Glory Of The Football Manager System

Christmas Day was a rest day. A proper rest day, sanctioned by Rebecca and protected by the fixture list Boxing Day was twenty-four hours away, but the morning training session on December 26th was light, recovery-focused, the squad would convene at two o’clock for pre-match. Which meant that Christmas Day, for once, genuinely belonged to us.

The squad had scattered. Sakho was with his family in London he had sent a photo earlier of his two daughters attacking a mountain of presents under a tree that was bigger than the apartment containing it.

Dann was in Liverpool with his parents. Neves was in Portugal via private jet, having left Stoke immediately after the match, and managed to squeeze a trip home before Boxing Day. Konaté was with Sakho’s family: the eighteen-year-old had been adopted as an unofficial son by the older Frenchman, who had decided that no teammate would spend Christmas alone if it fell within his jurisdiction.

Zaha was in Thornton Heath with his mother. Rodríguez was somewhere private and undoubtedly expensive with his family, the Colombian’s Instagram revealing only that he was somewhere with palm trees and excellent wine.

The staff had their own families too. Sarah had driven to Norfolk to spend the day with her parents. Rebecca was in Edinburgh.

Kevin Bray had flown to Spain; the set-piece coach, it turned out, had a villa in Andalusia, which was the most interesting fact anyone had ever learned about Kevin Bray.

Paddy McCarthy had invited the academy boys who lived in club accommodation to his family home: Hannam, Webb, Olise, Morrison because he couldn’t stand the idea of teenagers eating Christmas dinner alone in a training ground dormitory. Paddy was like that.

I had been invited to three Christmas lunches Parish’s, Jessica’s, and an open invitation from Paddy. I had declined all of them. Today was Emma’s. Today was ours. And I had plans.

"Get dressed," I said.

She was still in bed, still in my t-shirt, working her way through a second coffee. "Why?"

"Because I’m taking you out."

"On Christmas Day?"

"On Christmas Day."

"Where?"

"Surprise."

"Danny. Everything is closed on Christmas Day. Even the newsagent is closed. How have you managed to organise something?"

"I made a phone call."

"To whom?"

"Someone owed me a favour."

She narrowed her eyes, but she got up.

Thirty minutes later, she emerged from the bedroom in a cream wool dress... fitted, modest, tailored, the kind that made you look at the woman wearing it rather than the dress itself with her red hair pinned up and a deep-green coat over her arm. She had put on eyeliner. Not much. Just enough. The combined effect was devastating and she knew it.

"Ready," she said, with the quiet authority of a woman who had calibrated her appearance with surgical precision and intended to be appreciated.

"You look..."

"Don’t. We’ll be late."

"Late for what?"

"For whatever you’ve planned that you won’t tell me about."

---

The DB11 slid out of the Dulwich underground garage into an empty London. It was the strangest sensation driving through the capital on Christmas Day, the roads clear, the streets silent, the city a film set without actors. I took the scenic route.

Past Brockwell Park, where a group of teenagers were kicking a football in the December cold, their breath rising in clouds. Past Kennington, past Waterloo, across Westminster Bridge Big Ben striking twelve as we crossed, the sound bouncing off the empty water below.

"Where are we going?" Emma asked, her hand on my knee, her eyes on the silent Thames.

"Core by Clare Smyth."

She turned. "Clare Smyth’s restaurant."

"Yes."

"On Christmas Day."

"Yes."

"Core is closed on Christmas Day, Danny."

"Not today. Not for us."

She stared at me. "You didn’t."

"I did."

"Explain."

I drove. "Clare Smyth is a Palace fan. Her husband grew up in Croydon. They have a private dining room upstairs that they occasionally open for special guests.

I got a message through a friend of a friend, and Clare agreed, as a Christmas gift to one of her kitchen’s former pastry chefs, who happens to be a lifelong Eagle, to cook a four-course Christmas lunch for two. Today. For us."

Emma was silent for a long moment. Then: "You absolute madman."

"I know."

"We could have had beans on toast."

"We could have. But beans on toast doesn’t win three Michelin stars."

She looked at me with an expression that I had seen before the same expression she had worn the night I had told her about the permanent contract, the night I had told her about the Aston Martin, the night I had told her I was ready to look at properties in Dulwich.

The expression of a woman who was watching a boy she had known when he counted coins for the bus become a man with resources and still, miraculously, remain the boy underneath.

"I love you, Danny Walsh."

"I love you, Em."

The meal was extraordinary. The restaurant was empty just us, at a table by the window, the London skyline grey and silent outside, and Clare Smyth herself came out of the kitchen during the dessert course in her whites and her kitchen clogs, her northern Irish accent warming the room, to tell us about each dish and ask how she was playing in our league.

She was funny and sharp and utterly unimpressed by fame, and by the end of the conversation, she had invited us back in February and told me that if I sold Konaté to Manchester City, she would personally drive to my house and throw the leftover cranberry sauce at my front door.

"Understood," I said.

"Good man. Enjoy your Christmas."

---

After lunch, we drove. Not anywhere specific just around. Through Mayfair, its Christmas lights still glowing in the grey afternoon. Down through Chelsea, past the King’s Road boutiques that were all closed, their windows a fantasy of winter fashion that Emma narrated as we passed: "That coat is beautiful. That bag is obscene. That dress is what happens when an intern gets access to a sewing machine and a trust fund."

Past Battersea, where the power station’s chimneys rose against the grey sky like industrial monoliths. Across the river, back into South London, along the A3 with the radio playing a Christmas compilation that Emma had curated Shane MacGowan’s broken voice on "Fairytale of New York," The Pretenders’ "2000 Miles," Wham! twice because Emma had no shame.

We drove for almost two hours. We didn’t need to be anywhere. That, more than anything else, was the gift. A Sunday afternoon in December, a car, a woman, and no fixture list demanding anything of either of us.

When we got back to the penthouse, there were three boxes in the foyer.

"What are those?" Emma said.

"They’re for you."

"Danny."

"Open them."

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.