Chapter 272: Bramall Lane I

I said no to the kebab. Raj had 2 wrapped anyway and ate both in the car outside the shop with the heater on full. He fetched his hen party at 2, and at 7 o’clock the next morning the Vauxhall still smelled of chilli sauce.

He was outside my house with the engine running and 2 bacon rolls in foil on the passenger seat, still warm.

"Eat one," he said. "You are not standing up in front of a dressing room on an empty stomach. Not out of my car."

I ate one on the M25 with the satnav telling us to keep left. In 2 miles, take the M1.

By Luton I had said it out loud 3 times, to the windscreen, the way I meant to say it at 2 o’clock.

"No," Raj said, after the third.

"What is wrong with it?"

"It has got ’circumstances’ in it. You have never said circumstances in your life. You sound like the council writing to me about my bins."

"It is a hard thing to say, Raj."

"Then say it hard." He pulled out round a lorry and back in again. "Say it the way you would say it to me in this car."

"How would I say it to you?"

"Short." He checked his mirror. "And then you would look out of the window, like you are doing now."

I stopped rehearsing after that.

At 9 we passed the turn for Leicester. In the life before, 3 of the 4 men I was driving up to face won the Premier League in that city at 5,000 to 1, and the fourth followed them there a year later.

The supporters’ coaches had left the ground at 6 and stopped at Toddington for breakfast, and north of Leicester we came up behind them. 4 coaches in the inside lane, nose to tail, with amber and black pressed flat against every back window.

"Is that Ted?" Raj said. "On the front of the first one?"

"That is Ted."

"He is 79. He has been on a coach since 6 o’clock in the morning to watch us lose in Sheffield."

"We have not lost yet."

"I have seen your face since Luton." He pulled alongside the first coach and leaned on the horn. parp. parp.

The whole coach waved. Kids, dads, a woman in an amber wig, a lad holding a can up to the glass. Ted had both hands on the top of his stick. He did not wave. He pointed at me through the glass, and then he tapped his watch.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Raj said.

"It means I owe him an answer."

"What answer?"

"Whether we are keeping them."

Raj looked at me sideways and then back at the road. "Are we?"

"Yes."

"Then that is the easy one," he said, and put his foot down.

Raj parked behind the main stand at Bramall Lane, in a space with my name on a sheet of paper taped to a cone.

"I am going in with ours," he said, getting out. "The away end."

"There is a seat for you in the box."

"With the ties?" He locked the car. bip-bip. "I came to stand up and shout, Sam. I can sit down at home."

Sheffield United had sacked their manager on the Wednesday, the morning after they lost at home to Crawley. Their reserve-team coach had the job till May, a centre-half who had captained them for years.

I passed him in the corridor at 12, in a club training top, shaking hands with the woman who ran the tea room. He shook mine as well.

"First one," he said. "Be gentle with us."

"Good luck to you."

A director of theirs met me at the boardroom door, a man of 70 in a club tie, and he apologised for the state of the place before I had my coat off.

"You will have heard," he said. "It has been a week."

"I have had one of those myself."

He poured me a tea into a china cup with the crest on the side, chink of the spoon, and took me over to a photograph on the wall from the days when cricket and football shared the grass. He put his finger on the glass where the old pavilion stood.

"They laid this out for cricket in 1855," he said. "It is the oldest major ground in the world that still has professional football on it. My father watched Yorkshire here. He used to say the football was the winter lodger."

He took his finger off the glass. "On Tuesday morning our new man was taking the reserves. On Wednesday afternoon he had the first team. The programme had gone to the printer with the old manager’s notes in it, and the lads in the office were up till midnight redoing the page."

At 2 o’clock I went down to the away dressing room.

Stan had been in it since 12. The shirts were on the pegs, amber, numbers facing out, with the socks folded on the bench under each one, the way he has done it for 40 years.

Dev was taping Pett’s ankle. rip of the tape off the roll. Somebody’s music was going on a phone speaker in the corner, and the hot-water pipe along the back wall knocked every few seconds. clank.

"Hold still, Gary," Dev said. "Or you can tape your own."

Maguire sat under the 6, nearest the door, in his training top. He was looking at the walls.

"Told you, son," Stan said, putting a bottle of water down by his boots. "The other one."

"It is smaller than ours." Maguire stopped and went red. "Than theirs."

"It is smaller than everybody’s," Stan said. "They do it on purpose."

Sadler was at the door with his clipboard under his arm. He looked me up and down, from my shoes to my face.

"You will do," he said. "5 minutes. Then they are mine."

I walked into the middle of the room. Gray reached over and turned the music off. click.

The 4 of them were not sitting together. Mahrez was in the far corner with his headphones round his neck. Kanté was on the bench beside Murphy with one boot on and one in his hand. Maguire was by the door. Vardy was standing up.

Vardy spoke first, from where he stood, for the whole room.

"Is it right?" he said. "The money did not come?"

"It is late," I said. "It is not gone. Every man gets what I signed, and you will have it before you play again."

The pipe knocked. clank. Nobody moved.