issue, but there was something about his relationship with Morley that unnerved him. Maybe it was because Morley had won something in the game and Chance hadn’t, even if was a seventh-tier league championship.

Maybe it was he was strong and aggressive in his manner and Chance was not.

Maybe it was because when Chance had swung his hammer, Morley had been embarrassed but little else. When Morley had swung his hammer, Chance had gone flying straight out of the club.

He didn’t seem to be a bad guy. But he represented a link to the past and that seemed odd, with his friend Johnno gone from the club. They had always been a two-man team and something didn’t seem quite right.

Yet, it was a funny old game, football. Things happen, or they don’t. It’s a cruel game, too. Friendships are made, broken, and remade in days. For now, though, something had happened and Chance didn’t have time to think about it. He did have to think about his team, as the matchup with Gloucester City and the opening of the season neared.

Salford City v Gloucester City – Vanarama Conference North Match Day #1
Moor Lane, Salford – Referee Stephen Smith

The crowd was surprisingly good, and all five members of the Class of ’92 were present in their accustomed position along the railing at one end of the ground.

As players arrived for the match, they were greeted by the owners, which seemed like a quaint thing until you remembered who they were. Professionals themselves seemed pleased by the gesture.

As it turned out, they were waiting for Chance, who arrived at the appointed moment and spoke with his employers.

“We’re ready,” he announced. “As ready as we will ever be.”

“Relax,” Scholes said, which for him was a major speech.

Morley entered the conversation, and you’d never have guessed that the bosses had let his best mate go the preceding spring.

“Bernard, big day for you,” Phil Neville began. The assistant manager simply smiled through thin lips.

“It’s time to do what’s necessary,” he said. That could have been taken in a number of ways, but for now it was a team thing to say and that was enough.

Hine had damaged his neck in the Buckley Town friendly and didn’t pass a fitness test. That was a blow but in the “next man up” mentality so popular in the game today, that meant a chance for Phenix, who didn’t want to waste it.

The team took the pitch to a stand just over half full on opening day. That said, the stand was significantly larger than it had been three years ago, so that news wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

The local flair attached to the club had attracted a number of curiosity-seekers as well as the long-time fans, which was one thing the owners wanted. Now, to show those new faces what was in display was something else again.

Chance watched nervously as the match kicked off. It turned out that he needn’t have worried. Green slipped his marker, found space at the top of the penalty area and drove a low shot home only twelve minutes into the match.

By the time the crowd had finished celebrating and the chants of “Go on, Salford” rang through the stand, Phenix had doubled Salford’s advantage. Eight minutes later, Green trebled it, scoring on a delicious and very well struck half volley to put the home team three goals up within the first twenty-two minutes.

After that, the team seemed to switch off and that was too bad. Gloucester was there to be routed and seemed to be awaiting the executioner’s axe, yet the Salford players stubbornly refused to wield it.

Still, three goals to nil is three goals to nil, and there’s no debating that. Chance told the players to be sure they stayed switched on for the second half and was only mildly surprised to see them completely disregard his comments for the vast majority of the second half.

Morley was quiet and patient, reminding Chance not to “get brassed off” about the team’s pedestrian attitude in the second half.

Six minutes from time, though, all four of the back line switched off at the same time and Luke Hopper ruined the team’s clean sheet.

That got Chance up like a jack-in-the-box, hotly pursued by Morley, who forgot for the moment that he was no longer the manager.

What the bloody hell did I tell you lot?” Chance screeched. The veins in his neck bulged like cordwood as the mild-mannered manager grew quite red in the face indeed.

This time, the team listened to him. They scored not once but twice before the match was over, with Sam Walker and Simon Grand, two rather unlikely goalscorers, getting into the act.

That mollified the manager, who had to remember that a four-goal win on opening day was pretty good work indeed.

Salford City 5 (Green 12, 22; Phenix 14, Walker 86, Grand 90)
Gloucester City 1 (Luke Hopper 84)
H/T: 3-0
A – 1,237 (23 away)
Man of the Match: George Green, Salford City (MR 9.6)

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I liked it!

___

“See what happens when you relax?”

If Scholes had made a major speech with a single word before the match, he had made one six times bigger after it. The mood was very good in the car park as the owners had a quick word with the manager after the season-opening romp.

“Can’t argue. Won’t argue,” Chance said, meaning his words in more ways than one. “We were pretty good today.”

They all made small talk after that. There was very little to discuss, frankly. The lads had been quite brilliant and everyone knew it.

That wasn’t to say there wasn’t pressure. Of course there was, and with the Class of ’92 there to turn the screws plus a billionaire waiting in the wings, Chance was acutely aware of that.

Yet this had been his boyhood club, while the five men around him were all at another, much bigger, footballing enterprise.

He had that much going for him.

The conclave broke up and Chance headed to his car to start for home. A group of women passed him heading in the opposite direction and one of them caught the manager’s eye.

She was tall, slender, and blond, with hair worn short to the nape of her neck and a figure to die for.

And bedroom eyes like Chance had never seen before. He had to smile. They were blue and most appealingly large. They gave her face something of a cherubic appearance, which Chance found most captivating.

“Bang tidy,” he thought to himself, until he saw the woman was smiling back at him. He nodded and got into his car.

“Go on, Salford!” she yelled, holding her scarf over her head as she did. Chance had never seen her at the ground before, but evidently she knew one of the cheers. So far, so good.

He drove to one of his haunts, the Duke of York on Marlborough Road. It was only two miles from the stadium so he didn’t have a lot of time to compose himself.

A wag would have noted that Chance wasn’t even in Salford – more properly, he was in Cheetham Hill and less than five miles from Old Trafford – but he was at a place he liked.

He entered as he always did and found a table in one corner of the old gothic style building as he always did. A waitress approached as he sat.

“Now then, Mr. Morrison,” she said with a smile. “Diamond?”

“Aye,” Chance answered, reaching into his laptop bag to pull out a tablet. “That’ll be grand.”

Soon she returned. As the waitress placed a rather lovely looking Holt Diamond Extra Cold Lager beside the tablet, he began to watch the match for a second time.

Green looked almost as good on video as he had looked in person. “Player, that lad,” Chance mumbled to himself, taking a pull from a fine pint of lager.

Then it was Phenix looking good, and then Green again. All his matches weren’t going to be this easy, but for now, life was good.

Then the ladies from the ground entered and with Chance having his nose buried in his tablet screen, he failed to notice.

They were ships passing in the night.

# # #

 

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Stalybridge Celtic (1-0-1, 10th place) v Salford City (1-0-0, 6th place)
Vanarama Conference North Match Day #2 - Bower Fold, Stalybridge
Referee Paul Rees

With a week between the first two matches, Salford’s good start was only good for sixth place once the second match rolled around. FC United had played three matches and won them all, so Chance’s men found themselves six points adrift after only seven days of the season, through absolutely no fault of their own.

He had put in three good days’ roofing work that week, training with the team on the other two days and resting from his exertions. He was fortunate in that he could work more or less when he wanted to in the high summer. In the winter, it would be more difficult.

He saved his money carefully, which didn’t exactly befit his personality, but he knew it would be necessary to get him through the winter months when other work was hard to find.

Of course, if he was successful in his football job, the possibility of a full-time position wasn’t the worst thing to consider if he could get Salford up another league.

For now, though, he had a trip to Stalybridge and Bower Fold to be concerned with. It wasn’t exactly a long trip – under fifteen miles by coach, so the team gathered the morning of the match for the leisurely ride east.

All three of the team’s first matches would be played in or near Salford, which was great from a travel standpoint. His players got off the coach ready to get stuck in.

Yet once the match started, they didn’t stick to much.

They had started cautiously, and that certainly kept the ball out of their goal, but there wasn’t nearly as much inventiveness going forward as there had been the previous week.

Possession was largely there for Salford but application was not. Stalybridge had more attempts for the match and often better attempts for the match, but Albinson was equal to the task.

The match needed a bit of magic and there didn’t seem to be a place to find it.

That is, until David Norris stepped into the breach. The 35-year old midfielder, who had played at Championship level for ten years with Plymouth, Ipswich, Portsmouth and Leeds, grabbed the whole game by the scruff of the neck. He smashed home a first-time volley from twenty yards and home eleven minutes from time to finally get Salford into the lead.

They made it stand up. The first away win of the season was in the bank and less than ninety minutes after the end of the match, the team was back home and ready to start its evening.

Stalybridge Celtic 0
Salford City 1 (Norris 79)
H/T: 0-0
A – 803 (159 away), Bower Fold, Stalybridge
Man of the Match: David Norris, Salford City (MR 8.2)

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Chance wanted the right tone.

The runup to the third match day of the season was a special one for a variety of reasons. First, it was against a rival. Second, it was against the rival.

FC United of Manchester would be the visitors, three points ahead of Salford having played one more game – but for the Class of ’92, this was a big match.

Of course, the “Red Rebels” were created as a protest to the Glazer family’s ownership of Manchester United, for which all five members of the Class had so proudly labored for many years, even if all of them hadn’t finished their careers at Old Trafford.

So that made the preparation extra special. With a week to prepare, and a bumper crowd expected, Chance wanted to leave as little to chance as possible for his part-timers.

And while he had nothing personally against longtime boss Karl Marginson, the fans certainly had something against each other. Or so it appeared, anyway. Having them at Moss Lane first would be a big help.

As the team arrived at the ground in one, twos and threes, Jessica Granger was waiting for Chance. “Hope you like the music,” she smiled as the boss headed into his small stadium office.

“Do I have a choice?” he asked, and the younger woman smiled at him.

“Of course you do,” she grinned, “but not if you know what’s good for you.”

That sounded ominous, so Chance simply told her that he’d plan to enjoy the pre-match playlist.

Salford City (2-0-0, 4th place) v FC United of Manchester (3-0-0, 2nd place)
Vanarama Conference North Match Day #3
Moor Lane, Salford – Referee Anthony Backhouse

The team took the pitch for warm-ups and Chance had to admit, the lady knew how to cook.

Pre-match playlist
Salford City v FC United of Manchester

Clap Your Hands – Parov Stelar
Sorry I’m Late – Kollektiv Turmstrasse
The Max – Prince and the New Power Generation
Head Like A Hole - Nine Inch Nails
Billy Jean on the Storm – Michael Jackson vs. The Doors
Can’t Stop the Rock – Apollo 440
Mercy – Duffy
Delirious (Boneless) – Steve Aoki & and Chris Lake & Tijiano featuring Kid Ink
Cleanin’ Up The Town – The Bus Boys (Ghostbusters OST)

Starting with Stelar proved to be a popular choice for the fans, many of whom had arrived early looking for a reason to do what the title of his song suggested. Before long they were really into it, to the point where Chance had to caution his players not to use too much of their own energy while warming up.

The atmosphere was terrific, and as the match kicked off Chance looked over to the owners, standing in their accustomed corner. Salford City had gone from a very small local club to a side capable of putting 2,000 fans into a newly updated ground.

There wasn’t a seat to be found anywhere, and the standing areas behind each goal were filled as well. That left the corners and the railing Gary Neville had expressly forbidden anyone to remove.

Chance had other things on his mind by this time, though, and watched with some satisfaction as his team pressed the Red Rebels all over the park.

The breakthrough came through Skapetis, who did a great job to find space at the right side of the FC United penalty area to drive home a half-volley in seventeen minutes. Ninety-five percent of the fans – the visitors had sold their allotment of 100 tickets – rose as one and cheered the home team to the rafters.

That sparked some very bright play by their heroes, and it was only by the hardest that the visitors avoided conceding a second. That is, until Green’s strike four minutes from the interval which not even a Manchester United keeper could have stopped.

Green’s placement was perfect, the goal was solidly and professionally scored, and the home team took a two goal lead to the changing room.

“Let’s learn from last time,” Chance demanded. “I want to see you switched on in the second half no matter what the score is. If you let these fans down, I won’t need to tear a strip off you because the supporters will do it for me.”

“I had never seen this side of you,” Morley said as the teams took to the pitch for the second half.

“Nobody ever tried to bring it out,” Chance replied, taking his seat on the bench.

Morley realized that Chance had a point. Nobody had tried to bring out his competitive side when he was at the club the first time. It was almost as though he was changing before their eyes.

The second half began and the inevitable riposte from FC United was not long in coming. Chance had dialed back the pressure a bit to sit behind the ball for the first ten minutes of the second half, expecting opportunities to counter would abound.

They got through the first fifteen minutes of the second half all right, but in the 61st minute Jerome Wright ghosted between the central defenders and lashed home to cut Salford’s lead to 2-1.

The traveling fans finally had something to cheer about and Chance frowned as the teams headed back up the park. “Suppose it was inevitable, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Chance growled.

At that, Morley looked at Chance, who nodded. The former co-manager headed to the touchline.

“Stay switched on, lads,” he yelled, pointing to his forehead. “They get nothing else today!”

At that he returned to the bench and sat beside Chance.

And at that, Salford started to play better. The veteran David Norris, who was proving to be quite deadly indeed from range at this level of play, restored Salford’s two-goal cushion only four minutes later, with an unstoppable volley to the top left corner of the goal for 3-1.

They were starting to look comfortable, and Green made it four eight minutes from time, his fourth goal in the season’s first three games. He was already looking the best player in the league and it certainly showed.

Now when the Salford players came off for substitutions they had a genuine crowd to applaud, and the majority of the 2,000 strong in attendance ate it up. This was the kind of performance that might bring some of them back, even if Jason Gilchrist pulled one back for the visitors to help the scoreline.

It had been a terrific win. As Backhouse blew for full time, Chance looked at Morley and grinned, extending his hand.

“I think we understand each other, Bernard,” Chance said.

Morley only smiled in reply.

The PA system had one more song to play. The old cowboy, Roy Rogers, sang “Happy Trails” with his wife Dale Evans, as the defeated Red Rebels left the pitch.

Cold? You bet. Satisfying? Absolutely.

Salford City 4 (Skapetis 17; Green 41, 82; Norris 65)
FC United of Manchester 2 (Jerome Wright 61, Jason Gilchrist 84)
H/T: 2-0
A – 2,000 (100 away), Moor Lane, Salford
Man of the Match – George Green, Salford City (MR 8.8)

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Wait for it ....

___

The win had moved them to second place, one point behind Tamworth with a match in hand. Everyone at the club was delighted at the quick start.

Training sessions, whenever the part-timers could get together, were starting to go better. Morley wanted more time for tactical training – one of the reasons Phil Power had been dismissed two years before was a perceived lack of tactical nous on his part – and Chance agreed.

However, there was only so much that could be done in the time available to the players. As a result, away days were actually an opportunity for Chance and Morley to talk tactics with the players.

In the very low league days, players were responsible for getting themselves to the ground. Now, there was at least a motorcoach – not a first-class one, mind, but enough for sixteen players, a manager and two coaches to get where they needed to go.

So it was that the trip to Liberty Way gave Chance the opportunity to drill the players in the nuances of the 4-3-1-2 he was asking them to learn. When it worked, it worked very well, but there were times when it didn’t seem to work at all and when that happened, the ball wound up in their goal almost every time.

The trip to Nuneaton was important for more than one reason. It was an away day, but it was also an opportunity to go top, and that doesn’t happen every day.

It was also Chance’s 34th birthday. He wanted a happy day and before the team left, no less a personage than Bernard Morley approached him.

“We’d like to get you blotto after the match if you’d like,” he said. “The coaches are buying.”

Chance looked at him quizzically. “Where’s Jonno?” he asked.

“Well, he’s my mate, yeah, but it’s your birthday, not his,” Morley explained. That kind of logic was hard to argue. The two were still virtually inseparable off the pitch but the team’s fast start had to stick in Jonno’s craw a bit.

This was the kind of team he would have loved to be around – gritty, some skill, but coachable. And he wasn’t there.

Chance decided to be magnanimous. “Tell him to come along if he’d like,” he said. Morley’s face turned into a frown, but not necessarily a bad one.

“All right,” he finally said. “That would be grand.”

Chance was genuinely trying to build a positive relationship with Morley, and he had made some real strides in recent days. He figured this would be another way to help in the process.

So as the team headed out for the trip to Nuneaton, things seemed just fine in Ammie country.

Nuneaton Town (2-1-0, 7th place) v Salford City (3-0-0, 2nd place)
Vanarama Conference North Match Day #3 – Liberty Way, Nuneaton
Referee – Jake Collin

The first quarter-hour was normal service, as the phrase goes. The visitors came out brightly, as you’d expect a team in form to do, and even made an early breakthrough.

It was that man again, Skapetis, doing what he already seemed to have shown a real knack for doing – finding space between central defenders in a zonal marking scheme and making his shot count. The visitors led and that was a nice birthday present.

Salford was doing very well in possession and generating more chances than their hosts, which was a second good thing. But Billy Daniels equalized for Nuneaton just after the half hour and at a stroke, the momentum of the match switched from visitor to host.

Chance didn’t like the signs. So he sat with Morley and asked for advice.

“Get them forward,” he urged as the first half entered added time. Chance saw the wisdom in that idea, showing the players that he wasn’t about to sit back and let Nuneaton take the match to them. So he stood up, walked to the touchline and whistled for Green’s attention.

He pointed forward, got a nod of recognition from the attacking midfielder, and turned back to the dugout.

Almost immediately, Nuneaton caught them on the counter, and it was Daniels again, sweeping home unmarked to put Nuneaton ahead at the break.

Red-faced, Chance didn’t look at Morley, who had been right in his judgment. It was his players who had been lacking in application, leaving their responsibilities at the door when they moved forward.

“Well, at least we have that our of our bloody systems,” he snapped as the team sat for the team talk. “Just not good enough, gentlemen. Not good enough. You hear me? Not good enough!”

He was wound up. Morley then stood as well and gave the kind of blistering talk only he could give, since Jonno wasn’t in the room.

Thus energized, the players had no choice but to absorb the reality check Nuneaton had given them in the first half. Determined to do better, they came out with an attacking mindset in the second and almost immediately made things happen.

Though not in a good way. The Salford players looked like they had never heard of a counterattack, and after two narrow misses, Rees Wedderburn couldn’t miss in 65 minutes. And he didn’t. Now it was 3-1 and Salford was up against it.

It’s at times like this that teams see what they have on the ball. The answer in this case was “not very much.”

Chance had learned something about his team that was most alarming. It was that in the offensive style he craved, they could be carved open with ease by a pacy opponent.

Happy birthday, Chance.

Nuneaton Town 3 (Billy Daniels 32, 45; Rees Wedderburn 65)
Salford City 1 (Skapetis 16)
H/T: 2-1
A – 831 (101 away), Liberty Way, Nuneaton
Man of the Match: Billy Daniels, Nuneaton Town (MR 8.8)

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Heh heh. Well , there are a few things I need to tweak in my tactic just yet.

___

“We’re still going out,” Morley insisted.

The team had nearly two hours up the A5 and M6 to think about their first defeat of the season, and it was pretty silent on the coach during the trip. So while Morley was insistent, he was quiet about it.

Realizing that a brew might not be the worst way to wash a disappointing day out of his thoughts, Chance agreed. He had received text messages from Gary Neville, who seemed to live and die with Salford, and Scholes, who attended most home matches but didn’t have quite as much to say.

“Happy birthday,” Neville offered. “Wish things would have gone differently today.”

“We need to figure out how to defend a counter,” he had replied, “and thank you.”

Before long they were at the Waldorf, just a couple of miles out of the city center, and a favorite haunt of some of the local footballers. As a recently married man, Morley didn’t get out much either and as an unattached man, Chance didn’t either.

The group gathered starting at 8pm. The squad was off the next day so nobody was looking at a clock. Morley, volunteer assistant Phil Priestley, goalkeeping coach and third-choicer Craig Dootson and chief physio Val McCarthy were all present.

Then Jonno walked in, and looked around. He found what he was looking for and approached the group.

“Happy birthday, old man,” he said, extending his hand to Chance, who shook it. The squaddie had an iron grip, as you might expect, and he sidled in next to Morley at the table as the pints began to flow.

“Wish things would have gone better today,” he offered, though without sarcasm.

He’s taking this well,” Chance thought, taking a pull from a Holt Diamond Extra Cold that was a nice cap to what had to this point been a rough day.

“Me, too,” he finally said. “We won’t win them all but we do have to look like we’re trying.”

“You’ll find that’s the hardest part,” Jonno replied. “We can yell and scream all we like but they have to listen, yeah?”

So far no other club had come in for Jonno’s services and that was a source of angst for him. A proud man, he wanted to get back into the game to show the owners that he could not only run a team, he could do it without Morley, who remained his best mate.

The two of them talked quietly – they were going to do that whether or not Chance was present – and the manager struck up a conversation with Dootson.

Then the waitress arrived, and Chance did a double take. The girls from the car park had just entered and that little blonde Chance had admired was with them. No doubt about it.

He smiled to himself and took another drink.

Just then he looked up and his blond-haired friend was standing next to him.

“Pardon me for intruding, but I just wanted to say I was at the match today,” she said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Chance immediately replied, and she smiled in return.

“Can’t win them all even if you want to,” she said, “but I wanted to tell you that I’m a supporter and I hope you can have a good season for the fans.”

Chance smiled, but before he could answer, Morley did it for him. “That’s grand of you,” he said. “We’re celebrating Mr. Morrison’s birthday despite it all.”

The lady’s face flushed bright pink. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

Now Chance spoke. “Not at all,” he replied. “I’m glad you stopped by. What’s your name?”

“Sara. Sara Copeland.”

“Thank you, Sara Copeland,” he replied, extending his hand. “Chance Morrison. Pleased to meet you.”

# # #

 

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They got Chance banjoed up and even poured him into a cab to take him home. That was neighborly of them.

The Sunday was spent nursing an understandable hangover but after that it was right back to business to prepare for a crunch clash with AFC Fylde.

There was going to have to be better in these players than they had shown against Nuneaton – Fylde had three wins and a draw from four matches and sat second behind Tamworth – but at the teams’ Monday training session, the only one before the Tuesday match, Chance made his feelings clear.

“We need to let the last one go,” he said. “Yes, we were s***e against Nuneaton. Yes, there will be days where we will be s***e again. That’s part of football. But one of those days is not going to be Tuesday.”

The fixture list called for them to travel again, this time to Kirkham. This wasn’t as long a trip – Mill Farm was located almost exactly on a straight line between Preston and Blackpool in Lancashire – so the coach left in the afternoon so the team could get off the bus and play.

AFC Fylde (3-1-0, 2nd place) v Salford City (3-0-1, 5th place)
Vanarama Conference North Match Day #5 - Mill Farm, Kirkham
Referee - Peter Gibbons

The match began with Salford in the same lethargy they had been in the preceding Saturday. However, part of that was by design. Chance’s intention was to do to Fylde what Nuneaton had done to them – absorb pressure and hit on the counter.

Fylde was a good, strong, organized side that was rugged and clearly built for Conference football. But midway through the first half, Chance and Morley realized that in attack, Fylde wasn’t exactly what the scouting report had claimed.

Salford grew a bit more adventurous as the half wore on, with Josh Hine working up front with Skapetis to try to make something happen in the Fylde defensive third. Nothing did in the first half, though, but by the time referee Peter Gibbons had blown for halftime, the visitors had seven attempts at goal to two for the home team.

Yet the breakthrough hadn’t come and Chance had a choice to make in the changing room. He chose to be the good cop.

“This is winnable,” he insisted. “It just takes one, now who’s going to be the one to get it?”

The teams took the field for the second half and just after the hour, Skapetis made the breakthrough. Hine was the provider, acting as a target man in Chance’s 4-3-1-2 look. With his back to goal he took a pass from Green, spun to his left and slid a delicious lead ball onto the diagonal run of Skapetis. His rising shot beat Rhys Taylor to his short side.

It was a goal that was especially special at this level, just a fine piece of skill between two strikers who were trying to build an understanding.

There were two areas where Chance couldn’t seem to find synergy: the central defenders and the strikers. It was a matter of finding out who worked best with whom and that was all there was to it.

The problem was that nobody seemed willing to step up and be part of either of those tandems except for Skapetis, who had been excellent. Club captain Simon Grand had started slowly in defense but had more or less come on, but the problem had been finding a partner for him.

As such Chance was watching Steve Howson closely. A Salford lad, the 6’1, 200-pound defender moved like an ice wagon but once he got set there was no going past him. While Fylde huffed and puffed, Howson and Grand were right in the middle of the action trying to stop them.

It wasn’t pretty. But it worked, and when it was done Chance had the rebound his team craved and as importantly, a potential partner for his captain.

AFC Fylde 0
Salford City 1 (Skapetis 61)
H/T: 0-0
A – 1,346 (83 away), Mill Farm, Kirkham
Man of the Match: Simon Grand, Salford City (MR 7.9)

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More than anything, Salford City needed a few days off.

Like all the Conference North teams, they had played a heavy schedule in the opening weeks while the weather was good. But on the other side, the season was over by the end of March, which made the early season hard work worthwhile.

But for now the games were coming thick and fast. The Ammies had gone top with the win at Fylde, but led Nuneaton by two points with one more match played so the lead wasn’t exactly secure.

The feeling was good, though – with the exception of the Nuneaton match, the Ammies were playing like they belonged in the league they were in. They were explosive in the attack and not nearly as good in the defense but these were things that could be worked upon.

Next up was a home match against Gainsborough, a team already settling down to mid-table but one against whom Chance thought his players could work on a few things they needed to improve.

Right back in action on the Saturday, the Ammies would be at home before an enthusiastic crowd and Chance knew it would serve them well. They had been very good at home in his short experience and the friendly confines of Moor Lane would undoubtedly be good to them again.

But the thing of it was, Chance was happier with the one-nil at Fylde than he had been with the 5-1 pasting of Gloucester in the opening match of the season. He was starting to identify weaknesses in his team and as such, the clean sheet was very satisfying to him.

Gainsborough was the next item on Salford’s agenda, a team that had lost only one of its first five matches, just like the Ammies. However, they had two draws, which is why Salford was first and Trinity was tenth.

Chance gave the team two full days off to rest tired legs. He could sense a weariness among the regular players that he wanted to nip in the bud, especially this early in the season. The matches came thick and fast in the early going and without the squad size to truly rotate players effectively, off days were the only method Chance had of keeping players like Green fresh.

The squad was rounding into match shape nicely – being a part-time team hurt with fitness – but even five matches into the season, Chance would need to play players out of necessity who weren’t fully fit. So far, knock on wood, the injury bug had avoided them.

Salford City (4-0-1, 1st place) v Gainsborough Trinity (2-2-1, 10th place)
Vanarama Conference North Match Day #6 - Moor Lane, Salford
Referee Ian Hussin

Gainsborough started the match the same way Salford had at Fylde – cards held close to the vest, and looking for a chance to counter. Thinking that the Ammies would be set out to attack – and they weren’t wrong in that – the Trinity backliners invited the pressure and looked to counter.

“At least we know they look at match video,” Chance commented to Morley midway through the first half. Taking down the league leaders required a bit of effort these days and clearly Gainsborough had spent a bit of time looking at Salford.

Chance continued his search for a second striker who could play well with Skapetis, who was one of the few names, along with Green’s, to almost be guaranteed a spot on the team sheet. Today it was Mike Phenix’s turn and the two of them huffed and puffed against the Trinity back line for the entire first half to the tune of two shots on target.

That was two fewer than the visitors, which earned the Ammies a warm reception when they returned to their changing room for the halftime team talk.

“We don’t look like we know where the goal is,” Chance said quietly. He was trying a different tactic with the players – since yelling wasn’t his style and he was trying to stay true to himself.

Whatever it was Chance was trying to do, it didn’t exactly translate. The second half started as the first half had ended – a staid, dull affair that was a very poor advertisement even for this level of football.

That was, until the breakthrough. An inch-perfect square ball found the foot of the striker who powered home from ten yards – but it w as Gainsborough’s Nathan Jarman on the receiving end rather than Skarpetis, and the home team trailed in the 65th minute.

That put Salford into the position Chance hadn’t wanted to see them in – needing to chase a game and being vulnerable to a counter game at the same time. Yet this time, the result was different.

It came through Phenix, who latched onto a great little chip pass from Green seven minutes after the first goal to level the match eighteen minutes from time.

Moor Lane was about 75 percent full for this game and the good-sized crowd showed its appreciation. That was better stuff.

That was, until referee Ian Hussin put Gainsborough on the spot through a penalty awarded against Wassi in the 78th minute.

The defender reacted like the referee had shot his dog, and Jarman stepped to the spot to the loud whistles of the home fans. They made no difference, though, as Jarman sent Albinson the wrong way for a 2-1 advantage.

“Well, I’ll be wildly f***ed,” Chance announced to no one in particular.

“No sense getting your mad up,” Morley said, trying to mollify his boss, who would have none of it.

The annoyance Chance felt was matched only by his team’s inability to find a response. This one hurt – it was at home and as far as Chance was concerned, the referee had decided the points.

Salford City 1 (Phenix 72)
Gainsborough Trinity 2 (Nathan Jarman 65, pen 78)
H/T: 0-0
A – 1,484 (41 away), Moor Lane, Salford
Man of the Match – Nathan Jarman, Gainsborough (MR 8.6)

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Chance tried to avoid Hussin after the match. He wasn’t happy and didn’t want a sanction. He told the team what he honestly felt – they had been hard done by and the players seemed to take that well.

He was also glad there was no media covering the match – Salford wasn’t yet at that level where they could demand regular coverage – so he had no outlet to say what was on his mind.

So he chose Morley as his target, a known referee-watcher in his own right. He needed to vent and Bernard showed a great deal of understanding.

“Bloody shambles,” he agreed. “But now’s the time you tell the lads these things even out.”

“Maybe they do, but that’s cost us two spots in the table,” Chance snapped, looking at his phone for the day’s results. They hadn’t gone well.

Salford had dropped from top to third place – still great and still far beyond expectations, but still not what Chance wanted to see. He was in a very bad mood as he headed out for a drink, his laptop in tow to watch video of the day’s setback.

Soon he was sat in the corner at the Duke of York with his Diamond in hand – but after you lose, even the drinks don’t taste as good.

He replayed the penalty over and over, looking for a foul against Wassi that he never found. Surely it was red-and-black colored glasses he was wearing, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

He looked up to see Sara standing beside him. “You’re going to have a heart attack if all you do is look at video after you lose,” she said, nearly in a teasing fashion.

“Why is it I only seem to see you after we lose?” Chance asked, returning the lady’s smile.

“Just lucky, I guess?” she asked. “Mind if I sit down?”

Ordinarily Chance would have refused, but this seemed different. She sat and Chance simply admired her soft good looks.

“It looks to me like you could use a friend,” she said. “It’s no fun obsessing over a lost match, even if you are the manager.”

“You know, there are some fans who would disagree with you,” he said, taking a pull of the Extra Cold Lager. It was starting to taste better.

“There’s also more to life than football,” she said, which to Chance was nearly sacrilegious.

“Really? What else is there?” Chanced asked. “I mean for me, there’s roofing…”

“You aren’t very good at this, are you?” Sara asked, her ready smile showing she meant no offense. “Come dance with me and I’ll show you.”

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He felt better. The song had at least been slow. No matter Sara’s thoughts on winning and losing, the manager being seen getting down with his bad self after a home loss wouldn’t have gone over well.

They hit it off well. Chance had even gotten her mobile number, which he hadn’t anticipated.

The next day, though, it was back to work. Preparations began for a trip to Ashton-under-Lyne and a battle with nominal rival Curzon Ashton, which wasn’t off to the best of starts.

It was the kind of match Chance craved, to see how far his team had come, especially on the back of a disappointing loss at home. Getting on the road was a good thing for them, even if it was only a few miles.

But above all, the match gave Chance a chance to remind his players that hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard, and that you make your own breaks. Once he had run out of clichés, he sent a transformed eleven onto the pitch.

Curzon Ashton (2-1-3, 15th place) v Salford City (4-0-2, 3rd place)
Vanarama Conference North Match Day #7 - The Tameside Stadium, Ashton-under-Lyne
Referee David Richardson

The Nash seemed bound and determined, almost from the opening kickoff, to show why they were 15th in a 22-team table.

The first fifteen minutes were dire on both sides of the ball, but especially from the home team, which seemed unacquainted with the idea of stringing two passes together. They couldn’t blame the pitch – it was in decent shape and it was a nice early autumn day – but they could blame a lack of skill, because it simply wasn’t on display.

Skapetis finally made them pay for it twenty-one minutes into the match, and in the most ridiculous of ways. He stole a short back pass and went in one v one. The keeper had no chance and Salford led away.

That was the stuff Chance was after, but even as he implored his team forward for a second goal that would surely kill off the match, it just never came.

The match dragged to halftime still at one-nil and looking for all the world like it would stay that way well into the second half.

That was enough for Chance, who would have loved a one-nil win away, until his central defense made an error that made him question the new partnership between Howson and Grand. Neither one of them noticed Ian Heffernan standing between them and neither one of them noticed him latching onto a through ball that had the score tied in 68 minutes.

“Nice finish,” Chance moaned. “Too bad nobody on our back line noticed.”

Instead, the two men stood next to each other, one arm raised in a feeble protestation of offside. That wasn’t helpful.

The idea now was to get men forward and to try to restore the situation, but with the team playing as lethargically as it seemed to be playing now, that was almost as difficult as Curzon Ashton trying to pass between themselves in the first half.

On a rare foray forward, the ball wound up at Green’s feet, and the player went down on a shoulder charge from Danny Shaw.

Then there was referee David Richardson, pointing to the spot. Chance couldn’t believe it.

That’s an awfully soft penalty,” he hissed to Morley, standing to his right.

“They can’t hear you, Chance,” Morley replied, over the boos and whistles of the crowd assembled behind the benches.

The manager simply smiled, and watched as Skapetis whipped a perfectly taken penalty home to get Salford back into the lead twelve minutes from time.

And in a match as dire as this one, that was enough. Chance was left to remark that yes, sometimes the game does even things out – and sometimes it does so sooner than you might expect.

Curzon Ashton 1 (Ian Heffernan 68)
Salford City 2 (Skapetis 21, pen 76)
H/T: 0-1
A – 324 (84 away), The Tameside Stadium, Ashton-under-Lyne
Man of the Match: Peter Skapetis, Salford City (MR 8.6)

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“Top again,” Chance said, looking at his phone on the brief coach ride home.

Worcester was now the second placed team in the table, with Gainsborough a point back. The win had been timely, and it now put the team on fifteen points.

And, to be fair, it had been a nice answer to the most recent loss – but the team was hardly firing on all cylinders after its purple patch to start the season.

“Long season,” Morley said from the seat across the aisle.

“No doubt,” Chance replied, both men trying to play the Captain Obvious role to perfection.

“We’ll get them put right,” Morley offered, reading Chance’s mind. Right now, Salford was that most rare of anomalies – a table-topping team which wasn’t playing as well as it was capable.

“We can’t give teams a chance to climb on top of us or they will do,” Chance mused, flipping through the day’s scores a second time, as if wondering whether some of them would change.

The day’s matches over, Chance could put his thoughts on other things for a few minutes. One of those things (or was it two of those things?) was Sara, who had texted him regularly over the preceding days and seemed interested in a relationship.

“Bang tidy,” Chance thought to himself as he looked at a selfie she had shot of the two of them on the dance floor. She looked like she belonged there. Chance looked like he had been dragged there. But no matter – they looked good together and for now, that was enough.

His phone buzzed and he saw a text message from Sara waiting for him.

“Great job today,” she offered, “and congratulations. Manager of the month!”

That seemed odd. Yes, his team was in first place at the turn of the month but he hardly considered himself to be the award-winning kind, especially not in his first full month at Salford’s helm. Yet, as the Americans say, “ball don’t lie,” and ball certainly didn’t lie here.

What was nice was that Chance hadn’t heard of his honor until Sara had told him. That counted for something and he liked the thought.

“You may be too good for me now,” she teased in a second text.

“Hardly,” he replied. “Meet you for a pint this evening?”

She had accepted surprisingly quickly and before long they were at the Duke of York at their accustomed table, with Chance walking through the day’s events at the Tameside.

This was more like it, he thought, as the two simply learned about each other. Football was nice to talk about, and she certainly seemed a knowledgeable supporter, but for this evening it was on the back burner.

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“So, is she your girlfriend?”

Morley could afford to tease Chance. The team was top of the table with the 18th placed team, Alfreton Town, coming in for the next match. Things were going well.

“She’s a friend,” Chance smiled. “That’s all you need to know.”

And indeed, she was. Sara and Chance had gone out a couple of times in the intervening period, once to catch a movie, and once for a drink. To some people, that was enough to make a relationship Facebook-official, but for Chance at least, it was a chance to unwind with a friend who happened to be rather distressingly gorgeous.

But Morley wouldn’t let go of the idea. “Really, Chance, she’s lovely and you should … well, you know … you just should.”

Bernard Morley had never been one to spare the language when he felt strongly about anything, so his sudden burst of decorum was as humorous as it was effective.

“I’m not that kind of a guy,” Chance smiled, as the players began a tactical drill.

“The hell you aren’t,” Morley laughed in reply. “I’ve learned a lot about you in the time you’ve been here and if there’s one thing I’m sure of it’s that you’re a horrible liar.”

“It’s not for a married man to rate women,” Chance reminded him, and Morley just grinned.

“I’m married, not dead,” he deadpanned. There was certainly no arguing that point.

But there was a point to what he was saying. He had seen quite a bit of Sara in recent days – not as much as some wags would have suggested he wanted to see, even if that kind of talk was fashionable nowadays – and he liked the feeling.

He liked winning more, though, and for the time being that was the top priority.

Salford City (5-0-2, 1st place) v Alfreton Town (2-1-3, 18th place)
Vanarama Conference North Match Day #8 - Moor Lane, Salford
Referee - Peter Wright

Coming home was just the right thing to clear Chance’s head. Alfreton had been indifferent through their first six matches so Chance was hoping to jump on them early and keep them that way.

The visitors were up for it, though, as Terry Kennedy wound up in Peter Wright’s book after only eight minutes with a thundering challenge on Skapetis which left the Salford man needing the magic sponge.

Moor Lane was just over three-quarters filled for the occasion and the fans were thus brought fully into the match. Salford responded well, throwing men forward with dash and style, but coming up with nothing until the player who started it all – Skapetis – found a way to goal just before the half-hour, launching a searing drive past German keeper Fabian Speiss and home for the breakthrough.

There was quite literally nothing to be upset about with the home team’s play, so Chance decided to sit back and enjoy a few minutes of football from a team that was playing well. Alfreton couldn’t get near the goal in the first half, not registering a single shot, much less getting one on target.

“More of the same,” Chance demanded at the break. “Let’s see how long you can keep them off frame.”

Three minutes after the restart it was reserve midfielder Sam Walker who doubled the advantage. He was supposed to be playing behind the likes of Norris, Barnes, Green and Haughton, but the problem was that whenever Chance put him out there, Walker played like he was possessed. This time it was just a simple sidefoot home from five yards, but the midfielder had arrived late, gotten to the right position, and taken his chance for two-nil to the home team.

Chance admired Walker’s ability to get to the point when he was out there, and as such was a highly useful substitute – or even as a starting player when he wanted to get someone’s attention. Walker got it, and that meant a lot at this level.

Yet it was the veteran Craig Westcarr, playing for his thirteenth club despite being only age 31, who made things interesting just after the hour with an impressive effort from the edge of the Salford penalty area. Sometimes the other guy just beats you, and that had been the case here.

Yet Alfreton Town hardly troubled anyone the rest of the way – curious for a team looking to move up the table. Their failure to place pressure on the Salford goal was one reason why they were a mid-table team and looked likely to stay that way.

Salford City 2 (Skapetis 28, Walker 48)
Alfreton Town 1 (Craig Westcarr 61)
H/T: 1-0
A – 1,567 (89 away), Moor Lane, Salford
Man of the Match – Patrick Brough, Salford City (MR 8.1)

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You're welcome :)

___

Not many people drop what they’re doing in order to follow the FA Cup Second Qualifying Round Draw, but while sat on a rooftop in Hale, that’s exactly what Chance was trying to do while staying out of the view of his foreman.

The morning’s job was simple – he was reshingling an old home in one of the more fashionable areas of the district – but he was wondering who his team would get upon their entry into this year’s knockout competition.

The Class of ’92 had set the goal of two wins in the competition for Chance – which was to say, reach the Fourth Qualifying Round and we’re all good. That made the draw important.

Eventually, he liked what he saw. It was AFC Bridgnorth of the Counties League, at home, on the 17th September. His team would be fancied in that match and that was just fine with Chance.

The way they were playing, they should have been fancied. Almost immediately, as he got back to work, he started thinking about ways to get different players into the mix to increase match sharpness and as he did, his phone buzzed again.

It was a text from Gary Neville. “My mate in Hale says he can see you on that roof checking your phone,” he joked. “Get to work!”

Then the phone buzzed again. “And nice draw, BTW. Good luck.”

The fixture list had Salford home again, this time to FC Halifax, and the home cooking certainly was good for the team. So was a good, if short, week of training with a focus Chance really liked seeing.

Bernard was a 4-4-2 man and wasn’t really shy about saying so. Chance preferred 4-3-1-2 and wasn’t shy about playing it.

At that time, the Ammies trained three alignments – Chance’s preferred team, a 4-2-3-1 and a 4-5-1 related to the second alignment in that it could become 4-2-3-1 at the drop of a hat or the whim of the manager.

As such, since he didn’t have his way in terms of formation, Bernard wanted tactical preparation. And this week, the players really seemed to get it for the first time. When a team trains only twice a week, that can be quite a nuance, and as such Chance looked forward to seeing the results.

Salford City (6-0-2, 1st place) v FC Halifax (3-2-3, 12th place)
Vanarama Conference North Match Day #9 – Moor Lane, Salford
Referee: Simon Barrow

Five minutes into the match, all the focus had been thrown on the scrap heap, as Liam King headed off to the small aggregation of away supporters, pulling himself along by the badge on the shirt, while Albinson fished the ball out of his goal with a look of utter disgust on his face.

It had been far too simple. King found space – way too much of it, in fact – in the left hand channel and given the keeper practically no chance despite shooting from an angle.

“Sometimes we look like we’ve never seen a football when the opposition has it,” Chance snapped at Morley, who for the moment remained a stationary target. Then the assistant was up on the touchline for a moment, pointing angrily to his head while gesticulating in the direction of the back line.

Back he soon came, taking his seat on the bench while the home team tried to climb back into the match before a crowd that was suddenly as restless as it was large.

They needn’t have worried long, though, as Skapetis equalized from near the penalty spot in 22 minutes to get Salford level, at which time the pitch seemed to tilt in the direction of the visitors’ goal.

The goal from the poacher galvanized Salford, which suddenly began to pour forward with confidence and energy, of the good kind.

It was Green who put them ahead, with an effort from distance seven minutes before the interval, and with Chance mollified in terms of his team talk, Hine found a way to sneak into space to add a third just before the match ticked into first half added time.

That changed Chance’s team talk for the third time. Now it was a whole different game.

“Pour it on them,” he urged. “Don’t let them off the mat. This match is there for you to grab. Now get out there and do it.”

Green was the first to listen, powering home eight minutes after the restart for a fourth goal that effectively killed the match – or so Chance thought.

Just nine minutes later, Adam Morgan was dancing around in the Salford six-yard box, after leading the central defenders a dance before toying with Albinson to cut the arrears to 4-2.

Chance leaned back and looked at the sky, his exasperation with Grand apparent for everyone to see. Salford’s captain wasn’t having his best day.

But Hine answered quickly, finding space to the short post only four minutes after Morgan to restore Salford’s three-goal advantage. And if Chance was upset with his defenders, he couldn’t hold a candle to Billy Heath, who was up and screaming after every Salford incursion.

They were having a howler, and Heath finally sat down in disgust when Bradley Barnes made it six in 72 minutes by converting an inch-perfect cross from Yvan Wassi.

Now the fans were roaring, and Green did nothing to calm them down when he completed a dominating hat trick ten minutes later with a rasping effort that clipped the crossbar before deflecting down into the goal to make it 7-2.

“Do you think if I took the lot of them off they could leave without falling down?” Heath snarled, loudly enough for the Salford bench to hear them. It was a moment of levity, at least from the home team’s point of view, in a match which rather needed it.

Morgan scored a consolation goal on the stroke of time for Halifax, which was enough to make Chance frown one last time, but by the time Simon Barrow blew his whistle to end the proceedings, the devastation of Halifax was complete.

Salford City 7 (Skapetis 22; Green 38, 53, 82; Hine 45, 66; Barnes 72)
FC Halifax 3 (Liam King 5; Adam Morgan 62, 90)
H/T: 3-1
A – 1,428 (83 away) – Moor Lane, Salford
Man of the Match – George Green, Salford City (MR 9.6)

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“Entertaining? Sure. But I’d rather us be a little less entertaining at the back.”

There were a few reporters at the post-match news conference this time – as befitted a team leading its league. There was no doubt that Salford was lethal going forward but at the level of football in which they played, high-scoring affairs could happen at the drop of a hat.

A look at the numbers told a lot. Salford topped the league in goals scored but was fifth bottom in goals conceded.

They could beat opposition at this level that way, but where the Class of ’92 wanted to go, that kind of play simply wouldn’t do.

“So, what will you do about it?” he was asked. “Players coming in?”

“Not entirely that easy,” Chance said, not ruling out new players but not wanting to alarm his current squad, which was long on numbers but short, evidently, on marking ability.

“We need to get better at the things we need to do better,” he said, trying to be cryptic but instead making his meaning crystal clear.

“Well, since you scored seven goals today it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what those things are,” he was informed.

“You’d be right,” Chance said. “I mean, seven goals is incredible, amazing, wonderful, but we can’t keep giving up two, three goals in a given match and hope to get where we’re going.”

“What about going full-time?” Reporters.

“Talk to the chairman,” Chance said, his good humor starting to evaporate. “We just need to be better in our own defensive third. That’s our goal.”

Chance was so upset, he asked the scouting team to start looking at potential center halves for acquisition. That would take a bit of time for a part-time team, but the resources were there to make a signing and it was the area that stood out like a sore thumb to even the casual observer of the Ammies.

But for now, seven goals were enough to make anyone smile.

It certainly made Sara smile, as Hall and Oates might have sung in a different context.

They sat, as always, in the Duke of York, but this time seemed easier than the others. He enjoyed her company and when they followed their drinks with dancing at the club this time, it was with much less reticence on Chance’s part.

He even tried a faster song, which for Chance was a big deal. When the DJ played Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” she grabbed him by the hand and led him to the floor.

He worked off his last ale, and before long they were doing a passable job of respecting the art form.

They stayed out there for a few songs, until Chance realized that he wasn’t as fit as he had been in his playing days.

“Mind if we step out for some fresh air?” he asked, and she smiled, taking his hands as they walked to the door.

Soon they were outside and taking a brief walk around the block. They traveled behind the club, and Sara smiled up at her friend.

“So,” she said, “when are you going to get around to kissing me?”

Chance flushed. “Well, I…” he began, but Sara just grinned at him.

Like a flash, she backed him against the back wall of the club and fell into his arms. She pressed softly but firmly against him and they kissed for the first time.

“I was hoping you wanted that,” Chance admitted once they finally came up for air.

“Now,” she cooed, leaning her head against his chest, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

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  • 2 weeks later...

Now she’s my girlfriend,” Chance said to Morley the next morning.

“What made the difference?” his assistant teased.

“Well, a good-night tonsillectomy had a lot to do with it,” Chance grinned.

“Naughty boy,” Morley replied, as the two men walked side-by-side to the training ground, where they were assisting the grounds crews with daily work. Salford City was still a small-enough club where volunteer labor meant a lot.

Since the players wouldn’t report for training until the next evening, that meant there was work to be done that morning, even though it was a Sunday.

The pitch was still holding its firmness well, despite the recent action seen upon its surface. The two men rolled the pitch with a large roller, working side by side, and Chance had a chance to think

Finally, he turned to Morley. “She kisses me, and I’m the naughty boy?” he said.

“Now, you never said that,” the assistant replied. “They don’t bite, you know.”

“A bloke shouldn’t kiss and tell, especially in this day and age,” he answered.

“Well, don’t worry about that,” Morley answered. “Nobody told me anything.”

The two were starting to mesh, it appeared. Chance could almost overlook the fact that he had once been let go by Morley, and Morley could almost overlook the fact that he was second to someone he had once dismissed as unfit for purpose.

Both had had to make changes to their belief systems for that arrangement to work, and work it had. At least to this point. So maybe the Class of ’92 had had a point when it made the change it had.

After the grounds work was done, though, Chance had a more important meeting to attend – with the scouts, whom he had asked to find him a center-half.

The combinations hadn’t worked. Grand worked hard, God knew, but he was struggling to hold his own in the Conference North. Should Salford move up, what would become of him?

There just wasn’t a lot of quality to pair him with, either. Players like Brough at fullback, Green in midfield and Deon Moore up front were surely of a higher standard, but they were loan players and there were very few men at the club who could hold a candle to any of them.

Chance was playing with borrowed money, and that didn’t appeal to him. He wanted players under contract to the club – and that was a problem.

The Class of ’92 had money and the overseas owners had even more, but they had put in all of what they intended to put in for the season. It was a simple question of ambition.

For the time being, the fixture list figured to be kinder to Salford than it had been. Kidderminster was next, away – and if you were looking for a team to keep a clean sheet against, Harriers were as good a candidate as anyone.

They had scored one goal in their last five matches. On the other side of the ledger, though, they were fourth in the league in goals conceded, with only eight against in nine matches. It was no wonder, then, that they were mid-table but competitive in every match they had played.

Playing away from home, though, Chance knew his team needed to be careful. This was a match where one mistake could cost two points or more.

So it was that the manager focused his players on their defensive responsibilities in training heading up to the match. Even though Harriers would make the proverbial 98-pound weakling look like Sandor Clegane by comparison, it was a tricky fixture far from home.

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Kidderminster Harriers (3-2-4, 15th place) v Salford City (7-0-2, 1st place)
Vanarama Conference North Match Day #10 – Aggborough, Kidderminster
Referee: Declan Ford

Only seven minutes into the match, Skapetis was on the scoresheet, the red-hot striker netting from fifteen yards with a seeing-eye ball that seemed to find its way through half the Kidderminster defense on the way to its home in the back of the net.

But as positive a harbinger as that should have been, Salford flattered to deceive. Harriers found their stroke, which they hadn’t found in nearly a month, and created a parade of chances and opportunities in front of Albinson, who at first started to yell at his defenders and finally was reduced to shaking his head in disbelief.

It was a clown show at the heart of the Ammies back line. Grand was awful and Howson not much better – but as good as they were in attack, Kidderminster still couldn’t find a way through.

That was due to those big white things called goalposts. The home team struck two of them solidly in the first half and should have gone to the interval in the lead.

Salford, after its goal, couldn’t string two passes together and looked lethargic. So despite being in the lead at the break, Chance asked for more from his team.

Walker was the only player who listened, doing so three minutes into the second half with a well-taken volley that on any other day would have killed off the game.

Sadly, though, Walker picked up his fifth yellow card of the season shortly afterwards and would therefore miss the match at Chorley, but what was much more distressing was how easily the low-scoring Harriers were picking apart the Ammies back line

They had hit two goalposts in the first half. They hit another in the second, plus a crossbar for good measure. By some miracle, Albinson had a clean sheet as the match headed toward injury time but Salford was playing like a punch-drunk boxer; covering his head to avoid the kill shot and hoping the ropes will save him.

Inevitably, Harriers scored. Jordan Lonchar, who had accounted for two of the struck goalposts in the match, finally managed to avoid hitting one and hitting the back of the net instead, in hitting a well-struck volley four minutes from time.

That brought the crowd to its feet – and it was of decent size, so it made a difference – as Harriers surged forward looking for a late equalizer.

They didn’t find it, though it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Kidderminster Harriers 1 (Jordan Lonchar 86)
Salford City 2 (Skapetis 7, Walker 48)
H/T: 0-1
A – 1,382 (96 away) – Aggborough, Kidderminster
Man of the Match – Sam Walker, Salford City (MR 8.3)

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“They should have bloody manhandled you!” Chance exclaimed in the changing room after the game. “They didn’t, and that’s football, but sometimes it’s what happens. You were damned lucky to win this game today so be thankful for that on the way home. We’re going to the bottom team in the table next week and if you aren’t better, it’s going to be f***ing embarrassing for you lot. Now get showered.”

When it was all right for someone else to speak again, the assistant manager finally broke the silence.

“Did we win?” Morley finally asked, with just enough of a smile to avoid getting punched in the mouth.

“I think we did,” Chance replied, his annoyance showing through. Yes, he was the good cop, but sometimes it’s not wise to prod any kind of cop, good or bad. He was angry and had every reason to be.

He saw on his phone that Fylde had found the range five times against FC United of Manchester, to stay two points back in the table.

And, he was thinking about the upcoming trip to Victory Park in Chorley. As they boarded the coach for the ride home, Chance turned to Morley.

“Where we’re playing next week, if a player throws up his arms after scoring, the pitch is so small he’s liable to punch someone out by accident,” he said.

“Small pitch,” Morley admitted. “And they can’t stop anybody scoring, so being small is the best way they have to park the bus.”

“We’ll have to figure it out,” Chance replied, sitting in his usual seat in the front row opposite the driver.

As he did, he saw a text message from Sara waiting for him. Her smile made his smile bigger, and he was always delighted to hear from her.

Got lucky today,” she teased, telling Chance nothing he didn’t already know.

Can I be lucky enough to take you out for dinner when we get back?” he replied.

Never know how lucky you might get,” she answered, which made Chance blush.

He had thought of that before, but didn’t think they were far enough along in their young relationship to bring the issue up for discussion, so to speak.

So things were going well on a lot of fronts. As the coach rolled home, Chance thought he might as well enjoy the end result of the match since it had, after all, been a good day.

She was waiting for him in the car park when they got back to Moor Lane. As the players claimed their bags and personal items from the storage area, they too met their wives and girlfriends. It was a nice feeling not to be alone any more.

“Hey you,” Sara said, wrapping her arms around Chance and kissing him. “You did win today.”

“And I’m winning tonight,” he said, returning her kiss and winking at her. “Let me get my things and let’s get out of here.”

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Chorley (1-2-7, 22nd place) v Salford City (8-0-2, 1st place)
Vanarama Conference North Match Day #11 – Victory Park, Chorley
Referee: Ryan Johnson (MR 5.6)

Sometimes records don’t mean a whole lot, and Chance’s goal the whole week prior to the Chorley match was to make sure his squad realized that.

They had dodged a bullet at Kidderminster and before coming home to face Bridgnorth in the FA Cup, Chance wanted a smart, sharp performance to get them ready for the Cup tie.

There were two training sessions that week – a rarity – and Chance pounded defensive positioning through their heads. They had been poor, though relatively unpunished, in recent games, and the search for another central defender was starting to pick up.

In short, Chorley, which had won only one of its first ten matches and was firmly at the foot of the table, was a banana skin.

And when the team finally left, it was still a banana skin, after a lethargic week of training. Victory Park wasn’t anywhere close to full, even with the leaders as the visitors, and fewer than 100 visiting fans made the trip as well.

In short, they all expected this to be exercise. Once the match started, though, it was clear that it wouldn’t be.

Ryan Johnson was the referee, and the lad seemed to be wearing Chorley-covered glasses in the early going. Within the first half hour, three Salford players were in the book despite a first half that had been full-blooded in both directions.

Then, eight minutes from the interval, Nottingham picked up a card. Unfortunately, it was his second of the match, and with things still scoreless, the tie turned from tricky to downright dangerous.

Chance threw up his hands in disgust, as much at the referee as at Nottingham, who had put himself in a position where the referee could send him off, and had to do some quick thinking.

Moore, the loanee, was up front with Skapetis, and he was sacrificed as Wassi, who was being given the day off, came on to finish a match in which he hadn’t expected to feature.

Right away, Chance noticed that something was dreadfully wrong with Salford’s shape. The back line was all over the place and he couldn’t wait for halftime to try to put it right.

Right as the match turned over into injury time, Wassi sprinted forward from his right back position, first into midfield and then alongside Skapetis.

“What in the hell is Wassi doing?” Chance half-yelled, half-groaned in Morley’s direction. But then, Wassi took a pass from George Green and drove it home for a goal for the ten men.

The bench erupted in cheers, and Chance turned to Morley again.

“Never mind,” he said.

They got to halftime still ahead by a goal to nil, and at this point Victory Park’s small surface was playing as much to Salford’s advantage as it was to Chorley’s with eleven men.

“Nice, tight and compact,” Chance pleaded. “Let’s hold this lead and get out of here.”

Chance wasn’t optimistic. It had been six weeks since Salford had kept a clean sheet – against Fylde, which allowed them to lay claim to a spot at the top of the table – and playing away from home with ten men, he wasn’t sure how long this new advantage would last.

For the first time in quite some time, Chance was actually uneasy as the team took the pitch for the second half. He hated the feeling.

And Johnson wasn’t a hell of a lot better in the second half either. He handed out three more cards to Salford and only one to the home team. Seven out of eight is a good percentage in most sports but in this case it was a very bad ratio for Salford.

Chance had two more substitutions and despite using them to try to cover for carded players, he was still looking at two carded midfielders and two carded defenders among his ten men as the match moved past eighty minutes.

Then Green went down after getting his foot stepped on while he completed a long run – uncarded, naturally – and a quick shake of the head from the physios meant that Salford would have nine men for the final ten minutes of the match.

That isn’t to say the referee didn’t think about it. He peered in, gave the ever-popular wash-out signal, and play resumed after being assisted to the touch line.

“Boss-eyed,” Chance said with disgust, waving his arm in the general direction of the referee, to the full attention of the fourth official.

“Mind yourself,” he called, and Chance walked slowly to him.

“Two teams on the park today,” he said quietly. “Only one is being punished.”

He walked back in the other direction, half-expecting to be sent to the stand. But no further words came from the fourth official, probably because he realized he didn’t have an argument.

Not needing to score, Chance aligned his men with four at the back and three in the middle of the park, with Skapetis at the tip of a pretty small spear in case the chance availed itself for him to thunder the ball up the park.

Chorley hammered away – but one reason they were tail-end was that they couldn’t take their chances. They didn’t on this day, either, and the nine men walked off the park with their heads high and their first clean sheet in nearly two months in the books.

Chorley 0
Salford City 1 (Nottingham s/o 37; Wassi 45)
H/T: 0-1
A – 927, Victory Park, Chorley (77 away)
Man of the Match: Nick Haughton, Salford City (MR 7.8)

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“You’re being fined for failure to control your players,” Bailey said to start the post-match comments.

“Lovely,” Chance said. “There’s 500 quid we’ve just binned off. I’d prefer we ask whether all those cards were really yellow cards or if…”

His voice trailed off and Bailey didn’t miss his chance.

“Or if what?”

“…or if they were errors,” Chance finished, looking straight at the reporter.

“Must have been some errors,” Bailey muttered. The statistics had been pretty stark. Despite playing with ten men for nearly fifty minutes, Salford still had a slight possession edge. Whenever they lost the ball, it seemed they fouled, and as often as not, they wound up in the book.

“How’s George Green?” Bailey asked.

“He’s got a cut on his heel and we’re going to be careful with him,” Chance said. “He got clipped from behind while on the dribble and it’s the kind of thing that should go in the book. In my opinion.”

Green was already a doubt for the Cup tie with Bridgnorth, but the thought was that he shouldn’t be needed against lower-level opposition. However, Nottingham, who had played well in fits and starts in relief of Wassi, would also miss and that meant the team was a bit short on players with a seven-man bench allowed.

 

Meanwhile, Fylde had defeated Stockport two-nil away to keep pace with the leaders, with goal difference in their favor to boot. Salford had scored 27 goals in their first eleven matches, while Fylde had scored 22, but the Ammies’ 14 conceded far outstripped the six goals the second-placed team had conceded in eleven matches. Thus, Fylde held a +16 to +13 advantage in goal difference.

Better defending was not merely important, it was necessary. On certain days Salford could score for fun, but new tactics and more importantly a couple of new players could help with the defensive side of the game.

As such, there was an interesting negotiation to be held the Monday following the Chorley match.

The Class of ’92 had given Chance permission to hire a youth development director and he was amazed at one name which had shown up on the list of applicants.

Luther Blissett, the 59-year old striker who held most records that truly mattered at Watford and who had also played for Milan and Bournemouth while being 14 times capped for England, was one of the hopefuls.

It didn’t take long for Chance to bring in the Jamaican for an interview – or more precisely, a cuppa at the club offices.

“I like where the club is headed,” Blissett had said. “And I know that if it is to keep growing it’s going to need a better youth system than it’s got.”

He couldn’t have been more correct. There was money in the owners, but not necessarily money in the club, at least not over and above what had already been placed there, and youth was where the club needed to be allocating at least some resource.

Blissett signed on the dotted line, and Salford had instant credibility in the youth side of the game.

Now all they needed was some money to spend.

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Salford City v AFC Bridgnorth
FA Cup Second Qualifying Round – Moor Lane, Salford
Referee: Tony Harrington

The announcement was made regarding Blissett’s hiring – giving Jess a bit more to do on match day – and amid the social media jokes about Salford now being the “Luther Blissett Project”, the man got down to business evaluating the youth setup.

For his part, Chance resisted the opportunity to simply call him “Q”, and got his team ready for Bridgnorth instead. The Ammies would be heavily fancied to score a few, at home against a club two leagues below them on the charts.

Here were some newer faces on the park and some players in unfamiliar positions. Mike Phenix and Deon Moore were the strike partnership, and Houghton moved up to take Green’s place behind the strikers.

The Ammies knew there were no excuses for failure on this day and even though the bench extended beyond the bounds of the dugout for this match since there were seven substitutes and only room for three bodies inside the covered area, eighteen players knew their jobs if called upon.

The strikers made sure most of them weren’t. Moore found the range early, striding past the Meadow Men’s backline and finishing with ease only thirteen minutes into the match.

Three minutes later, he turned provider, squaring for Phenix to power home and for most practical purposes, to kill off the game before it was twenty minutes old.

The Ammies had hit the Meadow Men in the mouth, so to speak, and there was no response from the visitors to the offense. Chance demanded focus in the second half and the players responded – first through Walkers looping effort in the 58th minute and then Houghton storming through to score less than sixty seconds later.

Then it was all down to keeping the clean sheet.

And Salford couldn’t do it.

A complete breakdown among all four members of the back line meant Paul Sinclair was played onside in front of Lynch with no one within ten yards of him. A child could have scored there and since Sinclair certainly wasn’t that, he finished with ease to give the visitors a consolation goal.

It took some of the gloss off what otherwise had been a solid display.

Salford City 4 (Moore 13, Phenix 16, Walker 58, Houghton 59)
AFC Bridgnorth 1 (Paul Sinclair 89)
H/T: 2-0
A – 2,000 (100 away)
Man of the Match: Deon Moore, Salford City (MR 8.8)


“Deon was excellent,” Chance said after the match.

The on-loan striker was in peak form, romping past the back line at will and generally making his presence felt whenever he had the ball.

“Looked a threat to score every time he had possession,” Bailey said, pulling his long, curly hair back over his five-head since some of it had strayed in front of his eyes.

“Moved well on the ball and off,” Chance said. “There’s a lot to be pleased about here.”

“Now you have Brackley coming in at midweek,” Bailey said, moving quickly onto the next topic. “They’re fourth. Do you plan to rotate your squad?”

“If I was, do you think I’d tell you?”

“People will want to know.”

“The same people who you said didn’t care about us at start of season,” Chance smiled. “Guess they care now, yeah?”

“Well, you don’t have to take it personal.”

“No, I suppose I don’t,” Chance admitted. “But in the end, I have to look out for my players and you’re part of that.”

“What, you trying to get them to pound seven shades of s**t out of me?”

“No,” Chance said, “I just encourage fairness. That’s all.”

He was carrying a grudge and now he was calling it in. That was dangerous with the season only half over and a lot of football still to be played. Joe Bailey could wreck Chance Morrison and both men knew it. But with Salford top of the league, that moment wasn’t likely to come anytime soon.

Chance left and headed back to his office. He checked his email.

Lawton looks good,” the note read. “Sign him?”

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One of the things Chance had lamented was the team’s comparative lack of depth in the midfield positions. Injury or suspension could hit them hard, and he wanted another hard, ball-winning midfielder to boss the center of the park in addition to another defender for that midfielder to protect.

The man he had decided on had just been released by Coventry. Twenty-one year-old Ivor Lawton had passed his medical the preceding day, despite a knee injury that had held him out for three weeks. The physios said no long-term damage was expected and Chance pounced, bringing the player in on a free.

The thing he liked best about Lawton was the scouting report on his intangibles, obviously compiled before his injury. “He never quits,” the report said. “He never stops running, never stops working and he’s at his best after his team has conceded.”

That was an interesting thing to say about a young player, and frankly, Chance thought it was something his team needed. Salford had a reputation for being a gritty bunch, but football at this level was as often a test of will as anything else. Lawton seemed to have plenty of it. So he was a new signing.

That still left the issue of a central defender, though. Lawton could play back there in an emergency, but emergency wasn’t what Chance had in mind. He wanted Lawton right in the middle of the park, acting like a bad arse and causing havoc in the other team’s buildup.

He wouldn’t be ready for a few weeks anyway, since he still had to play his way back into match sharpness, so he received the news he was headed to the u-23s with good grace. “I promise you, when you’re ready, you’ll play,” Chance told him. “We didn’t bring you here to sit you in the u-23s.”

The news came out the day after the Bridgnorth match that Salford had been drawn away in the Third Qualifying Round of the FA Cup – this time to Hardenhuish Park and Chippenham Town.

That was a half-decent side and playing well. They were promotion candidates, second in the Southern League Premier Division, but in any event Salford would be fancied to win again.

Chance had to suppress a smile when he read on social media that Chippenham’s top prospect wasn’t expected to play. Thus a 22-year old midfielder with the wonderful name of Alex Ferguson would miss out.

“Thank God for that,” Chance said to Morley. “Probably a good midfielder but I’m not sure I could handle him tactically.”

“Don’t let the owners hear you say that,” Morley cracked in reply. “I’d be the manager again.”

Meanwhile Brackley was, like Salford, a team that had managed to play its first eleven matches with no draws. Salford had won nine of eleven while Town had won seven. So it was a match between two pretty good sides scheduled for that Saturday.

Despite the hectic part of the season being upon them, Chance still tried to find time for some of his friends. Of course, with the team winning more people around town claimed to know Chance than he remembered in the past, but those who were close to him remained so.

When he wasn’t with Sara, he was with his mates when time permitted. One of his best was his teammate at Irlam, goalkeeper Brendon Hartell.

He was a little on the goofy side – but then, how many goalkeepers could you say weren’t a bit daft after a lifetime of getting hit with footballs?

But most importantly, Brendon was Chance’s loyal friend. The two had roomed together on those nights when it was necessary on the road – which wasn’t often, in fairness, but it gave the two men a chance to get to know each other.

The night before the Brackley match, the two went out for a drink and Brandon got a chance to catch up Chance on his life.

“Josie’s doing well,” he said of his young wife, pregnant with their first child and confined to bedrest after some early complications. “I hear you’re getting hitched.”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” Chance said, taking a sip of his ale after responding. “Sara’s wonderful and I think it’s getting serious but I wouldn’t say it’s time to pick out a wedding party.”

“I’m just angling to be your best man,” Brendon said. “I figure if I get in on the ground floor, you’ll pick me.”

Chance just laughed.

“I’m in it for the gifts,” Brandon finished, to a friendly obscene gesture from his longtime friend.

“You would be,” Chance replied. “But really, Sara is my girlfriend and that’s it right now.”

“I’ve seen her look at you,” Brandon said. “You should maybe raise your sights a bit.”

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Salford City (9-0-2, 1st place) v Brackley Town (7-0-4, 4th place)
Vanarama Conference North Match Day #12 – Moor Lane, Salford
Referee – Joseph Johnson (0.3, 2.6)

Chance looked at the referee’s table before he addressed the troops. Joseph Johnson, one of the most lenient officials in the league, was in charge today. He only gave out just over two yellow cards per match and had only shown two reds all season.

“We should be able to play today, lads,” Chance said. “Just relax and play your regular game. We got enough in this room to beat these, that’s sure.” He waved his arm in the general direction of the visiting rooms.

“Basics,” he emphasized. “Keep your shape when we lose the ball, help each other out when they have the ball and let’s play good football from the goal up. Hands in and let’s go.”

They gave a brief cheer and headed to the field.

And damned if within four minutes, Johnson wasn’t into his pocket to card Bradley Barnes.

“This is amazing,” Chance said. “Just amazing.”

A key player in the midfield already had to watch it and some of the fans hadn’t even reached their seats yet.

But in the 17th minute, there was Johnson pointing to the spot after midfielder Shane Byrne bundled Green to the deck while jumping for a header in the Brackley penalty area. Skapetis put the ball on the forward edge of the spot, looked at the keeper, and promptly hit the crossbar with a blazing effort.

So much for the penalty.

When Salford got the ball in the attacking third, they were wasteful. But to their credit, they kept a very tight ship at the back.

Steve Howson was Grand’s partner in the center of defense and the towering Salford native was having himself a good day. Standing six foot one and just over 200 pounds, he was an intimidating presence when he was in the right spot. The reason he hadn’t been playing more was that too often, he didn’t know where that right spot was, or couldn’t seem to find it.

But today, the big man had it all figured out. The match went to halftime goalless and Chance’s first order of business was to calm down Skapetis, who was still frustrated at missing the penalty.

Chance was more frustrated with the play of Brackley’s Gareth Dean in the heart of their back line. He was a stout, stand-up player who was doing to Salford what Howson was doing to Brackley. Whichever man cracked first would cost his team points, only Chance decided not to let Howson know that.

As the second half began, it soon became apparent that on this day at least, there were two evenly matched teams playing for the spoils. Matthew Barnes-Homer equaled Skapetis’ feat from the first half by finding a goalpost with a searching effort, but other than that, nobody really came close to scoring.

That was unfortunate since Skapetis had two wonderful chances in the second half. He was equally wasteful, though, missing one left and the other right.

And for the first time in a long time, Salford looked nervous as a team. Tentative. Chance’s pleas for composure really didn’t come to much. It was a watershed moment – a team that hadn’t played well in its last league match but won was now not playing well and not winning at home.

However, the cards kept mounting. Grand, Wassi and Norris all wound up in the book in the second half to go along with four players for Town. The referee who was supposed to let the lads play had ended up issuing eight cards.

Sometimes you just never know in this game.

Salford City 0 (Skapetis m/p 17)
Brackley Town 0
H/T: 0-0
A – 1,568 (34 away), Moor Lane, Salford
Man of the Match – Charlie Albinson, Salford (MR 7.8)

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“We need to bounce back from this one, lads,” Chance told them as they sat for the post-match team talk.

It was a time he could have roasted them – failure to win at home coupled with Fylde’s win had put Salford second in the table on goal difference.

He chose not to.

“The thing is to get ourselves believing in the system again,” he stressed. “That’s on me as the manager to be sure you’re at that level of belief. So don’t blame yourselves for this one. Blame me.”

It was an extraordinary thing to say and Chance tried very hard not to look at Morley. Instead, he searched his players’ faces for reaction and found understanding looks in return.

Ordinarily, players didn’t talk during Chance’s talks but this time Grand nodded at the boss, wanting to speak. Chance allowed it.

“Hand on heart, this is on all of us,” he said. “Gaffer’s being a man and taking it on our behalf but we ‘ave to do better, lads, them’s just the facts. We weren’t good. It cost us two points and the lead. We ‘ave to be better to get that lead back.”

No one else spoke. Grand had done it for them, and there was no need for anyone to shout.

As he left the changing room to reclaim his things in the manager’s office, he ran into both the Nevilles heading in the opposite direction.

“Feels like a real missed opportunity,” Chance said.

Gary, who was a ferocious competitor and was known for his severity when things weren’t going well, this time took a different tack.

“Level on points at this time of the season isn’t bad,” he said. “Just figure out a way to get the next one and this will all be forgotten.”

The same kindnesses Chance had shown his players were being shown to him in turn. If there was such a thing as karma, he was now seeing it.

As he met Sara at the main gate to head home, he was grateful for that kindness. He wasn’t as forgiving with himself as others seemed to be – and not nearly as much as his girlfriend, who simply wanted to enjoy his company with a glass of wine at his place.

As he held her close that evening, he had a hard time shaking the match out of his mind.

“Shhhh,” she finally said, putting a finger to his lips.

“I wasn’t saying anything, sweetheart.”

“Inside you were,” she said, and he knew she was right. “This time is for us. The match is over.”

He smiled at her, touching her hair as she placed her head in the crook of his shoulder. “Do you always have to be so damn practical?” he asked.

“It helps,” she teased. “When I’m trying to get you to concentrate on something else.”

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As far as Chance was concerned, when it came to the FA Cup he was playing with the house’s money.

The board had expected two wins. Fine. They had gotten them. Chippenham Town was the next opponent up, at Hardenhuish Park. That was going to be a real slog, mostly down the M5 through West Bromwich and Birmingham until you got near Bristol. Chippenham was east of there and Hardenhuish on the northwest side of town.

Just north of Frogwell, Chance saw on the map. That worked as well.

The coach ride would be more than three hours in length which, for this team, was long. It also meant an overnight stay, with the game scheduled for a noon kickoff on an FA Cup Saturday.

Town was off to a good start, but a league below. They were second in the Southern League’s Premier Division – and its more famous namesake had a big role in the history of the FA Cup.

It was from the old Southern League that Tottenham Hotspur became the only non-league team ever to win the FA Cup, in 1901. Most football fans will tell you that, but what most Spurs fans aren’t as quick to admit is that the Southern League was considered the Football League’s equal in those days. That said, Spurs were good – and in a higher league in those days than their rivals, Second Division side Woolwich Arsenal.

The modern-day Southern League’s Premier Division now claimed Chippenham Town as a member, in which the club was presently second-placed. In that regard, it was a battle of second-bests which was upcoming, with Salford rousted out of the top spot in its league by AFC Fylde.

That gave an added zip to training at midweek, with Chance able to motivate the players based upon a desire to return to the top. Yes, it was only on goal difference but if the season had ended the preceding Sunday, there wouldn’t be a league championship trophy headed to Salford. There would be a playoff with absolutely no guarantees about success.

It was a long trip. Chance wanted Sara beside him – he was really starting to change his opinion on personal priorities off the pitch – and since he couldn’t have her, he felt very much alone as he tried to sleep in Wiltshire.

So he texted her. He was delighted to get an immediate answer, so as he tried to sleep, he was at least able to enjoy a little time via electronic means.

It would have to do.

Chippenham Town (2nd, Southern League Premier Division) v Salford City (2nd, Vanarama Conference North)
FA Cup Third Qualifying Round – Hardenhuish Park, Chippenham
Referee: Adam Fielding

The faithful had come out in their hundreds – Hardenhuish Park was alive with noise. And at that moment, they were pleased, while Chance was not.

The home team had struck first, through a peach of an effort from David Pratt. The lower-league team led and Chance was waiting for the inevitable riposte that would soon set things right.

Only he waited for another half hour, with nothing whatsoever happening. His ire growing, he smoldered in the visitors dugout, while waiting for referee Adam Fielding’s halftime whistle.

It was, for Chance, almost like a starter’s pistol in athletics. Like a shot he was into the dressing room and he was the first one there when the players arrived.

“Really no need to sit down just now,” Chance said, “since none of you put in any running in the first half.”

Norris thought Chance was kidding, and started to sit, but an icy glare from the manager soon had the midfielder standing back up.

“I don’t know why we wasted our time coming here,” Chance said. “If you aren’t for it, get back on the coach and wait for the rest of us after the match.”

He looked at the players, challenging them. It was a pivotal moment.

Several players were being rested, but that shouldn’t have mattered. Salford’s players were showing neither quality nor desire and that was a bad combination.

Then he left the room and let the professional bad guy, Morley, tear into them. He got those parts that Chance had missed and duly roasted, the players headed out for the second half.

Loanee Deon Moore had looked like someone had kicked his dog during the halftime roasting but once he got out there, he played like he was possessed. Norris showed his penitence by playing the young man through with a real slide-rule ball four minutes after the restart and Moore didn’t miss.

They liked that idea so much, they did it again just eight minutes later.

That mollified Chance considerably and now that the players were into the game, the result was not long in doubt.

Hine made it three fifteen minutes from time and that killed off the match, but Moore beat the dead horse with an inch-perfect strike into the lower left corner five minutes from time to complete a fine “wake-me-up” hat trick.

Four goals in 36 second half minutes. The Fourth Qualifying Round awaited.

Chippenham Town 1 (David Pratt 16)
Salford City 4 (Moore 49, 57, 85; Hine 75)
H/T: 1-0
A – 1,077 (144 away), Hardenhuish Park, Chippenham
Man of the Match – Deon Moore, Salford City (MR 9.6)

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Like so much else in life, there was good news and bad news after the match.

First the good news – Norris went to the papers to tell the world that Chance had given the team exactly what they deserved and credited the manager for the victory.

That was nice, but Norris wasn’t going to be able to back up his words against Stockport because he had reached his yellow card limit during the match.

In that respect, he could sit next to Barnes, who had also gone over the limit and depleted Chance’s midfield for County in the process.

Salford had been carded five more times and that was just too many.

“Do you set out to hurt players?” Bailey asked after the match, and Chance gave him a withering stare.

“Of course not, because our players can be hurt too,” he replied. “The bloody officiating could do with work though. We get more possession than any team in our league and somehow we have the most cards. We breathe hard on opposing players and we wind up in the book. That’s not on by me.”

“Well then, every official in this league must be rotten,” Bailey smiled, showing he wasn’t intimidated by Chance’s bluster.

“Or you could quit arguing with me,” Chance replied, not for the first time annoyed at Bailey’s duplicity.

“So you don’t like the officiating?” Bailey asked, trying again.

“I’d like to see us get what we deserve,” Chance replied. “Look, they do the best they can, don’t they? But I think we’re getting a reputation we don’t deserve.”

Those were strong words from the first-year manager and they were sure to get around. In fact, they were probably too strong – which meant he was likely to learn a lesson about them someday.

It was a pleasant drive back to Salford, and as the coach rolled toward home, Chance saw that Bailey had already relayed his comments about the officiating to the online version of his paper.

“Good,” Chance said to himself. That was the message he wanted to get across.

However, the official statistics told a different story. Yes, Salford got more possession than anyone in the league. But, when they didn’t have the ball, they were the worst tackling team in the league.

Paul Scholes was an owner. He wasn’t supposed to be the players’ model for tackling.

And deep down, Chance knew it. As he looked for new players, he wanted ones who were fit for purpose at this level – sturdy and sure tacklers, good positional players and above all, players with outsized hearts. Players like Lawton, in other words.

“They have to want it more than anyone else,” he explained to Morley on the way back. “That way when we yell and scream at them, they’ll take it to heart instead of running away.”

“You’re starting to get it,” Morley smiled.

The next day, they watched the draw for the Fourth Qualifying Round online, and were reasonably pleased to get Dartford at home.

That club was in 16th place in the Conference South, with the fixture to take place on the Ides of October. The match with Boston United was moved to the following Tuesday to prepare for it.

A good crowd was expected for the match but Chance was, for the time being, interested in how the team was going to get through the upcoming league fixture against Stockport County.

That team was second bottom in the table, and it was a good thing, since Salford was seriously short of midfielders. Lawton wasn’t yet match fit and Norris and Barnes were suspended. That made the list of available central players pretty short.

“We’ll need to think about a different alignment,” Chance told Morley, noting that the number of central midfielders available was exactly three.

Morley, who had been trying to convince Chance to play 4-4-2 since his first day at the club, immediately jumped at the chance to try to put Salford back into his preferred tactic.

“Not so fast there, son,” Chance said. “We haven’t worked on that enough to use it in a match.”

“We’re English,” Morley said, a tinge of exasperation in his voice. “We can play 4-4-2 from the cradle.”

Yet, Chance did have a point. The three trained formations were his preferred 4-3-1-2, a 4-2-3-1 setup and a defensive-minded 4-5-1 which the team often trotted out but rarely used.

“We need to train it, and I’m serious,” Morley said. “Just think how good this group could be if we could get players like Brough and Wassi forward on overlaps with proper wingers along with them.”

“We don’t have any proper wingers,” Chance said. “When I got here, they were pretty scarce.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t make them,” Morley replied, not giving up.

“I’ll think about it,” Chance said. “And I’m not ruling you out. But I wouldn’t count on it, at least not yet.”

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  • 4 weeks later...

“Tell her,” Brandon said.

“Yeah, I know, but what do I tell her?”

Chance and Brandon were sat at Shere Khan for dinner, and the manager was asking for his best mate’s advice.

“Well, you love her, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Chance said, his face breaking into sort of a sideways smile. He always smiled like that when he was embarrassed and he surely was now.

“Chance,” Hartell said, “it’s me, ya dimmock. Don’t beat about the bush, tell me what’s happening.”

“Sara’s talking like she wants to move in,” Chance replied. “You know that.”

“I do, and if you don’t let her, you’re a bigger dimmock than I thought.”

“Established fact,” Chance said, taking a pull on his ale.

“Now how in the bloody hell are you going to get her in your bed thinking like that?”

Chance had nothing to say.

“Tell her,” Hartell repeated. “Look, she’s giving you the glad-eye every time I’ve seen her, and we both know it. I know you’ve never had a real relationship before and you’re too damned old to wait any longer.”

“Yeah, but I’ll probably make a dog’s breakfast out of it,” Chance said.

“Give yourself some credit but give Sara some credit too,” Hartell replied. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“She says no, she gets her mad up and I never see her again.”

“Have you ever seen her mad?”

Chance laughed. “Actually, no,” he said. “Though I’m sure someday I’d say the wrong thing. Every man does, yeah?”

“Look, mate, live a bit. You want her, don’t you?”

“Almost as much as a long Cup run.”

“Well, there you are then,” the old goalkeeper laughed. “Maybe even a bit more?”

“Let’s put it this way. I could die happy.”

“Then do it. No more excuses.”

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