Chapter 955 - 955: The Empty Lines III

Prrrp. Prrrp. Prrrrp.

Manchester City 1, Crystal Palace 0 on the night, and 2-2 over the 2 legs.

The referee tossed his coin in the centre circle and it came down for the west end. Our end.

We made a ring on the edge of the technical area. Rebecca went round it with water. Sarah stood in the middle of it with the sheet on her clipboard, and I watched her look round the 11 faces for a fifth name before I had said 1.

She did not need to look long. Tyrick Mitchell had come and stood directly in front of me.

He did not say anything. He was the 1 who had taken 10 at Hennessey on his own on Monday with nobody asking him to.

I looked at Neves.

"I take 6," Neves said.

I told Sarah, Mitchell 5, Neves 6. She wrote both names on the line, 1 above the other, and showed me, and I nodded.

Steele walked down to the goal with the water bottle and put it in the back of the net, by the post, with the tape on it facing the pitch.

City went first.

Agüero put it high to Krul's right. Krul went left.

Bowen walked up with his head down and put it low to Ederson's left, and Ederson went right.

Gündoğan rolled his into the bottom corner after a little skip that took Krul down too early.

Eze took his slowly, waited for Ederson to move and put it the other way.

Kevin De Bruyne came next. Krul went into the back of his net first and drank from Steele's bottle, reading the tape. Then, instead of going back to his line, he picked the ball up off the spot, held it, said something to De Bruyne that made the referee start walking over, and handed it to him.

Then he backed onto his line pointing to his right. He went down to his left, and De Bruyne's penalty was there, at a good height, and Krul pushed it out with both hands.

Thock.

Behind the bench Kirby came up off his seat on his good foot.

Connor Blake walked to the spot. I had watched him take the third at the Riverside in October and score it.

He put this 1 low to Ederson's right, and not far enough. Ederson got down and held it.

Blake stood there. Then he turned round and walked back to the centre circle with his eyes on the grass the whole way, and Mitchell put his arm round his neck when he got there and did not let go of him.

Mahrez scored. He ran up so slowly that the ground went quiet, and then put it in the top corner.

Grealish put his down the middle, hard, while Ederson was falling.

3-3, 1 kick each left.

Gabriel Jesus scored City's fifth, low to Krul's right. Krul got a hand to it and it went in under the hand.

So it was Mitchell's to keep us in it.

He took the ball off the referee and put it on the spot, and then he picked it up again and put it down again, and I thought, he is going to miss, he has had too long to think. He walked back 5 steps. He did not look at the goal once. He was looking at the ball.

He hit it to the same side as Monday. The same side as all 9.

It was a poor penalty, at a height Ederson could reach, and Ederson went the right way and got his left hand to it, and for a moment I could see the ball going wide.

It hit the inside of the post and went in.

Tk.

Mitchell did not celebrate. He walked straight back to the halfway line and put his arm round Blake again. It was 4-4.

Nicolás Otamendi took City's sixth.

Krul did his walk again, and the referee had a word with him again. Otamendi hit it as hard as I have ever seen a ball hit, straight down the middle, while Krul was going right.

It hit the underside of the bar, came straight down on the line and spun back up, and it hit the bar a second time on the way out.

Clang.

I heard Sarah breathe in next to me.

Rúben Neves picked the ball up from the edge of the box where the bounce had left it and walked it to the spot himself. He did not run up. He walked up, 3 steps, and stroked it into the bottom left corner while Ederson went right.

Swsh.

I do not remember the next 30 seconds and I have stopped trying to.

When I remember again, Bray had me round the neck from behind with both arms and was saying something I could not hear, and I was looking past him down the pitch to our end, where the other 10 were running at Krul.

Kirby had come over the advertising boards on 1 foot. He was hopping across the grass towards the pile in 1 trainer and 1 flip-flop, and Rebecca was going after him with her card still in her hand, shouting his name.

He got there. He got to the edge of the pile and Grealish reached out of the middle of it and pulled him in by the shirt, foot and all.

"GLAD ALL OVER. GLAD ALL OVER."

Guardiola was waiting for me on the touchline when I came back. He shook my hand and held my arm with his other hand.

"Bravo," he said. He pointed past me at Krul and said it again. Then he went in.

In the dressing room Deano went round with his bag, the same as every match, collecting the shirts.

Blake was sat in his place, still in his shirt. He had not taken it off. He had not taken his boots off. He was looking at the floor in front of him.

Deano stood in front of him with the bag open and waited.

Blake took the shirt off over his head, slowly, and put it in the bag. Deano did not move on. He folded his arm round the back of Blake's head and pulled it into his stomach, once, hard, and then let go and went on to the next peg.

Mitchell held his out before Deano got to him. Deano took it and put it in the bag.

"The sock," Deano said.

Mitchell gave him the sock as well.

Nobody made a speech. Nobody made a toast. Kirby sat in his place with his flip-flop up on the chair and a can of something, and every few minutes he started singing, and every time he started, Mitchell threw a towel at him.

Dougie put his head round the door at about 11 with his phone in his hand. Portsmouth's manager had watched all of it, he said, and Tyrick was to sleep in tomorrow and get the 10 o'clock train, not the first 1.

Mitchell said thank you and carried on taking his tape off.

Emma was at the players' entrance when I came out at 20 to 12. She was in her coat with her hands round a paper cup of tea she had got from somewhere.

She did not say anything about any of it. She put her arm through mine and walked me to the car.

"The traffic was so bad," she said, "that I paid the taxi on the North Circular and walked the last mile. The driver had the radio on. I asked him to turn it off."

I asked her why.

"I wanted to see it with my own eyes before I heard anybody talk about it," she said. "He turned it off and then he did not say a single word to me for 40 minutes. I think I hurt his feelings."

We got in the car. She put the tea in the cup holder and sat with her hands between her knees to warm them.

"Clive talked to my dad all the way through," she said. "All the way. My dad did not mind, I think he was glad of it. And at the end, the last bit, Mrs Asare reached across Clive and took my dad's hand and held it, and he let her."

She looked out of the windscreen.

"He has never held my mum's hand in public in his life. My mum is going to hear about this from Clive, I know she is."

On Thursday morning Ron put the barrier up before I had stopped the car.

"Mitchell rang me from Waterloo at 7," he said. "Blake rang me from King's Cross at 20 past. Neither of them had anything to say. They just rang."

He let the barrier down behind me, and I saw him in the mirror take his glasses down off his head and write something on the page in the plastic wallet.

7 names next Wednesday.

Pato was in the canteen with his phone and a coffee, in his coat. He held the phone up when he saw me. Chile 1, Brazil 0, in Rancagua, in the under 20s.

"Rodrygo did not play well," Pato said. "He knows. The newspapers there are all saying it. I ring him on Sunday."

Rebecca had Kirby on the bed in the treatment room with the dressing off and a lamp on his heel. He asked her, without looking at her, when the final was.

"The 24th of February," Rebecca said. "Ask me on the 10th."

"Ask you what?"

"Whatever you were going to ask me."

Deano's door was open on my way past. He had 2 shirts on hangers on the back of it, washed, in plastic, with Mitchell's sock pinned to the collar of the first. He had written on a strip of tape and stuck it across both of them.

MAY.

Sarah was in my office before me. She put List A down on the desk in front of my chair and turned it towards me. The 24 was there in the margin with her box round it, and the small 31 underneath it.

It was the 24th.

25 names. 2 lines to come off it, and 2 to go on.

"Chelsea and Spurs tonight," she said. "Whichever 1 it is, the final is 4 days after Madrid. I want these by tomorrow, Danny. Not the 31st. Tomorrow."

She put the pen on top of the list with the cap off and went to take the session.

I sat down and read the 25 names, from the top.