The small victory at the Tuesday training session was a potent drug. For the first time, I felt a flicker of genuine hope, a sense that this impossible task might just be… possible.
The 25 XP was a welcome bonus, pushing my progress bar to a satisfying 125/200 towards Level 3, but the real reward was the shift in the atmosphere.
The players still looked at me like I was a bit of a weirdo, but now it was a grudging, curious respect instead of outright contempt. I was no longer just the gaffer's strange new friend; I was the bloke who had made them run until they wanted to vomit, and had somehow made them feel good about it.
I spent the rest of the week refining my approach. My grand tactical masterplan was shelved indefinitely. Instead, I focused on the basics, using the knowledge from my unlocked skills.
I designed simple, high-intensity drills that reinforced the principle of collective effort. Everything was built around the 'five-second rule' - the idea that we had to win the ball back within five seconds of losing it.
It was our mantra, our identity. We were a team of pitbulls. Unskilled, perhaps, but relentless.
During my night shifts at the 24/7 Local, I would sketch out drills on the back of receipt paper, my mind a million miles away from the beeping scanners and the hum of the refrigerators.
I would watch videos on my phone during breaks, studying the way Klopp's Dortmund pressed in coordinated waves, how they hunted as a pack.
I was translating elite-level tactics into something that could work for a group of exhausted, part-time footballers. It was like trying to teach a donkey to dance like a racehorse, but I was determined to make it work.
I also spent hours with the notebook, exploring the system's features.
I discovered I could set 'Training Focus' for individual players, tailoring their development to specific attributes. I assigned Kieran, our young goalkeeper, extra work on 'Composure' and 'Decision-making'.
I gave Tommo, our tireless midfielder, a fitness regime to boost his already impressive stamina even further. The system was a treasure trove of tools, and I was only just beginning to scratch the surface.
My relationship with Frankie also began to change. He was still cynical and gruff, but he started to participate. He'd watch my drills, and instead of just smoking in silence, he'd interject with a sharp, insightful comment.
"Tommo, you're running with your head down! Keep your eyes up!" or "Baz, stop trying to win the ball with a Hollywood tackle! Just show him down the line!" He was adding his forty years of practical, hard-won experience to my system-driven, theoretical knowledge. We were, improbably, becoming a team.
He'd even started calling me 'Gaffer'. It was always said with a thick layer of irony, but it was a sign of acceptance. "Right, Gaffer," he'd say, a smirk playing on his lips. "What fresh hell are you putting the lads through tonight?"
Sunday arrived all too quickly. It was match day. My first official game as the unofficial assistant manager of The Railway Arms.
The sense of dread and excitement was a churning vortex in my stomach. I'd barely slept the night before, my mind running through every possible scenario, every tactical adjustment, every motivational phrase I could deploy.
This was where the theory ended and reality delivered its verdict. This was where I found out if I was a genius or a fraud. Our opponents were a team called 'The Merchant Bankers'.
I'd done my homework on them, of course. I'd watched them play the previous week, standing incognito on the touchline with my notebook, scanning their players with the system.
They were good. Really good, by Sunday league standards. Their average CA was in the mid-50s, a full twenty points higher than ours.
They played a slick, possession-based style, lots of short passes and movement. They were organized, disciplined, and they had a striker with a CA of 68 who had scored fifteen goals in eight games. On paper, we didn't stand a chance.
Even their name was annoying. It screamed entitlement. Frankie filled me in on the details as we stood on the touchline of another bleak, windswept park pitch.
"This lot are a bunch of city boys," he grumbled, lighting his first roll-up of the morning. "Work in finance down at Spinningfields. They treat this like their personal playground. All the gear, no idea. Think they're better than everyone else because they've got matching tracksuits."
As if on cue, The Merchant Bankers emerged from their cars. Frankie was right. They looked like they'd stepped out of a sports catalogue.
Identical, pristine white kits, brand new boots, and a collection of haircuts that probably cost more than our team's entire weekly budget for post-match pints. They warmed up with a series of slick, choreographed drills, passing the ball with a crispness that made me feel physically ill.
Our lads, by contrast, looked like they'd been dragged through a hedge backwards. Their faded red shirts were a collection of different shades and sizes.
Their warm-up consisted of a few half-hearted stretches and a game of 'let's see who can hit the crossbar from the halfway line'. The contrast was a perfect, depressing illustration of the class divide that runs through every level of English football.
Then I saw their manager. He was in his early thirties, tall and handsome in a smug, chinless sort of way. He wore a designer gilet over a cashmere jumper, and his hair was perfectly coiffed. He radiated an aura of effortless superiority. I immediately hated him.
I focused the system on him.
> Name: Marcus Chen
> Age: 32
> Position: Manager
> Current Ability (CA): 55/200
> Potential Ability (PA): 70/200
> Key Attributes:
> - Motivation: 14
> - Financial Control: 16
> - Tactical Knowledge: 9
> - Player Management: 7
Interesting. His CA was higher than Frankie's, but not by much. His strengths were in motivation - he was clearly a good talker, a charismatic leader for his tribe of finance bros - and, unsurprisingly, 'Financial Control'.
He was a man who understood money. But his tactical knowledge was average, and his man-management was poor. He was a motivator, not a strategist. A cheerleader with a chequebook.