Returning to Gigg Lane, New Manchester United received a warm welcome from the local supporters.
During the six months the club had played there, the Red Rebels had brought plenty of excitement to Bury, particularly through the atmosphere created at their home matches.
The travelling New Manchester United supporters also treated Bury with great respect.
After all, Bury had once helped the club, even if their original motivation had simply been financial.
However, the friendliness shown by the supporters and by Ethan toward Bury's chairman did not extend onto the pitch.
The New Manchester United players competed fiercely against their opponents.
This was a League Two match with important consequences for the table, while Bury were hovering just above the relegation zone. Both teams had every reason to fight for the result.
Despite the intensity, the match never became hostile.
Both sides showed excellent sportsmanship and relied on their football to decide the outcome.
In the end, New Manchester United left Gigg Lane with all three points after a 3-1 victory.
Elsewhere, Brentford continued their winning run with another emphatic result.
Their attacking play had been outstanding that season, completely reversing the decline of the previous two campaigns, and their squad had settled together extremely well.
Brighton, meanwhile, were held to an away draw despite their ambitious summer recruitment.
Reading immediately overtook them in the table.
Although the two clubs were level on points, Reading moved into third place on goal difference, while New Manchester United remained second behind Brentford.
With the next league match scheduled for September 8, leaving a full week between fixtures, Mourinho gave the players a day off on September 2.
However, Ethan and the coaching staff still had plenty of work to do.
...
New Manchester United's youth-development system was already highly advanced.
In addition to partnerships with nearby schools, every age group had its own designated coaches.
Darren Lyons, Karl Marginson, and Gareth Turner divided their time between learning from Mourinho and Moniz and working with the academy players.
Senior De Rossi and Senior Palacio were among the most popular coaches in the academy.
Both were patient men who had devoted themselves to youth development, particularly when working with the youngest children.
New Manchester United's academy had also begun to build a reputation throughout England.
In addition to producing Curtis, who had already represented England, the club's youth sides had achieved excellent results at every level.
Players such as Messi and Michael Johnson, both members of the under-18 squad, had already become recognised products of the Red Rebels' youth system.
Under Cassell's leadership, the academy followed the same tactical structure and playing philosophy as the first team.
The emphasis was on intelligent off-the-ball movement, quick combinations in tight spaces, and encouraging players to use their technique and imagination.
Moniz and Meulensteen, who had trained under the same mentor, had clearly divided their responsibilities.
Moniz focused on the first team, while Meulensteen oversaw the academy and the football school New Manchester United had recently established in Ghana.
Two coaches from Liberty Professionals had also been brought to Manchester for further education.
Their task was to study the methods used by Moniz and Meulensteen before returning to Ghana to develop young players there.
Meulensteen's coaching placed great emphasis on technical detail while remaining enjoyable and engaging.
His sessions were extremely popular with the academy players.
He was also delighted by the club's growing enthusiasm for indoor football and had introduced many exercises based on futsal-style training.
Naturally, the better the young players performed, the more attention they attracted from rival clubs.
Manchester United and Manchester City, the two closest major sides, had both begun coveting the talent within New Manchester United's academy.
Their interest intensified after a recent Manchester youth cup match in which a Red Rebels side led by Lionel Messi, Michael Johnson, Ishmael, and John Obi Mikel completely overwhelmed Manchester United's academy team.
Ishmael and Messi were outstanding, each scoring a hat-trick.
The midfield pairing of Michael Johnson and Mikel excelled in both attack and defence.
Combined with the team's movement and fluid combinations, their performance left Manchester United's youngsters helpless.
The 8-3 defeat sent Manchester United's academy side back to Carrington in embarrassment.
However, it also brought greater attention to New Manchester United's youth system, with more scouts and club representatives beginning to appear around the training base during the day.
Manchester City were particularly interested.
They had rejected Ishmael several times when he was younger.
Now, watching the tall forward develop into a powerful, quick, technically gifted player with excellent scoring ability, they must have regretted those decisions deeply.
Knowing that Ishmael's entire family had once supported Manchester City, the club quickly approached them and asked whether he might consider leaving New Manchester United.
Ishmael's father rejected the suggestion without hesitation.
"Sorry, but we're Red Rebels now."
After hearing that, Manchester City immediately abandoned their attempt.
The academy's success delighted New Manchester United's supporters.
Some even predicted that the generation led by Lionel Messi, together with Curtis, who had already established himself in the first team, could become the club's own Class of '92.
As a result, large crowds of supporters, particularly younger fans, began attending almost every academy match.
Ethan was also pleased with the progress of the youth system.
However, his greater concern was preventing the club's best prospects from being poached.
Manchester City's attempt to sign Ishmael served as a warning, so Ethan immediately instructed Cassell to address the issue.
After all, the club had invested enormous effort and attention into developing those players.
In addition to recruiting young footballers from Manchester and the surrounding region, Ethan had also begun looking farther afield.
He paid little attention to the Football Association's supposed restrictions.
In practice, if a club genuinely wanted to recruit a young player, and the player was willing to move while the original club received suitable compensation, few people would object.
Many English clubs, including several in the Premier League, had poor youth-development programmes.
Their facilities were often inadequate, their coaching standards inconsistent, and many lacked any specialised system for developing technical ability.
Qualified coaches were scarce.
Although many academy coaches were former players, a significant number had little genuine coaching expertise.
A successful professional footballer did not automatically become a successful coach.
That should have been obvious, yet many clubs still failed to understand it.
Funding was another serious problem.
Numerous clubs already struggled to support their first teams and had little interest in investing in youth development.
In the past, organisations such as the FA and the PFA had offered financial support, but even those subsidies had been reduced.
The result was a damaging cycle.
Clubs were forced to prioritise the first team and cut academy spending even further.
By contrast, the Manchester Evening News had recently published a feature on New Manchester United's youth system.
During the interview, Cassell explained that the club allocated a fixed proportion of its annual budget to academy development and employed a highly professional coaching staff to support the young players.
New Manchester United also placed great importance on education and personal development.
The youth players enjoyed many of the same conditions and services as the first team.
For example, each academy player had an individual file within Professor Fryer's laboratory.
Some had been monitored since the age of eight or nine, allowing the laboratory to track their growth over several years.
"Only a rigorous and modern youth-development system can continue producing outstanding players," Cassell had said when offering advice to other clubs.
...
"You've gone too far, Jim!" Ethan joked as he sat in his office and placed the newspaper on the desk.
"You've revealed the deepest secret of our academy!"
Everyone else in the room laughed.
New Manchester United's youth-development structure was a complete system involving numerous departments and countless details.
It could not be explained in a few sentences, nor could another club reproduce it easily.
Only the club's senior figures understood how much money, manpower, and equipment New Manchester United had invested in the academy since its creation.
Even now that the system had entered a more stable phase, Ethan continued increasing its budget.
The club was currently carrying out another series of improvements.
"I've spoken with Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Everton, Leeds United, Blackburn, and Bolton," Cassell reported to the executives attending the meeting.
"They have all agreed in principle to cooperate with us by arranging youth matches across every age group.
"However, several details still need to be resolved, including how to secure FA approval and how the new youth competition would be organised."
This was the most important result of Cassell's recent work.
His main objective was to increase the number of meaningful matches available to New Manchester United's academy sides.
Apart from the reserve league and the under-18 competition, matches for younger age groups organised by the FA were regional.
For example, New Manchester United's under-16 side occasionally faced Manchester United and Manchester City, but most of their fixtures were against academy teams belonging to amateur clubs around Greater Manchester.
Ethan did not look down on those clubs.
New Manchester United had begun as an amateur side, so he understood their difficulties extremely well.
They lacked money.
Some could barely operate their first teams, making serious investment in youth development almost impossible.
Several clubs had only a senior side and a reserve team.
For younger age groups, they sometimes recruited local schoolchildren temporarily simply to complete the lineup.
In a recent under-16 fixture, New Manchester United had called up 13-year-old Michael Johnson to play above his age group.
The academy prospect led the team to a crushing 15-0 victory.
On the surface, it was a result worth celebrating.
But the more important question was whether such a match had any developmental value.
The under-16 league contained only a handful of teams.
Because the competition was organised geographically, New Manchester United's group consisted almost entirely of nearby youth sides.
The difference in quality was far too great.
Many matches offered no meaningful challenge, while the schedule itself was extremely limited.
A full season might contain little more than ten fixtures, most of which provided almost no developmental benefit.
By comparison, academy teams in countries with strong youth systems, such as Spain, France, and the Netherlands, often played more than thirty competitive matches each season.
The gap was enormous.
That immediately drew Ethan's attention.
(To be continued.)