Chapter 876 - 876: Depth

A door went somewhere behind him and a lad came out with a laundry bag and went the other way when he saw the pair of us.

"You will get asked it in a press room," Issott said.

"Not by me. By a man with a recorder who has had 3 weeks to word it. And the honest answer is that we got it wrong and this is us paying for it in public, and I have watched 4 managers at 3 clubs decide they would rather have the list in a drawer than have that afternoon."

"I will have the afternoon."

"You say that on a Tuesday when you are top of nothing. Say it to me in March."

"Gary."

He stopped at the door.

"How many of your 18 can you name?"

"All of them," Gary Issott said, and went to his session.

Ron refereed in the Football League for 11 years. 4 seasons in the Third Division, and he stopped in 1999 because of a hip. I have known that man since April 2017 and I found it out in a corridor in about 9 seconds off a man who coaches our under 23s.

I asked him at half 11, stood at his own barrier, and he took his time about answering.

"You want me to ring them."

"3 dates. 6 months, a year, 2 years. Find out what they are doing, write it down, give it to Michael and Gary."

"And if 1 of them is doing something?"

"Then somebody goes and watches him."

Ron looked down that road at the same 40 yards of tarmac he has been watching since 1999. A van went past and the driver lifted a hand off the wheel at him and Ron lifted one back without turning his head.

"I have watched about 300 lads go out of this gate," he said. "Nobody has ever asked me what happened to any of them."

He starts on the 5th. 40 names, 3 hours a week on a Wednesday, and Steve Parish put him on the payroll for it inside an hour. Ron argued about the money for 20 minutes because he did not want any.

He does not know about the lad with 22 goals and he is not going to. He is going to ring all 40 in order and I want to know what he finds when nobody has pointed him at anything.

Fweep.

Thursday morning at Beckenham is the session nobody writes about. 14 of them played 90 minutes against Liverpool on Monday, so Thursday belongs to the other 17, and between the 11 Rebecca had on the grass they have 2 league starts this season.

There were about 30 kids along the far fence because the schools do not go back until the 3rd, and a groundsman took a line marker up the touchline behind them and had to stop twice to move a bag.

Scott Dann was the loudest man out there for 70 minutes, and he is 31, and he is the captain of this football club, and he has played 4 minutes of football since May. He organised a back 4 that will not play a match together all season.

He shouted at a 17-year-old for standing 2 yards square, then walked over and put the lad where he wanted him with a hand on his shoulder and made him do it again until it came without being asked, and then went and stood on his own by the mannequins with his hands on his hips.

James Rodríguez spent 20 minutes being marked by an 18-year-old and let him get close enough twice to think he had done something. Nya Kirby came off that pitch believing he had been at it. He had been at it. He will work out how much of it was a gift in about 4 years.

Thwack.

Andros Townsend did the warm down last and made sure Connor Blake did it properly, and a 27-year-old with 13 England caps does not have to do that for a 19-year-old who plays his position and is behind him. Blake got 20 extra afterwards with Michael Cooke on pressing angles. His April 2017 report says in writing that he cannot do them.

Every one of those men is going to play 25 matches before May, because there are 63 matches in this season and 31 of us.

We spent a summer buying teenagers so that a red card on a Monday night is a Thursday morning conversation and not a crisis, and so that a manager can lose the best young full back in England for 3 matches and have Hakimi, Ward and Tuanzebe stood in front of him, and 1 of the 3 won a Golden Ball 6 weeks ago.

Rachid rang from Bouknadel on Thursday afternoon with 1 question and 1 piece of news. The question was whether the 3 dates thing applies to Morocco, because Cooke forwards him everything.

The news was that of the 41 boys who came in on the 11th of August, 2 have already gone home. Homesick, 11 and 12 years old, 60 kilometres from their mothers, and they lasted 9 days.

"I drove them," Rachid said. "Both of them, myself, on Sunday. And I told their fathers at the door that it is open in January and it is open when they are 14 and it is open when they are 16, and then I went home and wrote all 4 of those things down, because a father remembers what you said and a club does not."

The other thing started at 6 minutes past 7 on Tuesday morning and I did not see it until Thursday because I do not read the internet.

CRYSTAL PALACE'S FIRST RED CARD IN 15 MONTHS.

That is true and it is the only part of it that was.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka's sending off at 74 minutes on Monday night is the first red card any player of mine has been shown since I took this job in April 2017. 60-odd matches. A Carabao Cup, an FA Cup, a Europa League, a Community Shield and a Super Cup. Not 1 red card in any of them.

Then 400 words underneath it, and whoever wrote them had watched the match twice.

A club that has not had a man sent off in 15 months has just had one for a professional foul on the last man, 4 days after beating Real Madrid 5-0, in a match they were drawing at home.

That is not a club that got unlucky. That is a club that has learned what winning costs.

Danny Walsh has spent 15 months being praised for a squad of children who play with no fear. On Monday night one of those children took Mohamed Salah down from behind at 1-1 with 16 minutes to go, and Crystal Palace won the football match.

Nobody teaches a 20-year-old to do that in a week.

It is a good argument and it is wrong, and the thing that makes it wrong is on the tape and I cannot use it.

A man committing a professional foul does not chase. He waits. He shepherds. He takes his man at 25 yards with both hands up and a face on him, and every defender in Europe knows how and about half of them have done it.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka ran at a football he had no chance of reaching.

You cannot say that out loud in a press room without telling a referee he was wrong, and Michael Oliver was not wrong, so I have kept my mouth shut all week.