13.9 - 80th Best
9.
The Eightieth Best Manager in England
By Bethany Alban
Reprinted with kind permission of Lionised magazine, the only women's football magazine dedicated to long-form content and in-depth tactical analysis.
Max Best is the 80th best manager in England.
It's a Tuesday night and the star of the Chesterness documentary is on the touchline at Portman Road, home of Ipswich Town. The Tractor Boys are in the Premier League and have a category one academy. The last time I wrote about Chester's youth team, they were playing in a local tournament while the first team plummeted towards tier seven. This should be one of the biggest footballing mismatches of the year. It is not. The home team are leading two-nil but since their second goal they have been outplayed.
"What makes you say you're the 80th best manager in England?" I ask, to check Best is still with us. He is almost completely motionless.
"I don't say that. That's objective science. It's based on Manager Points. Not sure who runs that algorithm or how it works but basically you get points for winning matches. The level of the match counts. I'm in League Two so I get pennies on the dollar."
I have never heard of Manager Points. "Will you get bonus points for losing this one because Ipswich are so much better than you?"
Best turns his head and gives me a disdainful look. "Are you fishing for a good quote?"
"You invited me," I remind him. Talk about a bolt from the blue - despite being the face of Chester's fast-growing men's and women's teams, Best has barely spoken to anyone in the media this season.
"Right," he says, and he rubs his chin. "What did you say? Ipswich are better? Okay, let's go with this. Best rose to his full height and growled, We're the best youth team in the country. Yeah, that's good. Print that."
"You're not, though. You don't even have an academy. You play loads of friendlies against randos."
"I'm pretty sure we are the best team and we'll prove it by winning this tournament. No, you don't get Manager Points for losing. I got some for drawing against Newcastle but nothing for playing Man United."
In both matches, tier four Chester FC's first team battled valiantly against Premier League opponents and Best burnished his reputation. The numbers in his head disagree. "Are you ahead of Jackie Reaper?" Jackie is the charming Liverpudlian in charge of Chester's thrilling women's team.
"Am I ahead of Jackie Reaper?" scoffs Best. "That bald fraud? That hack? Hackie Reaper?" He laughs; Jackie and Best are good friends. "The list doesn't include women's football. It's basically the men's football league plus the England team manager plus a few guys who were sacked in the last couple of years."
"Where is this list?"
"I dunno. Some website. I'll try to find the link later. I'm pretty busy, Beth. I'm actually managing a football match right now. Not sure if you've noticed."
"I notice you doing some masterly inactivity. Where's Pedro Porto on the list?"
"Fifth."
"Where's Alan Turner?"
"Who gives a fuck?" Best laughs. He despises Alan Turner and coined a nickname for him: Turner Blindeye. If you've seen fans of rival clubs mocking the Newcastle boss by covering one side of their face, that is a Max Best invention.
"Max, he could be the next England manager. Don't you want to play for England?"
Best ignores the question. "I'll tell you one ranking where Turner is clearly number one: income to talent. He's raking it in, isn't he? He gets paid by the suitcase. He brings the case into his living room, unzips it, and money flies up like in that show, The Crystal Maze. Turner jumps around the room grabbing the cash. The notes are blood-soaked and he can't get the stains out of his carpet and can't shift the smell from his hands, but every week there's a new suitcase. If he asks whose blood it was, the cases stop coming."
"Jesus, Max."
There's a burst of activity as Best zips around, pointing and barking out instructions. On the pitch, his players subtly shift. I try to follow what Best has done. "You've gone from 4-3-3 to 4-4-2?"
"Top marks, Beth. A lot of managers at my level - you know, 80th - take their sweet time spotting these things. Half are so busy screaming at the referees they don't realise things are changing."
"What's the purpose of this change?"
"They're trying to protect their lead by man-marking Wibbers." Wibbers is William B. Roberts, thought by Best to be the outstanding English footballer in his age group. Roberts has already smashed several goalscoring records in the Youth Cup. He is the leading single-season scorer, the leading all-time scorer, and has the most hat tricks in the competition's history. "I've moved him wide left to see if the marker goes with him. Yeah, there he blows. This could get messy, Beth. You might want to stand back from the pitch. You're in the splash zone of my magnificence."
I'm in disguise as a physio, wearing a Grindhog-branded training coat. Best asked me to 'do a ponytail' but fortunately I don't live in a country where a man gets to choose how I dress. "What makes a good football manager?"
Best remains still for about two minutes - he's checking his tweak is working. "Tactics," he says, as if only two seconds have passed. "Man management, transfers, dealing with the media, setting the club standard for trims. Personally I'd put building a culture quite high. If you've got limited resources you need to get the most out of absolutely everyone and everything." He points. "Ipswich are a club that put a lot of stock in culture and that took them from League One to the Prem. They're a good example for us."
"Tell us about the financial constraints you're working under."
Best turns, amazed, before cracking a smile. "Are you in podcast mode? I thought this would be an article."
I'm annoyed; he's right. "Why am I here?"
That wipes the smile off his face. "We're better than Ipswich but anything can happen in sport; this could be the last match for the Das Tournament boys, for Tyson, for Benny. You wrote that article about them and they loved it. If this is the end, I want you here so you can turn it into a memory." Best takes in the big stadium. "Ipswich Town won the UEFA Cup in 1981. They have never lost a European match at home, and they've beaten both Milan clubs, Madrid, and Barcelona. Their recent history is loads of success, loads of goals, loads of progress. They're at the end of their journey and we're still at the start. Maybe I want you here for my own ego."
"To document you smashing them?"
"Yeah," he says, which makes me smile. Best knows his way around a football pitch and his team have already dispatched West Ham, Charlton, and Everton, but this is a bridge too far. "And maybe I want someone to talk to."
His gaze turns to the opposition dugout, which is jam-packed. There are more people on tablets than in an episode of Euphoria. No, wait, I've got a better one. There are more people on tablets than in an episode of Real Housewives. The picture - lonely Max Best in a shit hoody versus dozens of analysts - paints a thousand words about the financial gulf between the two clubs, but just in case I don't get it, Best is on hand with some hard facts. "For every penny I have, they have a billion pounds. That's not an exaggeration, Beth."
"Why are you even here, though? You're not the youth team manager. Where's Spectrum?"
Best jabs a thumb. "He's with Boggy." That means Spectrum, Chester's de facto head of youth development, is doing co-comms for Chester's in-house broadcast, Seals Live, which has a surprisingly international audience: Texas, Malta, Slovakia.
"But why - ?" I start. The question dies on my lips. Henk, Chester's elegant centre back, slides a pass to Dan Badford. He shifts his weight, touches the ball, quickly moves it at a surprising angle. Just like that, he's away from his opponent and Chester players are flooding towards the Ipswich goal. Badford slips it behind the left-back, Noah Harrison drives, clips the ball along the six-yard line, Benny slams it into the net.
Two-one and there's an almost visible shockwave that emanates from the ball. It hits the nearest Ipswich players, sapping their belief. It hits the left-back - his arms stretch wide. 'What am I supposed to do about that?' The wave hits the dugouts. My heart rate doubles; more Ipswich staff hide behind iPads.
The eightieth best manager in the country doesn't feel the wave. He can't be shocked; he did it.
The Chester boys form a happy huddle but that isn't their main celebration. For that, they jog in front of their manager. Scratch that - they have come to me.
Benny leans forward and says, "That's B-E-N-N-Y. Tell your readers I'm single and like dogs and I'll listen to Taylor Swift in the car."
Badford says, "You'll be thinking of me for Man of the Match, right? It's Badford with no R."
Tyson says, "What, so it's Bad-fod? She's here to write about me, you dimwit. I'm the star of Wizard of Us; this is my sequel."
Badford says, "I was in that, too."
"You were just a weirdo in a puffy jacket."
Noah Harrison smooths his hair back and says, "Bethany, would you like to go to Nando's with me?"
Being asked on a date is the last thing I expect in that moment and I look at Wibbers to gauge his reaction. After all, he's the big star. He decides to misinterpret my glance and raises a hand in apology. "Sorry, miss. I'm taken."
The lads grab each other and yell things as they laugh their way back onto the pitch.
When they're gone, Best pinches the bridge of his nose. "Can you not flirt with my players, please?"
I shake my head; it's the Youth Cup Quarter-Final. Best has been preparing these young men for this moment for three years. He is taking it incredibly seriously but he can't stop the silliness from bubbling up.
Three years of intense training, pushing these young men, giving them minutes in the first-team, minutes that have resulted in dropped points, defeats snatched from the jaws of victory, long, weary drives home.
No-one can quite understand Best's motivation. No-one in his position would dream of managing the youth team, and even people much lower on the footballing ladder don't hold the youth team in any kind of esteem. Ipswich have had four head coaches in two years - the job is merely a stepping stone to better roles. Why would Best add such complexity and extra workload to his already stuffed schedule?
While he's grinning may be the best chance to get to the bottom of it. "If Chester's men's team had a match tonight, would you be here or there?"
No hesitation. "Here."
"Why?"
"I'm the 80th best manager in England but I wouldn't have ever got a job if it wasn't for these kids. You owe them, too. The Wizard of Us got you noticed. I do it because I should do it. Should follow through on my promises to them. Also because it's fun. Also because I get to slap Premier League teams who could vote to kill English football any time they want. But mostly because of this quote. The game is about glory. It is about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.'"
"Danny Blanchflower," I say, which gets an approving nod.
"Glory. Trophies. Winning the Youth Cup with basically the same squad I had in the National League North." His eyes shine. "Watch this."
Best gestures a few times. I glance at the Ipswich bench; when Best changes things they freeze.
All at once, the patterns of play change. The formation looks the same... "I can't see it."
Best blinks. I'm pretty sure he forgot I was there. "We're feeding Wibbers."
"Isn't he being double-marked over there?"
"Yeah."
I frown because I don't understand what's happening and I'm supposed to know a thing or two about this sport. I'm tempted to go and watch the match on one of those iPads. As I'm considering it, something happens on the far side of the pitch. There's a flurry of activity and the ball comes to Benny five yards away from Ipswich's centre backs. Chas Fungrieve, a lanky striker, drops to give Benny an option. That looks like a mistake from the sixteen-year-old - surely someone needs to be tight on the centre backs, stretching the play?
Benny rolls a pass to Fungrieve and sprints towards goal. Fungrieve lets the ball continue through his legs - he, too, sprints forward. Tyson, an attacking midfielder, picks the ball up on the edge of the D. He has two strikers in motion and time to pick his pass. Ipswich, normally so organised, are scattered. Tyson sweeps his foot through the ball... and coaxes it into the right-hand-side of the net. The goalie was ready to rush out and throw himself at one of the strikers. How could he have expected such cocky impudence from a tier four nobody?
"Fuck it," I say, and stride off to Ipswich's dugout. I plant myself in one of their seats and tap on its iPad to rewind the footage.
"What the hell are you doing?" says one of the coaches.
"I want to know what just happened."
"Join the club," he says. He decides to watch the incident on my screen - maybe I'll explain it to him.
I go back fifteen seconds before the goal. Wibbers is on the left of the pitch between the home team's right back and right midfielder. His marker - normally a defensive midfielder - is loitering. Lucas Friend, Chester's left back, ignores the numbers and passes to Wibbers. Wibbers jinks inside, turns back towards the touchline, accelerates, rolls the ball behind him, retreats. The three opponents come with him and the right-sided centre back is drawn across to help out. Four against one!
With another drop of his shoulder that unbalances the defenders, Wibbers flicks the ball infield to Benny, who finds himself with time and space against an unstructured defence. I’m entranced and so is my new friend.
"Oi!" cries Noah, gobbing off to the coach who is watching the footage with me. "That's my girlfriend! Hands off."
"No no no," laughs Max Best, grabbing Noah and pushing him away. "Keep it classy." Best intercepts Jamie Brotherhood, the right back, and Captain, the youth team's long-serving centre back. He pushes them back towards the pitch. "Get back to work, you worms. Come on." Best turns to the coach - too stunned to react angrily. "Soz."
***
It is two-all at half time. Best's Babes are 45 minutes away from the semi-final - or from the abrupt end of a three-year dream.
I witness what, logically, must be the eightieth best half-time team talk in English men's football.
"Lads," says Best, after giving his players a few minutes to wind down. "Something different today, since we've got a Daily Mail journalist here." He gestures that I should go forward; I shrink back into a corner. He moves to my side and puts his arm around me like he's a game show host. "As you know, lads, as part of their ongoing mission to turn the British people into the stupidest bunch of twats in the entire world, the Mail categorises every single object or concept into two: things that cause cancer and things that cure it. Let's see how well Beth knows her employer. Okay, Beth, question one. Are you nervous? Cure or cause? Bacon."
"I don't want to do this."
"Sorry, that's the wrong answer! Your publication says bacon causes cancer. Bit of a downer, isn't it? Question two."
"No, Max."
"Energy-saving lightbulbs." I wriggle away but Best strides after me like a zombie. "They cause cancer! Question three. Using Facebook."
"What?" I laugh, as I move a clothes bin between us. "How is that a question?"
"Using Facebook causes cancer! Actual Daily Mail article. Question four."
William B. Roberts doesn't share his boss's distaste for the Mail, or if he does, this is not the time. "Can we talk about football?"
"Sure," says Best, swiping on his phone. "Hundreds of articles about 3G pitches causing cancer. Fear, fear, fear. Get everyone nice and afraid of every-fucking-thing so they vote for fascists."
Wibbers closes his eyes and waits for his boss to finish. "I don't want to play left-mid."
Best's eyes bulge, his neck stiffens. "Oh, here we go."
A gap has appeared around Wibbers - another shockwave seems to be on the horizon. Whether it's brave or foolish, Wibbers stands up for himself. "I've got a hat trick in every round. These lot are shit. Let me at ‘em."
Best retracts his neck and goes on a tour of the dressing room. "Listen up, everyone. We're not Chester FC any more. We're Wibbers Wanderers. All that stuff we used to chat about teamwork and togetherness? Bin that. Don't need any of that, no thanks. Wibbers wants a hat trick in every round. Final score: Wibbers 3, The Tractor Boys 8. That's great. That's what we want." Best sticks his finger up like he's had a brainwave. "Tell you what, why don't the rest of us fuck off home so you can have all the limelight to yourself?"
Wibbers looks up - his face is undecided about turning white as a sheet or red as a beet. "I don't want that. I just want to play up top."
"Oh," says Best, his voice lower and full of menace. "So we'll bring your marker and the right back into the middle and we'll have a nice congested box, so instead of Benny getting a tap-in or Tyson having the freedom of Suffolk to pass the ball into the net, we'll make things easy for the oppo and make it fucking impossible for us to move or even fucking breathe just for the off chance YOU might grab a goal and that's all worth it so that you can print off your fucking Wikipedia page and fucking FRAME IT ON YOUR KITCHEN WALL."
Best punctuates the last clause by trying to fling his tactics board to the floor. It wobbles but rights itself. Best sticks his bottom lip out - he's impressed.
He goes back to scowling. "I've seen a lot of young players doing interviews and they're all the same. I'm gonna be famous. I'm gonna be a star. I'm gonna be voted the best player in the world. My stats, my numbers, me me me. There's loads of those at West Ham, at Everton. Where are they tonight? Playing FIFA because we dicked them on teamwork. Well, it was a good run, lads. Quarter-final of the FA Youth Cup for the first time in our history, but then the egos took over. RIP Chester Football Club."
It's hard to tell how angry Best actually is. This isn't completely fake, but if he was actually as mad as he sounded I think he would simply sub Wibbers off. The performance appears designed to allow the young forward slash left-midfielder to recant his sins.
While we wait for Wibbers to make his decision, I note with interest that Best mentions young players giving interviews. He doesn't let his young stars talk to the media. There is almost nothing from Wibbers, Dan, Banksy (the goalie rated sky high at Chester), and a flat zero from Welsh phenom Roddy Jones, who is kitted up and ready to come on if needed.
Wibbers gets to his feet. "I'm sorry, lads. Course I'll play left-mid. I don't need a goal. I just thought... you know. Because..."
It's actually really sweet, but Best is in Antics Mode. "Oh! He'll do his job! Aren't we lucky? Everyone, quick, onto the pitch before he changes his mind!"
Bomber, the reserve centre back, points to a clock. "There's five minutes left."
"Oh!" says Best, floating towards Bomber. "The Timekeeper has spoken! We must stay in our crevice until the allotted time! All hail the almighty Timekeeper!"
Bomber grabs his training jacket and heads for the door before Best sucks in another lungful. The rest of the lads follow.
I ask myself how I'm feeling. Not good but the last time I doubted Best I ended up with egg on my face. "That was eventful," I suggest.
"Mmm," says Best. He's pushing magnets around his board.
"I thought Wibbers was a real team player. Certified Max Best team first attitude. Why's he being like that?"
Best touches the left mid magnet and moves it forward. "It's his birthday."
I lose my professional detachment. "Fucking hell, Max! He wants a goal on his birthday and you're giving him shit? Did you need to push him like that? You could have just explained your tactic to him."
"He understands the tactic and he's happy to do it but he needs to learn that being a professional means if you ever go against your manager you get slammed and I need him to realise that if there's a match on his birthday, his birthday doesn't start until the final whistle. What if we've got a title six-pointer, what if he's playing for England in a World Cup qualifier? He leaves his zone to try to grab a birthday goal and England lose? Fuck that. When he's retired and he looks back on his career and sees he never scored on his birthday but his team won every match, how will he respond? What do you think, Daily Mail? Putting the team first. Is that cure or cancer?"
***
What seems like ten seconds before the second half kicks off, Best gets the kids over and tells them to play 4-2-3-1. They nod and take up their new positions. My mouth hangs open at the perfection of their new lines. The Ipswich analysts must have thought Best spent the entire break coaching his lads through the change. I know better.
Eightieth best football manager, my arse.
Even more jaw-dropping is seeing Wibbers not in his natural position as one of the front four. Best's tactical approach veers towards simplicity - that's his genius - but this is a pure galaxy brain moment. These are the decisions that blow up in managers' faces. These are the decisions that lead to disaster.
I wait for the inevitable mess.
I'm still waiting.
When Chester next get the ball, Wibbers moves away from his fellow DM into the right-sided central midfield slot. There he stands, covered by two opponents, watched by more. Dan Badford is more than capable of playing a pass to the CAMs, and he does so now. The ball shoots past Wibbers to the feet of Tyson. He battles with his marker, backheels the ball to Benny, and Benny feeds Noah. Chas makes a run that draws a centre back. Noah surges forward, throws his arms left like a rugby player doing an offload, and when the second centre back follows the path of the intended pass, Noah simply glides into the space and fires right-footed to the left of the goalie. Three-two!
The lads come to celebrate but Best scents blood. He yells at them to shut up and listen.
"Line up in 4-2-3-1, yeah, but then we go straight back to 4-4-2. Got it?"
"Yes, boss!" They clap their hands like in American sports and retake their positions.
I glance at the Ipswich dugout - their iPad Army is a blur of pointing and bickering. The head coach tries to make some adjustments. He abandons his plan to mark Wibbers.
Half a minute later, Wibbers is back to left mid just in front of me - just in front of the home bench - causing more pointing, more bickering.
It gets worse for the home staff. The ball is continually fed to Wibbers. He controls, spins, bounces defenders off him. When they lose their patience and slide in, he chips the ball over their legs and sprints away. He is unplayable.
The man-marker returns. Wibbers is a black hole, a weirdly specific one that attracts Tractor Boys into its orbit. Henk passes to Dan. Dan evades a feeble, frazzled challenge and shapes to chip the ball to Wibbers. Panic ensues and there's the familiar sight of multiple Ipswich players shuffling closer to him. Dan instead pings the ball to Tyson, who plays it out wide to Noah. He motors forward and hits a low, hard cross that Benny side-foots into the goal. It's almost identical to the first goal but now Wibbers is close to Best and he celebrates by jumping into his manager's arms.
"All right, you prick," laughs Best. "Go get your goal. What the fuuuuu."
What happens next is hard to believe, and almost as hard to describe. As Ipswich kick off, Chester line up in the same 4-4-2 with Wibbers on the left. The home team's normally reliable central midfielders try too hard to make something happen and the ball is gobbled up by a combination of Dan, Tyson, and Henk.
Instead of returning to their positions, instead of spreading out, they stay close together, moving the ball towards the right touchline. (Wibbers stays over on the left, two Tractor Boys watching him.) Jamie Brotherhood moves closer to Dan and the two bounce quick passes to each other. (Wibbers makes a sprint inside before moving back to the wing. He can't shake his defenders.) Tyson stretches the game with a pass to Benny but he turns back and the ball is pinged back to Henk, now stationed at the base of this rectangle of Chester players.
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I've heard of this. Best has taken ideas from Brazil and brought them back home. I've even seen some clips, but nothing can prepare you for the shock of seeing it live for the first time. "Is this Bestball?" I say.
"What's that?" says Best.
The Ipswich coach yells at his players to get the fucking ball, but the rectangle hasn't formed by accident. As frantic Ipswich players storm its walls and more and more players vacate their usual posts, a slick one-two-three ends with Dan breaking out of the mass of players and slipping a ball into the wide open expanse that is the entire rest of Portman Road. Has this ground ever seen a sequence quite like this?
Wibbers has outpaced the two defenders and is going to get to the ball first - unless the keeper can get there.
He can't.
Wibbers, the birthday boy, appears to miscontrol the ball, pushing it five yards diagonally away from goal. He rounds the stranded goalie, casually allows the ball to spin back into his path, and caresses it into the dead centre of the net. Five-two.
My first glance is towards the Ipswich bench. They're punch drunk. No doubt their army of specialists has created wagon wheel charts that describe Wibbers and Dan Badford in forensic detail, no doubt they know Best favours 4-3-3 and his team will randomly form strange shapes. No doubt they have prepared for everything Best might throw at them.
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
I want to suggest as much to Best but when I look at him he has the most extraordinary light in his eyes. He's smiling, grinning, swaying, sticking his tongue out, chuckling.
The 80th best manager in England gives me a hunted look. "What?" he says. "I wasn't."
"Wasn't what?"
He swallows hard. "4-4-2 low block? Calm things down? Yeah."
***
Best becomes subdued but the match remains compelling. The low block lasts all of a minute before Best reverts to 4-3-3. Ipswich score another but the real story is whether Wibbers can grab yet another hat trick. He scores his second in the 88th minute and there is chaos as Chester surge forward relentlessly, trying to set up their mate, until the full time whistle puts Ipswich out of their misery.
Six-three, no hat tricks, another Premier League side conquered.
I half expect Best to ban me from the dressing room after the game - it would be just his style - but I'm allowed in.
The victory music is playing, the lads are dancing. Best presses stop. "Yeah yeah yeah. We won. Shush now." The players shush. "Apparently it's William's birthday. Why didn't you tell me, mate?" There are groans and cheers. "I got you a present." Max hands an envelope to the nearest player; it gets passed along to the birthday boy.
Wibbers pulls out a voucher to huge laughs and cheers. I later learn it is for the chain restaurant Nando's. He grins, but there's another piece of glossy card in the envelope. He frowns at it.
Best explains. "It's for a long weekend in a spa hotel. Absolutely beautiful place. Good food, amazing scenery, massages included. It's, er..." Best hesitates. "The voucher's for two people, mate. If you can think of anyone who'll share a room with you..." This triggers an explosion of noise and some blushing. Best holds his hand up to ask for quiet. "One slight drawback... It's in Scotland. Lovely place, lovely people, but you might not want to let them know..." Best takes a printout from his backpack and holds it up like Neville Chamberlain. "That you're an England international."
This noise is ear-splitting, and when Best presses play on the speakers, it's Three Lions that fills the room. I look at the paper and it's the player list for the forthcoming England under 19s squad. If Wibbers impresses he could play in the summer's European Championships, which is also the qualifying competition for the under 20 World Cup.
Wibbers is lustily singing inside a huge huddle. Best is standing at the side of the room. If I had to choose one word to describe him, I'd say he was smug. I try my luck. "Can I interview Wibbers?"
"No."
I wave. "This isn't a good story."
The smugness diminishes by 80%. "What? It's top. David slays Goliath. Young star takes small step on path to greatness. Entire city is drenched in glory. What the fuck more do you want?"
I shake my head. "Sorry but you won so the story can't be about the kids. It's not their last match, is it?"
"You better write something or I'll kick off. Do you know how hard it was to get you that coat?"
I paw at it. It's really cosy and it has my initials on. "How hard?"
"Not very hard," admits Best. "Well, what do you want?"
I pretend to think. "Um... access? Hang around Bumpers and watch you at work? Watch your next league matches, get some colour, flesh it out. Paint a picture of you, the manager, from the inside." He's staring at me like I've offered to cover the Deva stadium's pitch in asphalt. "It's the only way to include this, to be honest."
Best eyes Tyson, Benny, and the rest. They give him strength but they are also his Kryptonite. "Off the record."
"No."
"Embargoed."
"No."
"God almighty." He shakes his head. "You know what? Fine. Home matches against Sutton and Notts County. You've chosen poorly, there. These are going to be dull as dishwater."
The 80th best manager in England has a very different definition of the word dull to the rest of us.
***
On the team bus, Best makes me sit across the aisle from him because he is 'tired of sharing oxygen'. He tells me that a record number of his players got international call-ups. Apart from Wibbers, the men's team will lose Cole Adams to the Irish under 19s as well as Youngster, Dazza Smith, and goalscoring sensation Foquita. He's not sure what worries him more - the match against Colchester when he will be without five important players, or the five matches in two weeks he'll have at the end of March.
The solution is easy. "Why don't you postpone the Colchester game? You can do it if you've got three call-ups."
Best gets haughty. "We are House Chester. There is no call we do not answer. No fixture we postpone." Also, he admits, "There's nowhere to move it to. We should have enough quality to win. Who else? Roddy Jones is in his age group for the first time. The five Welsh girls are in theirs, of course. Meghan and Sarah Greene got moved up to the u23s. That's so sensible - it'll keep the challenge fresh for them. Finally, Angel and Kisi Yalley got call-ups to train with the under 19s."
"Wow!" I say. "That's amazing! Great! You must be buzzing."
"Yeah," says Best. "I would be. But they left Dani out."
Dani is a deaf player Best believes to be the most talented in his entire, stacked, squad. "Oh."
"That's right. Oh."
***
I travel back with the team and stay overnight in Chester. Thus I'm at Bumpers Bank the next morning, watching Best watch Chester FC's squad train for the upcoming home match against Sutton United.
The stakes are high but not quite crystal clear. Chester and Mansfield Town have 11 matches left, Bradford City 8. Confusingly, Mansfield are 8 points ahead, while Bradford are 11. Best is more interested in the psychology of the situation.
"If we keep winning, one of the two will crack. If one cracks, so will the other. It's only a question of time. Is there enough time left?" I'm listening, of course I am. But there are two dozen fit young men chasing each other around Bumpers Lane. Best shakes his head. "Perving over young men causes cancer. I read that somewhere." When I don't react, he escalates. "We're expecting Sutton to play 4-3-3 so we're going to do a practice match. We normally do bibs but it's not that cold today. We could do shirts versus skins."
He's offering to make half his players go topless. "Do I get to choose which is which?"
"As long as it isn't Zach Green. His abs will make you go cross-eyed."
"I bet they would."
"Sorry what? Couldn't hear."
"I didn't say anything."
My admiration of these fine, upstanding young athletes is cruelly interrupted. A couple of Chester admins grab Best, he drops me in his office, and they vanish in a dust cloud of worry. He doesn't return for almost an hour. When he returns, surprise, surprise, he's surprised to see me.
"Everything all right?" I ask.
"Um... define all right," he says. We get cups of tea from the mobile kitchen and return to the cute little shed that serves as Best’s base. He explains the situation calmly enough: Chester FC have been hit by a fine and a shockingly harsh three-window transfer ban. It appears Chester failed to pay a club (which Best refuses to name) part of a transfer fee. The penalty for any such non-payment is harsh, automatic, and disproportionate.
I sip my tea. "I don't really understand. Were you disputing the fee or something?"
"Nothing like that," he says. "It was a mistake. Do you know how transfer fees are structured?"
"Pretend I don't for the benefit of my listeners."
He raises his eyebrows but ignores my gaffe. "Say you buy a dude for three hundred thousand. Normally you'll pay a third up front, a third a year later, the rest another year later. Something like that. It depends on the terms you negotiate but it's typical to split it into three or four. We bought a player and our admin guy set up the payments in our online banking. You know how it goes - you don't want to type the same crap three times so you do it once and duplicate it and just change the dates on the second and third. What I think has happened is that he has overwritten one of them and so one payment didn't get sent. It's absolutely trivial and easily dealt with by a phone call. Instead, the club in question has gone straight to the headmaster. Reported us to the EFL. Except it didn't - it waited until this week to do it to cause us maximum distress."
"You don't seem all that distressed considering you won't be able to buy players for three transfer windows!" I nearly scream it because Best doesn't seem to realise the extent of the problem.
"We wouldn't be able to pay fees for players," he says, smoothly. "I've got two absolute bosh guys coming in on frees and if anyone could thrive in this game just on free transfers and youth players, it's me. No, I'm not worried because there's precedent. Oxford United were late with some payments because Sunderland sent the invoices to the wrong person. This happens every now and then and if you're basically a good citizen you get the three grand fine and the transfer ban is suspended. It's the EFL in charge of this, not the FA, and the people in charge of the EFL these days actually like football. We'll be able to trade just fine. A new record signing every window just the way the fans want it." He takes a big, satisfying chug of the good stuff. "If the appeal fails, we postpone some player sales for a year. Yeah, the mood in the meeting we just had was not great but not terrible. Couple of interesting points from this. If you're a team in relegation trouble and you think you can save yourself by destabilising a club you're going to play in the coming weeks, why on earth would you choose Chester?" He scoffs and shakes his head. "Now that's a galaxy brain move. We thrive on chaos. Let's see how that works out for them." He has a small tactics board next to his armchair. He moves the magnets into a 4-2-4 formation, moves the left back forward, shoves the right back all the way to right midfield. He stares at it, jaw setting.
I think I know who has reported Chester for not paying their bills.
I think I know what formation Chester will play against Sutton United.
Best does this sometimes. Says he has two points to make but loses his thread and never gets to the second. "Are you going to sack the person who made the mistake?"
"No. That's my second point, if you'll let me finish. Jesus, you're so impatient." Approximately six minutes have passed since he last spoke. "The thing is..." Best puts his cup down on a shelf to his left and lets himself sink into the soft cushions. "It's my fault. I have to take responsibility."
"That's good of you, Max, but it's not your job to input those payments, is it? It's really not your mistake."
He waves his fingers around. "New training ground, new stadium. Players in, players out, media requests, National League rules, EFL rules, international transfers, interviews for documentaries, photos for our social media campaigns, selling and shipping six thousand tickets for the United match. We're flying through the leagues at breakneck speed and my focus is on the players and the coaches. We're very nearly a League One team with a League Two training ground and a National League North office setup. I haven't given the staff the support they need. Haven't hired anyone new since Brooke." He clicks his fingers. "You know what? This is her fault. She's such a workaholic. We have a meeting and I have seven things I want and I ask her which two she wants to do. She grabs the list and comes back a week later. She tells me that numbers two, three, and five are illegal but she's done the rest. I used to be much better at not overburdening the others. With Inga I'd give her a busy few days then I'd leave her alone for a week. I wasn't born a monster; Brooke turned me into one."
"It's a football club. It's understandable you'd focus on what you can put out on the pitch."
"Yeah, course, but we should have done more, collectively." He shakes his head. "Can't change it, can only look forward. We'll hire people, train them up. These transfer payments will get double-checked and we'll have someone go through the rules to highlight anything that could get us a transfer ban or a points deduction. We need to get ahead of those threats. Mostly, though, we need to make sure we stay lean but we have the manpower to meet the growing demands of the club."
"You're being quite mature about this."
"Could you say that again without the surprise?"
"I was thinking about how lean you are. You've got one scout, right? And far fewer coaches than the other teams at the top of League Two. How many scouts do you think you'll have when you're in the Championship?"
"One."
"That's crazy."
"If you say so." Best closes his eyes and puts his index fingertips under his chin. "This might simply be a case of unfortunate timing. I do have plans to expand the staff in the summer. Kian's coming on as a full-time assistant and I want Brooke to take another intern. MD will take a paid role, we're getting a new IT system that we'll roll out in stages, and we've hired a hospitality manager who will start in pre-season. I have been thinking about the office staff but it's easier to hire people when you're in League One because you won't necessarily have to sack them if you get relegated. If you go from League Two back to the National League, everyone you hired is toast."
"Can we cut the shit for a minute? You're not the 80th best manager. There's no way you'd get relegated."
"Maybe not but what if I get cancer from turning on an energy-saving light bulb? I don't want to build something that will crumble when I'm gone, do you know what I mean? When I got here, the average attendance was a bit over two thousand. If we go to League One and get relegated back down twice I hope that number would be three thousand at least. Do you know what I mean? That's kind of how I think. It's not just raising the ceiling, it's lifting the floor. Raising the ceiling is a piece of piss. I'm actually kind of obsessed with lifting the floor."
"You sound like a serial killer."
"I've been doing a lot of scouting recently and I've added a ton of quality to our under 14s and under 12s. It gets harder to find quality as you go older - some kids stop playing footy, I guess - but I don't think it's absurd to say that in the last couple of months I've added five million pounds in future player value to our squads."
"If you're allowed to sell them."
Best laughs. "Yeah. Ah, this story is going to suck on the forums and Facebook groups. The fans have had it too easy and this will bring out all the fucking nutjobs and conspiracy theorists."
"The news isn't public yet, is it? You need to get ahead of it. Be the first to put the message out. Shape the narrative."
"Um," says Best. He thinks for a short time before pulling his phone out. It's not the ancient block he has been lugging around since I met him; it's one of the newer models. He holds it in selfie mode and talks. "Hey, Chester fans, Max Best here. Bit of bad news for you. We made a small admin mistake with one of our transfer payments and as a result we're subject to a fine and a transfer ban. We're going to appeal because it was an honest mistake but these rules are in place to protect the sport. If clubs stop paying each other the whole house of cards will collapse and we don't want that. The rules are there to protect against bad actors, not honest clubs like ours, so I'm expecting a suspended sentence and we'll be really on top of all these payments in the future. I would normally apologise for this because no-one wants to read about their club failing to pay what it owes. There are still companies in Chester that won't work with this football club because the previous version didn't pay them for goods and services in the bad old days. One of my low-key ambitions is to undo all that damage and one of the very first things I did when I took over was to change our payment terms from 60 days to 30 and in a season or two I want to change that to 14 days or sooner. We owe you money? We'll pay you straight away. It's not easy because most of our income comes in a couple of big bursts but that's the kind of company I want to work for and that's the kind of organisation we're trying to become. So why no apology? You'll get one. You'll see it on the pitch this Saturday." He ends the recording and looks over. "What do you think?"
"I think you'll sell a lot of tickets."
"We're sold out for the rest of the season."
I panic. "There's room for me, though?"
"Yep," he says. He points. "You'll need a ponytail."
***
He was joking about the hair, and he not only set me up in the executive box but promised he'd let me in to witness his half-time team talk. It seemed like it would be a non-event, though.
In the first half against lowly Sutton, Chester - playing a basic 4-4-2 - score three goals without response even though they barely get out of first gear. I am astonished, then, to walk into the dressing room to find myself in the middle of one of the biggest tear-down sessions I have ever seen.
Best's wrath is aimed at the Australian striker, Darren 'Dazza' Smith and it seems cruel to recount the whole evisceration. The crux of the matter is Dazza's work rate, which Best compares variously to that of a slug, a worm, a fucking sausage that fell off the barbie. "I haven't seen anyone care that little about their performance since the last Ryan Reynolds straight-to-Netflix movie. I haven't seen anyone care that little about their performance since a FedEx driver chucked a 'sorry you were out' ticket into my garden even though I was staring at him from five fucking yards away. I haven't seen anyone care that little about their performance since Solly the dog looked at the stick I threw him and said 'you get it.'" Best turns to his head of performance, the Brig, who is tasked with carrying Chester's tablet computer. "Did this prick run more than Sticky?"
The Brig taps a couple of times and says, "Yes, he ran more than the goalkeeper."
"Oh, glory, hallelujah!" screams Best. "Callooh! Callay! O frabjous fucking day!"
"Boss," says Dazza, but while it might seem like Best is unreasonably worked up, it turns out the Australian has few allies.
"Shut the fuck up!" suggests Chester's captain Christian Fierce. "You're as much use as a glass hammer."
"Fucking soup sandwich," growls Vimsy, one of the gruffest, most old-school coaches remaining at Chester. It's usually his job to do the shouting but today, they are all Vimsy.
Best wants to have the last word. "You're as much use as glow-in-the-dark sunglasses. I kept you on for two reasons. One, so everyone remembers what it feels like to play with someone who doesn't give a shit. Two, so I could scream at you at half-time. That's happening now. That's now. This is that. Three, so I could fucking bin you off in public. You're done, mate. Get in the bin." Best kicks one of the big clothes bins; it rolls towards Dazza.
Best has gone too far. The first to complain is Henri Lyons, the person who would stand to benefit most from Dazza being out of the team. He's the first, but he's not alone. There is shouting, there are groups putting their arms around the Australian - he's only 20 - others trying to bring Best down off the ledge.
When things quieten, Best makes everyone sit down. He walks around, quietly jabbing his finger towards the away dressing room. "Those fucks," he says, "tried to destroy us this week. They're the kind of people who'll use every trick in the book including pissing on our picnic just so they can run off with our crisps. Three-nil won't cut it today, lads. Three-nil isn't anywhere near the realm of what I'll accept from the best team in the league on a moral crusade against the worst. If you're not feeling it, if you can't be arsed, consider yourself transfer listed, get out of my sight, find a new club. For everyone who gives a fucking shit about this club and these fans who are paying your fucking WAGES - " Best kicks a table and water bottles go flying - "get off your arses and put a fucking shift in! Dazza, you've got ten minutes to make your running stats respectable. I suggest you sprint non-stop because if we aren't peeling you off the pitch when it's time to go, we're going to put you in the back of the Brig's car and we'll dump you at Manchester Airport. No-one puts in a performance like that at this football club. Not now, not ever."
Best kicks a different table and storms past me. I half expect him to wink at me on the way out but no - he's livid.
The players drift out of the dressing room in ones and twos. Henri Lyons is a sub for the day and I ask him if Dazza deserved to be singled out. He shows me his back teeth. "Oui. Players can accept a teammate who has a bad day. Putain, even Henri Lyons has a bad day once per season." He considers what he said. "Twice per season. But we cannot accept what Dazza did. This is not walking football. Everything in this life must be earned. Dazza thought today was a game he could coast but Max is far, far more prone to anger against the weak teams than the strong ones. Dazza is young; he will learn. Or not." Lyons sniffs and leans slightly closer to me. "What are you wearing?"
I tell him the name of my perfume.
He beams - I could not have said anything more delightful to him. "Make me the subject of your piece and I will send you a box."
"I'm writing about the 80th best manager in England," I say.
Henri is puzzled. "Who is that?"
"You'll have to read it to find out."
He wags his finger. "Very good, Bethany. Very good."
***
Is it possible for the average reader to guess what will happen in the first ten minutes of the second half? I'm no gambler but I would have bet on a goal rush from Chester, with a side bet on Dazza to run his arse off.
Three-nil becomes four-nil soon enough, but then the spark Best ignited seems to leave the game. Dazza does keep running, bless him, but the rest of his team take the chance to rest their legs - the dangerous Notts County are up next.
Best brings himself on with half an hour to go. He walks a yard onto the pitch and scans it, eyes hooded; I get instant goosebumps. I've seen that look before.
Almost immediately after the final match of this season (unless Chester are in the play-offs), a demolition crew will descend on the Deva stadium and blow the Harry McNally stand to smithereens.
They will not do a faster nor a more complete job than Max Best did on Sutton.
There are different facets to Best's game. He is an extremely good defensive midfielder, able to put himself in passing lanes, make interceptions, win headers, and spray passes. He is a decent central midfielder, able to keep the ball moving, turning away from pressers, threatening all sorts of clever scoops and chips.
But he made his name as a winger and against Sutton he is somewhere close to his imperious best.
Only he isn't playing as a winger - he is nominally Chester's right back. (On the left of the pitch, Josh Owens plays wing back - it's the ultra-offensive 4-2-4 variant Best had been daydreaming about days before.) Best thunders up and down the touchline - mostly up - crunching into tackles, playing one-twos, running past young Calabash Barkley, demanding the ball.
Best's first goal involvement comes when he does a piece of skill I'm not sure I've ever seen before. Imagine a DJ 'scratching' a disc, but the disc is the football and instead of making a funky sound the action results in a nutmeg. Clear of the defender, Best dashes towards the corner flag. He looks up and sees Dazza and Foquita are miles behind. Visibly annoyed, Best has to wait for them to catch up, has to beat the defender again, hits a pinpoint cross that Dazza heads home, then tears strips off both strikers right there on the pitch.
That is five-nil.
Six comes when Best passes to Bark in a dangerous advanced position and then makes a sneaky run into the box. Bark plays a short pass exactly along the goal line - it has to be one of the rarest passes seen in professional football. Best arrives and thrashes the ball low and hard across goal. Foquita's attempted finish makes the ball squirt past the unlucky Dazza - who has finally made a good run but has not been rewarded for it. Charlie Dugdale is on hand to guide the ball into the unguarded left-hand side of the net. It's not the easiest chance but few people strike a ball as cleanly as Duggers.
Six.
Best decides it is time for his mate Henri to replace Dazza. The home fans give the Aussie a good round of applause - the manager is not happy about that.
Shortly after his introduction, the goal-hungry Frenchman outmuscles his opponent in the race to get on the end of another delicious Max Best cross. The irony is that Henri's opponent was his fellow striker, Foquita.
A magnificent seven.
With time nearly up, a free kick is awarded thirty-five yards from goal. The angle suits the left-footed Charlie Dugdale and he makes his willingness to take the kick perfectly clear to his boss. His boss made his thoughts equally plain: touch that ball and we'll need a forensics team to find your teeth.
Best takes a long run up and strikes the ball so hard and so true Dugdale makes an O face before the ball has even left Best's foot. The 80th best manager in English football is aiming through a crowd with the idea that if no-one touches the ball he will score and if anyone does get a deflection, the goalie will be helpless.
As it happens, the ball brushes the very crown of someone's head, lifting it just high enough to crash into the crossbar and away from danger. Max Best scowls at the seats where the visiting VIPs sit - the seats are empty.
Full time, seven-nil. I rush down to hear Best's post-match interview and catch the end.
"Next time you've got a problem with Chester Football Club, get on the phone." He smiles down the camera lens, twinkles as he adds, "We're very reasonable."
***
The win doesn't lift Chester higher in the league - they're still fifth, but the table will only really take shape as Chester's games in hand are played. One is coming up against freewheeling Notts County.
I call from Manchester the day before the match.
"How are things with Dazza?"
Best is surprised I'd start with that. "Ask him."
"You don't let me talk to your players."
"Do you have any questions that, you know, are interesting?"
"Max," I say. "You erupted at him. If I'm reading this article I'm thinking you're a rageaholic or the stress of the season is getting to you. I'd think, yeah, maybe he is the 80th best manager. He sounds like an arsehole."
"Mmm." He's considering what I've said. "I don't really care what your readers think of me, but kudos for remembering it's readers this time, not listeners."
"Ha ha."
"Did you watch the first half back?"
"No."
"Mmm. It was really bad, Beth. In most teams that gets hidden inside the three-nil but this isn't most teams. We've got the lowest budget in the league and we can't have passengers. This isn't only about three points against Sutton. We're getting ready for next season in League One and these matches are auditions. I'm sympathetic if someone's having a bad day. It could be anything, right? Bad news from back home or some girl he's crushing on writes on her socials that Adam Sandler plays the best detective character in movie history. Devastating. If there's something going on, tell me. But tell me before I fill in the team sheet, do you know what I mean? If you're on the team sheet you're responsible for your performance and if you can't perform you can at least work your arse off. If nothing's going on in your private life and you just want glory to be handed to you on a plate while your mates do your work for you, that's okay, too. Enjoy your new career as a toy spider salesman."
"You're so demanding. No-one can play well every game."
"You can run, though, can't you? You can graft. Fans demand graft as a minimum and they're right. Plus there's a pretty interesting correlation between running stats and wins. I think the modern game has a scouting problem. Big teams scout for athletes and try to teach them to play. That's in the direction of stupid but it tells you how important running is."
"Why is it stupid?"
"I mean, take Dan Badford. I don't think there's a club in the entire football league that would scout him and think, yes, please! But he held his own against Newcastle and looked good against Man United. He's an absolute baller and players like that can let the ball do the work. Dan to Duggers to Ryan Jack to Pascal to Wibbers. I mean, you can keep your six foot four athletes because when we click, you're never going to get the ball from us."
"You think Dan's on the same level as the others?"
"Haven't you been watching, Beth? He's out there dropping nukes like Gandhi!"
I leave a big pause. "Sorry, what did you say?"
"Dropping nukes like Gandhi."
"The most peaceful man of the twentieth century?"
Best is annoyed. "It's from the Civilization games. They gave Gandhi an aggression score of minus one, but that caused an overflow or whatever you call it and it made him love to drop nukes all over the place."
"I don't follow."
"Ugh," says Best. "It's not that hard, Beth. Imagine two footballers going for a tackle. One's got Aggression 20, the other is Aggression 1."
"Right."
"The high aggression one does a foul, gets a yellow card. Over the course of a season, that guy gets three red cards, ten yellows. The low aggression guy gets two yellows and one of those is for swirling his shirt over his head when he was celebrating a goal."
"Okay."
"Now say you want to make sure there's a guy who's really, really not aggressive. You give him a score of minus one, but because of maths and computer shit, you've accidentally created the love child of Dennis Wise and Sergio Ramos."
I laugh at the image. "Go on."
"So take Dan..."
"Go on," I repeat.
But Best doesn't go on. All I hear is what sounds like him moving the phone away from his mouth and softly saying the word 'fuck'.
***
Best gives me half an hour before the Notts County match. He has named his starting eleven and his squad and says the hour before the match is 'totes lame' so he 'might as well slot me in'.
We're in his tiny manager's office, along with the Brig, who appears to be addicted to Sudoku. He's also munching on tangerines; a pungent citrusy smell pervades everything.
I try to pick up the Dan Badford thread but Best refuses to discuss it. I try to go back to the transfer embargo but he says it's in the hands of the lawyers and vengeance has been served. I try to confirm that it was Sutton United who complained about the missing funds from the Eddie Moore transfer but Best checks the time and says 'you've got 28 minutes left'.
I ask him to talk me through today's line up and that goes better.
"Notts use 3-4-1-2 so we're going to match them with a 3-4-3 that I'll tweak as opportunities appear.
"In goal it's a debut for Ian Swan. Swanny. We're going to play Heart Attack Football and that suits him better than Sticky. I was wary about starting Swanny today because Notts could score a hatful and I don't really like new players getting thrown in at the deep end but hey ho.
"Back three is Zach, Christian, and Lee H. It's stronger than I'd like because all three need a break, really. But you can't dick around with Notts; they're super good going forward.
"Midfield is Duggers, Ryan Jack, Andrew Harrison, and Bark. Quite rotated but there's more than enough quality. It's a break for Youngster and Lee C and if we can get away with not using Magnus that's another bonus.
"Up front it's Henri, Foquita, and Pascal. Loads of threat there."
I squint. "No Dazza?"
"No."
"Is he on the bench?"
"Um," says Best, digging his nail into the wall. "Can't remember."
I tut. "You can't keep doing this, Max. One day soon you're going to have players who you need to suck up to. You can't keep going Gandhi on everyone's arse!"
The Brig looks up, surprised, before getting back to his puzzle.
Best says, "There's one thing you might want to write in your article and it might be the most important thing. I'm the director of football at this club as well as the manager and I don't plan to ever sack myself. I'd need to lose six games in a row before MD started to think about showing me the door. That means I don't have to be popular with the fans. I can ride out the shit starts to the season while we get our machine purring and I can take some poor results if it means we get more squad depth or it boosts a young player's development." He tuts and makes a 'get rid of that' motion as the Brig finishes a segment - of his fruit, not his puzzle. The Brig stands, gathers the remnants of four tangerines, and takes them to a bin outside. He's back to hear most of what Best says next. "Fans get attached to players and if a player gets more popular than a manager, at some clubs that's a recipe for disaster. Not here, because MD doesn't give much of a shit what the fans think about him, either. I mean, he does but he's been the face of years of underperformance and he's used to getting abuse. No, when I go to the fans forum near the end of the season and I say teamwork and hard work are absolutely non-negotiable and any player who falls short is not long for this world, they'll have to accept it. Maybe being so hardline like that comes with a limit. Maybe you can only get to tenth in the Championship if you're not willing to indulge shitheads. I don't see why, but I'm willing to accept the possibility of a theoretical limit. After four seasons of finishing tenth, I'll probably admit I was wrong."
"You're not wrong," mumbles the Brig.
There's a knock on the door. Physio Dean pokes his head in. "Gaffer, can you come? It's not a crisis, but..."
Best stands. "That's your time, Beth. Enjoy the match, yeah?"
"Yeah," I muse. Something's nagging at me. Something big that I missed. I leap to my feet and hurl myself into the corridor. "Max!" I yell, seconds before he goes into the dressing room. He pauses, as does everyone for a mile around. I throw my arms wide. "What's Heart Attack Football?"
He rocks his head back and laughs before vanishing through the door.
***
Chester 1 Notts County 0.
Chester 1 Notts County 1.
Injury to Zach Green.
Chester 2 Notts County 1.
Chester 2 Notts County 2.
Injury to Magnus Evergreen.
Chester 2 Notts County 3.
Chester 3 Notts County 3.
Red card for Andrew Harrison.
Chester 4 Notts County 3.
That's heart attack football.
***
Chester finish the evening in fourth place, with a game in hand over Fleetwood Town who are only 2 points ahead. Mansfield are only 5 points clear of Chester, while Bradford's lead has been slashed to 8 points and could be 2 in the blink of an eye.
While their opponents stumble towards the season's finish line, Chester's men's team are in a full sprint. The women's team are already on something of a victory lap and all the talk is of the upcoming visit of a team from Colombia. The under eighteens will play Chelsea in the semi-final of the FA Youth Cup and that glittering opposition will hold no fear for Best's Babes.
Despite having a fraction of the resources of their peers, all of Chester's squads are bristling with international players and in this culture, even the stars must improve or fall by the wayside.
Are there clouds on the horizon? Certainly. There is the threat of a transfer embargo, the club have been contacted about its conduct towards a new signing's former agent, and construction work on their training facility is starting at a less than opportune moment.
But if Max Best is the 80th best manager in England, I'd really, REALLY love to meet the one in 79th.