Soccer Supremo 2

The story so far:

Max Best has been given the powers of the football management computer game Soccer Supremo and has used them to take Chester FC to the top of League One, the third tier of English football. After a controversial but successful spell in charge of a top German club, Max is back home.

With half the season to go, Max is navigating the January transfer window - where football clubs can trade players - with an eye on next season's step up into the greatest league in world football - England's second tier, known as the Championship, where the matches are frenzied and relentless and not ruined by Video Assistant Referees. Max needs to upgrade Chester in every respect in order to compete in that dog-eat-dog environment.

"The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future." John Maynard Keynes

***

1.

Thursday, January 6, 2027

- Hello and welcome to The Coin Toss, a sports podcast without the sport in which Loughborough University's Graham Harold joins me, Greg Knight, to discuss the money behind the games we love. Whether it's football's multi-club models and amortisation, rugby's struggle to attract new audiences, or the boom in darts, we break it all down twice a week for you, our lovely listeners.

Today is one of our regular interview pods. Graham couldn't be here and, in fact, neither could our guest. We were due to talk to Brooke Star, the CEO at high-flying Chester FC, but she is unwell. Who has stepped into the breach? It's none other than Chester's player-manager Max Best! Max is 26, has had a spectacular start to his career, and is taking time out from his preparations for Saturday's FA Cup Third Round tie against Sunderland. Max, welcome to the show!

- Delighted, Greg. It's a lifelong dream for me. I grew up with a Coin Toss poster on my wall.

- I had one of you. Even though you weren't born yet.

- You think I'm joking but you can ask anyone. They'll tell you Max Best has always been a Tosser.

[Huge laughter from Greg.]

Greg Knight was a well-known comedian and comedy writer who was the inspiration for one of the characters in Ted Lasso. He had auditioned for the part (of playing himself) but didn't get it, which he totally wasn't bitter about.

- Graham is as sick as a parrot that he couldn't be here for this one because Chester FC - and you in particular - are making a mockery of everything we talk about on this show.

- Oh. In what way?

- For example, the idea that a fan-owned club would struggle to get beyond League One and that in modern sport, money is the main determinant of success.

- Yeah, I'd say you're not far wrong about that. We are bucking the trend, for sure. More money means more points in the league, definitely. Based on our budget we should be in the relegation spots and not having a rich owner makes some things harder. It's definitely not easy to do what we're doing.

- I must say, Max, you make it look easy.

- Ha. Well, I have a good team around me.

I was doing the interview with my laptop on the kitchen counter while Emma did some lawyer work from the sofa. She looked up and smiled at me. Gave me a little thumbs up.

- We were very surprised you agreed to take Miss Star's place on the interview. You don't normally volunteer for media work but have to be dragged into the media centre.

- The first thing is that Chester promised you an interview, right, and I like to think that we keep promises where possible. Second, I like your show. I listen to it and I think most directors of football do. It's a good way to find out what's going on in the industry and for me it's a relief to hear the ways other clubs are messing up.

I really love hearing the mad schemes your listeners come up with to get around the various Financial Fair Play rules. Chester don't need to do those but they're still educational! And another reason is that if I come on the show and seem like I've got my head screwed on and I'm not a madman or a flibbertigibbet, maybe one of your listeners will lend me some money, or buy mini-bonds if we do that again.

Maybe it's good that Graham isn't on, though, because he might want to ask things I don't completely know the answers to. I more or less know everything that's going on at the club but not to anything like the detail Brooke does.

- If there's one thing I've learned from doing this podcast it's that I won't ask the right questions.

- You'll ask the wrong questions and I'll give the wrong answers. [Both men laugh.] But I'll get things more or less right. Rounded up or down a little. How about I blast through some numbers and context and you can dive into the specifics as you want?

- I did want to ask a few general questions first.

- Hit me.

- What's your background? You came out of nowhere. One day there was nobody in football called Max Best, the next you were the player-manager of Chester. How did that happen?

- I was trying to be a football agent and I spotted this guy called Ziggy. He was playing left back, left-sided defender, for his five-a-side team but I thought well no, he's a striker and surely he's good enough to play at a decent level. I was trying to get him signed up for a club and that took me to FC United of Manchester.

- You're from Manchester yourself.

- Right. While there I met a Liverpudlian coach called Jackie Reaper. While I was trying to tell him about Ziggy he was saying what about you, la? That's how they talk, Greg, those Scousers. They grin and look like they know things better and they say la. Okay so it turns out Jackie was right and I was a decent player.

- More than decent, I think, Max.

- I'm trying to stay humble so your listeners will like me. I don't do great first impressions. [Max laughs, humbly.]

- But what were you doing before that? How did you never get scouted by a team? There are enough scouts in Manchester.

- I mean, I never really got picked for my school team. Our P.E. teacher didn't like that I wasn't stupid enough to throw myself into tackles where I was going to break my legs. The pitches were terrible so I couldn't take a ball and dab it five yards to a teammate. If I did, I wouldn't get the ball back. A player like me can't shine when it's like that. One passion of mine is finding players like me who aren't rated for whatever reason. Chester sometimes gets called Max's Misfits. We have plenty of players who are totally normal, who popped from a young age, who were always first pick at school but we have some who have been overlooked or amazingly undervalued. It's always a buzz when I find players like that.

- The drive to do that comes from being overlooked as a young player yourself?

- Er... I'll have to discuss that with our sports psychologist. [Both men laugh.] It might be that, I don't know, but mostly it's just I have a tight budget and by far the best value for money is an amazing player that no other team wants. If you can find them and if you have the patience to wait for them to blossom, you're golden.

- Pascal Bochum would be one of those.

- Are we doing transfer talk already? People love hearing about transfers so you should make them wait till the end.

- You're right. How was your Christmas and New Year?

- Quiet.

- In a good way?

- Yeah. It was all good but there was something missing. My friend Henri used to organise surreal Christmas parties but he's at Tranmere now so it wasn't the same. Maybe after the craziness of me going to Germany for a month the club needed some normality. We all looked forward to Henri's events, though. We'll come back to transfers but losing great characters has a cost that we won't get into on this show.

- Since this is a finance show, let's do some numbers.

- [Sound of Max sliding a sheet of paper closer.] I've been scribbling out the numbers I could remember. They tell the story of Chester FC's recent history, I reckon. You have international listeners, don't you? I'll put things into as much context as possible because we started quite low down the English pyramid. [Clears throat.] Okay when I started as Chester's director of football we were a National League North club. That's tier six. The budget for players was 16,000 a week and that was about 40% of our turnover.

- That's a very healthy ratio.

- Yes. My boss, Mike Dean - not the former referee - doesn't want the club to die again so he's quite strict. The first year I was in full control, the turnover was about two million. Two point one, whatever. As careful as MD was, the club always had to run a campaign to raise money to clear the decks and give the manager a little extra to work with. One of my first goals was to stop having to get the begging bowl out at the end of the season.

We boshed the National League North and went up into the National League. Tier five. Player budget goes from 16 to 19,000 a week and we had quite a big player sale. I used half that money to put solar panels up because I wanted the club to be more sustainable and those have been great. Brooke got us some grants so we got a bigger array than we could have afforded ourselves which makes the return on investment look healthier. The panels are indirectly chipping in about two grand a week to my playing budget. That season, turnover went from 2.1 to 2.5 million. Not a huge jump but it was a good start.

- That was because of higher attendances? More commercial revenue?

- A little bit of everything and more prize money, too, because we got deeper into cups. Another thing we did early on was to start putting up 3G pitches around our area. People rent the pitches so that's income for us and we are testing out a model where we offer free coaching.

- That's fantastic.

- Yeah, I hope so. The concept's in its early stages but if you think about it, some seven-year-old comes along to a session and if he's the next Messi we have a chance to spot him first.

- Oh, I see. Yes, that's almost diabolically clever. You don't have much of a scouting department but everyone at the club is always on the lookout for talented players.

- You could put it like that, yes. Doing those sessions will also let me hire more coaches in the long term and they'll be developing their skills over time. It's about having a pipeline of talented people who can fill gaps when people move on. The 3G pitches have been great and they're all-weather so the income is fairly reliable. At first we got good grants to help us, and each pitch has been adding about another two thousand a week to our income. Heh.

- What?

- You and Graham often talk about fifty-million pound transfers and billion-dollar stadiums. Chester's numbers are tiny but if you think what it means to me, the manager, for my budget to go from 19,000 a week to 22,000 a week, it's really meaningful.

- We always say that Wealdstone FC is just as important to its fans as Liverpool is to its fans. And to be honest, the numbers you're using are a lot easier to understand than the tens of millions that get chucked around like confetti in the Premier League.

- I can't remember exactly but I think MD let me have 45% of the budget around that time. Apart from having some tangible assets that were easing the financial pressure, we were also putting together a squad with transfer value. MD was going to the office every morning and seeing that clubs were trying to give us tens of thousands of pounds. Even if you're ultra-conservative, that's reassuring.

We won tier five and moved into the EFL and that's when we started getting serious TV money but we were still incredibly poor. In League Two I had 30,000 a week to play with, which was a third of what the top teams had. We had a couple more 3G pitches come online so my budget crept up, and we were able to get promoted while using all the TV money on infrastructure.

- Wait. You didn't spend a penny of it on players?

- We couldn't. We were training at a credit card company's offices - BoshCard, don't just buy it, bosh it - and that was fine in the beginning but we had to get serious. We got some land near the stadium and got to work on building up our facilities. At first it was loads of cabins but we have been replacing them with proper buildings as and when the money has been available. By the start of next season I'm optimistic it will be good enough for what we need. So what's that progression there? Let me see. Turnover goes 2.1, then 2.5, hits about 3.5. It's really good but miles behind our rivals. As well as pimping the training ground we needed to rebuild the stadium.

- Ah. Graham was very excited to hear about this. The mini-bonds.

- Right. We raised five million pounds and we pay 8% interest a year for five years then give everyone their money back. It has worked out great so far because the stand has been pretty full and we have three sponsors’ boxes up there, plus a proper area for the players' families to hang out.

- Have there been any problems with the mini-bond?

- Um, no. Er... what do you mean?

- Well, I think it doesn't break any data protection rules if I say that one of the hosts of this podcast bought some of your bonds.

- [Max laughs.] Tell Graham his money is safe.

- It could have been me.

- I listen to the show, remember. You'd pay your tax bill before buying risky financial instruments.

- Oh, don't mention His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, Max. I'm in quite a pickle, as ever.

- Soz. So this year we're in League One. There's a bit more TV money, a bit more trickle down from the Premier League. More away fans because the clubs are bigger, more home fans because we're winning every week and we're on track to have the club's best ever season.

- Best ever?

- Yeah. Chester City's highest ever finish was fourth in the old Division 3. We're top of the league in the rebranded Division 3. It's actually pretty epic, Greg. We projected a turnover of 6 million. That gave me 54,000 a week budget - remember a couple of years ago it started at 16,000. My various investments pushed it to 60 a week, plus our last set of 3G pitches are live and that's another thousand a week. We're actually doing better than the forecast so there's a tiny bit of scope to have small amounts of fun in the transfer window.

- You seem like the sort of person who would find the transfer window fun. I find it quite stressful not knowing which of our players will be poached, being linked to defenders we've never heard of, the constant chatter and speculation and hope and dread.

- You're a Crystal Palace fan, right? That's an interesting case because yes you clearly have a few standout players but I think your recruitment team has been doing a great job for a while and the guys they sign are good value for money. It's an impressive setup there. Transfer windows can be stressful for me but I normally get the work done early and I don't have to sell players unless I want to. I got burned with a player who had a release clause, which meant we couldn't refuse the offer, and the offer actually came in after our transfer window had closed but the Saudi window was still open. That was a bit of a nightmare because we had cash but needed a player more than the money at that time.

These days I've got talent in the pipeline and I... let me think... yeah we don't have anyone with a release clause right now. That makes it a bit less stressful. The lads are having a good time, improving, quite likely to have at least one trophy to lift at the end of the season. There isn't anyone pressuring me to leave but I know for a fact that clubs are circling.

I had a perk called Interested Parties which told me when my players were on the radars of other clubs. About a third of the time, a player who was attracting interest also attracted a transfer bid. Of course, nothing's easy so sometimes the bids came out of absolutely nowhere, with no hint from the perk.

What I knew for sure was that nine of Chester's men's first team were possible transfer targets this window. I was expecting at least three serious bids.

- I'm making so many notes today, Max. You said you don't have to sell players unless you want to. Does that mean Chester's finances are healthy?

- That's an interesting question. It depends which angle you look at it from. Graham would look at our books and see that we're diversifying our income streams -

- What do you - sorry to interrupt - Can you elaborate on that?

- Sure. So we do the usual stuff football clubs do - sell tickets to the matches, find sponsors, and take money from the broadcast rights holders. Cool. We've also got that new stand and it has hospitality boxes so that's new money for us, plus the more we win, the more people want our merch. We're getting a small but interesting following overseas - Slovakia, Texas, Germany - and that's ticking up, though we're limited in terms of selling streaming passes because to be honest, our camera angles aren't that good yet.

What else? Oh yeah, we're expanding the sponsorships pretty fast and we have our documentary about the women's team. We talked about the pitches that we rent out, and we're building a new canteen at the training ground that will double as a function room. Weddings for hard-core fans and live shows for podcasts, hint hint. Most football clubs at our level do some of those things but I suspect we're unique in doing all of them. We don't have a hotel yet but that's something for the future.

- It all seems very sensible.

- Yeah, we try to be businesslike and think long-term. We built a gym exclusively for our players but we designed it so that in theory we could one day sell access if the club gets skint. I'm trying to future proof the club, make it properly sustainable long after I'm gone, which is why I was hesitant with my answer to this question. But income is rising in all the areas you'd expect and we keep selling out of our replica kits which I think is the canary in the coal mine but in a good way. Like, you know, there's much more potential support in the area if we keep doing what we're doing. We've got no debt except for the mini bonds, and our wages to turnover ratio is under 50%. UEFA recommends that figure should be 70% and there can be penalties for clubs who overspend. We're never going to get anywhere near 70%.

- It sounds like you're in rude health.

- Yeah, we are, but then if I look at it from another angle and think what would happen if I died tomorrow, okay, there's plenty of talent in the team but look ten years down the line. As you said, there isn't a big scouting department like at Crystal Palace so the club's recruitment in a post-Max world could be poor. It might only take a few bad signings to put strain on the club's finances.

If Chester got relegated back to non-league, could they survive with no TV money? The documentary wouldn't be much fun to watch so that would get cancelled. Attendances would halve at least. The stadium would be nice but would it be a bit of an albatross? Would the training ground cost more to run than it produced in value? At the moment it's a coin toss, which is why I'm still grinding - why we're all still grinding. I want to lift Chester's floor so that it's inconceivable that it would fall below League Two, the fourth tier, and that it would be able to more or less break even there even if the team was a bit crap.

- This is music to my ears, Max. You can't imagine the stories we hear from football clubs around the world where owners bet everything on black in a bid to get promotion or to get into their continental competitions. It's all or nothing and frankly that scares me. We don't want to see more clubs go out of existence but it happens all too often. Looking at my notes here... You've got the 3G pitches that you rent out. How many of those did you say you have?

- We have four full-sized pitches either in our training ground or in the wider region, and now we've got two smaller ones. They're sized for 7 v 7 games for nine and ten-year-olds, as per the Football Association's guidelines. What we can do there is cut the adjacent pitch in half and have four matches going simultaneously, which means we can host kids tournaments. The first one's coming this summer and I'm looking forward to it. Adults can play five-a-side on there - swap out the goals to the size you want - and we can do individual training with players there, year-round. Great investment.

- So let me see if I understand this. I can go to your training ground and rent a pitch? Whenever you're not using it?

- That would be the model when we're chasing every nickel and dime but right now we've got a calendar tool where the coaches block the pitches they know they want and we don't take bookings either side of that. Generally we open all the slots in evenings and weekends but we don't want the area feeling too manic when we're doing first team training. If you take lunchtime bookings, for example, what you get is a bunch of thirty-something lads going full-pelt because there are pros around. They take it way too seriously. [Max laughs.]

If the pros have gone home, the guys renting the pitch relax and enjoy themselves. I want the balance at the training ground to be massively in the direction of keeping a focus on improving our players. If we get sixty quid for a pitch booking when one of our strikers would like to use that space to work on some aspect of his game, that's a bad deal for the club because the striker's value could increase by millions of pounds over a season. Do you know what I mean?

- I do. This is turning out to be a really hard interview - enjoyable, but hard - because everything you're saying is leading to more and more questions. I could listen to you talk for hours about what it's like for you to interact with normal players.

- Here's one for you. You know I went to Bayern Munich for a while?

- I did catch that story, yes. Believe me, I have questions about that.

- The first game back as Chester manager was Boxing Day - that's the 26th of December for your foreign listeners - away from home against Oxford United. First against second, title battle, epic. I did all right, I think, but I wasn't quite in the zone the way I wanted to be. It was a tense match, really tight, fine margins. I think a lot of the rest of the season is going to be about tight margins. We defended well and scored from a free kick. Charlie Dugdale, left-footed cross, Christian Fierce, our captain, header, bosh. Glorious. Beautiful. I told our guys to sit back, absorb pressure, and we would pick them apart on counters. It didn't quite work, though, and when I tried to switch things up to be more balanced, it didn't change anything. We couldn't get out, and basically got battered for the rest of the match. That is pretty unusual but Oxford are the team in our division with the highest budget. It's three times ours so it's amazing we're competing against them.

- Quite.

- We held out for the win but it was nervy.

- It might have been different had you been playing.

- Sure, but I was injured, so... No point thinking about it. All's well that ends well, right? Okay but next up we're at home to Peterborough United. Really good team but not as good as Oxford and we've got home advantage. That ends two-all and Oxford win their match so in the two matches, we've earned 4 points and they've got 3. All that mental energy expended to get one point ahead.

- You wanted to win the next one to hammer home your advantage.

- Yeah. I want clear daylight between us and the second-placed team because I want the next six months to be about preparing for next season. Anyway, two-all's a fine result in all honesty but I had that feeling I wasn't myself. I talked it out with Alex, our sports psychologist, and he suggested, in essence, that I'd been driving this unbelievable German supercar on the autobahn with no speed limit and I've come home to a Welsh A-road with a 30 mile an hour limit. He didn't put it like that, in case any of my players are listening to this, but that's how I rephrased it. The way my mind works is I'll go right to the other extreme. Something had popped up on our training pitches. Man versus Fat. Have you heard of that?

- Yes, I have. Footy for men who are carrying a bit too much timber.

- Yeah it's an interesting concept. First, everyone's in the same boat which takes away any embarrassment they might feel, and you get goals added to your team's score if you lose weight in the week leading up to a match. I'm not totally sure about the weight loss part of it because you can be overweight and perfectly healthy and the quote correct weight and have all kinds of medical issues but I love that lads are using footy to get fit and I went to have a look and, yeah, I got itchy and sort of took over one of the teams.

- That sounds very Max Best. From Bayern Munich to the Portly Timbers.

- Portly Timbers! That's an amazing line, as long as you know there's a team called the Portland Timbers. It's, like, too clever to even laugh at it.

- I've always been rated a clever comedian more than a funny one.

- [Max laughs.] Top. It was curious, though, managing that style of footy because what I'd normally do is make the tactic do some of the work for the players, if you get me. With Man versus Fat, though, shouldn't my intention be to make the lads run more? There's a bigger goal than winning - they want to lose. Lose weight.

- So what did you do?

- I asked them. They said they wanted to be managed how I managed Bayern Munich. I said, okay listen up, and proceeded to absolutely hose them with jargon and intricate instructions. Sort of a ten-minute high-level team talk in thirty seconds. I mean, I thought it was pretty funny but they were horrified.

- [Greg laughs hard] I wish I'd seen that.

- I said lads, I'm taking the piss, then I gave them a solid formation that they all understood, gave everyone one little task to focus on, and gave them some tips as the match went on.

- Did they win?

- That wasn't the goal, Greg. They want to lose, remember.

- So did they lose?

- Course they didn't. They slapped. I'm actually good at this, guys. Anyway, going through the process of setting up a new team, getting back to basics, it was great for me. Just what I needed.

- And of course, they'll keep booking your pitch because they might get a free masterclass when they least expect it.

- My God, you're cynical.

- For the record, Max looks guilty.

- For the record, Max does not look guilty. Anyway, I did that and the next Chester match was against Northampton. We only won 2-1 but it was really one-sided and I felt that I was back in the groove. Mission accomplished, as we say in Chester.

- So you had to give back your supercar and to appreciate your normal car you went go-karting for the day?

- My car drives like a go-kart. Cute little all-electric Mini! I'm obsessed with it. It takes better corners than me. Wow, I thought you'd laugh at that one.

- I'm laughing on the inside. Going back to the money side of things, you talked about wanting to be sustainable. Apart from the pitches, how else can you future-proof the club? Because from what I know, those artificial pitches aren't cheap.

- No, they're half a mill a pop and it's not like we own dozens of 105 by 68 metre parcels of land in perfect locations. If we put them too close together we cannibalise our existing customers. Diminishing returns and all that. I think we could do a couple more nearby and in North Wales.

- Wales. There's a topic we could spend an hour on.

My Welsh project was going fantastically. Despite narrowly losing to the team with the highest budget in Welsh football, Saltney Town were still top of the league, its youth teams were winning and playing astonishing football, the first groundwork was starting on our ten-million pound training centre and stadium complex, and there was a serious buzz around the place. The only cloud on the horizon was the upcoming match between Wales and Poland. If Wales lost, there was a danger they would miss out on qualification for the tournament they would host in the summer of ‘28. That would be a disaster.

It was my turn to speak.

- What we're doing in Wales is astonishing. Keep an eye on it, Greg. Back to Chester, though. Where was I? Adding more pitches. There's a limit unless we start buying ones in, like, London. Would we do that? Don't know. Maybe we would.

Did I mention the solar panels? As we redevelop more sides of the stadium we'll fucking plaster the roofs with panels. We shouldn't pay for electricity again, ever, and the club pumping out energy is just an awesome image. We've got an electric team bus we call Sealbiscuit.

- Named so because Chester are the Seals.

- Exactly. I want to buy ten minivans, all-white with the Chester logo, all-electric, and our staff will be able to zoom around doing meetings or picking up gear or ferrying disabled fans from the train station or whatever, then they'll bring the van back to the stadium to charge it up. I'm going to call them the Seal Pups.

- Max, I love you.

- [Max laughs loud.] Thanks. The pups are probably something we'll do when we hit the Premier League. You get like a hundred million pounds a year in TV money and that's just, you know, astonishing amounts. We won't spend it all on players in the first year while we finish building the stadium and doing whatever infrastructure work we need to do. If we get to be in the Prem for, say, five years, that's half a billion in income from the TV money alone. Half a billion! We have to turn some of that into assets that will keep the club afloat forever.

- I'm no football expert but I think I see the flaw in that plan. If you did make it to the Premier League you would need to spend every penny and more to compete. You'd never have cash to spare.

- Maybe not in the first year, or the second, but the third? It's possible. We're getting ahead of ourselves, though, because we missed the intermediate step. Next season's going to be wild. The Championship, Greg! Best league in the world. Ten million in TV money, plus we've thought things through and believe we can double our revenues. 115,000 pounds a week in player wages. A huge sum that would put us... dead last in the league. 24th out of 24. [Max laughs wryly.] What's new? Until now we've been able to blast our way to promotion despite the disadvantages, but not in the Champ. No, siree Bob.

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- That's a bridge too far even for you?

- Yeah. I'm not saying every club in League One and Two are badly run but they waste a lot of money. If you're super lean you can make up some of the ground, and if you've got good tactics and flexible players you can get better results than maybe the talent of the squad would suggest. And if you sign players with room to grow then you can make up the talent gap over the course of a season. If you look at our recent history, we finish strong and that's because our players improve more than average and that's possible because they're chosen for that very reason.

- Ah. You've answered one of my questions. [Sound of him scratching a line across a sheet of paper.]

- But it's one thing to overtake a team with three times your budget whose new manager doesn't fit the old squad and it's a completely different thing to come up against a team with six or seven times your budget who only got relegated from the Prem by one point. Do you know what I mean? It's a brutal, brutal challenge. We'll need to spend a consolidation season getting our ducks in a row.

- Hang on, something's just struck me. [Sound of a man mashing buttons.] I've got my trusty calculator... You say 115,000 a week but... that's not right, is it? You'd have much more than that.

- I'm talking about only spending the income the club itself generates. The TV money would go into finishing our training ground and kitting it out plus building a new stand. A few million for transfer fees, maybe. This is one of our challenges. It's cool that we have come straight from tier six and are heading to the second division - that's a great sporting achievement - but in some ways we're still a non-league organisation. We're playing catch up in all areas, from the squad to the facilities to the equipment to the number of groundstaff, admins, and so on. We're still reliant on volunteers on match days and for all sorts of things. That's cool because those people get to be part of the action but it's also crazy. They should be paid. If you ask them if I should put them on the payroll or sign a twenty-goal-a-season striker, they'd all say the striker. Which is why I don't ask them. Hey, Greg, I'm sorry about this but I just got a message I can't ignore. Can we take a tiny break?

- Absolutely. We can drop an advert for male grooming products here.

- Ha.

***

I took my phone and walked out of the kitchen. Emma looked up at me, worried. "Got a weird message," I said.

"Is it in Hungarian?"

I smiled. "No."

"That's all right, then," she said, returning to her work. Thanks to some recent shenanigans, I wasn't very popular with the government of Hungary and I was still going everywhere with at least one bodyguard.

The message was strictly football, though, unrelated to what I had done in Budapest. Or was it? The topic was the under-pressure manager of Manchester United.

Unknown number: Max, thought you should know that unless he goes on a long winning run, Pedro Porto will be sacked the next time he loses a match. If that happens this month, the Club will recall Matt Rush before the end of the January window. Hope this helps you plan. From an admirer.

So much to unpack there, but I didn't want to leave Greg staring at my kitchen wall for too long.

Pedro Porto being sacked would be embarrassing for him but his career would recover. Him being listed as 'very insecure' on the job information page said more about United's shitty owners than it did about him.

An admirer. Someone who liked what I did in Hungary? Or was this someone who didn't like me who was yanking my chain?

Losing Matt Rush would be a blow. I'd had a couple of run-ins with the spoiled brat and since he wasn't my player I didn't have the patience to deal with him. When I tried to send him back to Manchester, Pedro Porto had intervened personally, despite being one of the busiest men in the sport, and Rushy had knuckled down and been good as gold ever since. I was getting a crazily talented player for free - not contributing a penny to his wages - and he was my best player in terms of the metric known as 'Current Ability' (CA).

Rushy was CA 110. I had a few players on CA 109 but our rudimentary facilities meant their progress beyond that point would be agonisingly slow, perhaps even impossible. Rushy, along with Peter Bauer, was training at Manchester United's base every Monday, which allowed him to blast through what I called the 'soft cap' on our progress.

Rushy was a right back and our next best dedicated right back was far, far behind. Magnus Evergreen was home from Gibraltar, on double the salary (1,400 a week - still cheap), and he was versatile enough to fill in as a dutiful, diligent right back. Matt Rush had far more attacking potential, though, so realistically if United recalled their player I would not be able to use certain formations. Also, Peter Bauer would have his invitation to train at United rescinded. That would be a blow because Peter was key to how I wanted to play in the Championship. His CA had been rocketing in recent months, going from 55 in pre-season to 86 today. His fast improvement wasn't just happening because he was training with Manchester United - I had a perk called Secret Sandra that allowed me to burn experience points to boost his training speed.

With Matt gone, I'd probably need to use that perk on my second-best right back. Nasa had come over from Brazil after Christmas and while his own growth had been pretty spectacular, he had started at CA 1. Now he was CA 59 but the minimum needed to play well in League One was 90. If I invested heavily in Nasa he might get up to scratch by the end of the year. Might.

I pulled at my lip for a while. I wouldn't buy a replacement for Rush because Nasa was talented and I had an even more precocious talent in the wings. I texted my co-manager.

Me: Sandra, please bring Roddy Jones into senior training full-time.

Roddy was only 16 but he had Potential Ability (PA) 184, which meant that if he worked hard and got the right exposure to the first team he would become one of the best players in the world. He had trained with the Welsh national team and had been a minor part of the team that won the Youth Cup final (against Manchester United, in a match that persuaded Pedro Porto to loan players to me. Funny how things work). Giving Roddy more first-team minutes, along with his exposure to the Welsh national team at their luxurious home base, might get him close to CA 90 by the end of the season. Might.

Sandra: Okay. Does that mean what I think it means?

Me: We have to prepare for the worst.

I pulled at my bottom lip again. Problems were opportunities. Matt leaving halfway through his loan meant far more minutes and quicker progression for two talented players. But it could also fuck up Matt's career in a way that meant he could - maybe, just maybe - end up leaving Manchester United. The logical place for him to go would be another big club. But could this chain of events make it more likely that he would join Chester on a permanent transfer? Probably not, but the thought was tantalising.

I went back to my laptop.

***

- I'm back. Sorry about that. Transfer stuff.

- No problem at all. I know it's a busy time of year for you. Maybe we should get into transfers. I know a lot of people will be agog to hear what it's like, how the sausage is made. What can you tell us?

- One thing is that I have decision-making power but I try to delegate some of the negotiations. We have a team of two. One's a Chester fan who used to be on the board. She's an agent now which has the potential to make things messy but she's a third-generation Chester fan and wouldn't do anything against the club. She has on many occasions misunderstood one of my more wonderful ideas and threatened to, ah, do harm to my extremities. [Laughter from Greg.] The second is Ryan Jack. He's an elderly midfielder -

- Elderly? I'm 74, for reference.

- He's 38 which in footballer years is, yeah, exactly 74. Do you know him? [Laughter from Greg.] Ryan's our loans manager. We did a couple of interesting loan moves this window. Write that down so we don't forget. Anyway, they negotiate some of the numbers with players and clubs because you wouldn't believe the shit people think they can get away with. I'm thinking about directors of football who should know better but who take the actual piss. It boils my blood, Greg, and I get vindictive, so it's best if I'm involved as little as possible.

Ruth and Ryan come to me and say 'okay Burnley want half a million and the player wants five grand a week' and I take it from there. Sometimes it goes easier, without all the back and forth. We've done three deals this window - no, four - and three came from me meeting people face-to-face who didn't take the piss. They got great deals but not so much that I shut them down and blocked their number, do you know what I mean?

- I've got the details here. Lee Contreras to Crawley.

- Yeah, pretty good deal all round. We signed Lee for free after Tranmere let him go. They were underrating him and I thought he could do a job for us. He's our best central midfielder but we needed the money, so...

- I thought you didn't need to sell.

- After this set of deals, we don't. Remember I said we needed to finish the training ground? We had bids for three players which came to exactly the amount needed to do the last of the essential work. To me, developing players is the holy grail. Everything else we want to achieve starts from there, and if training is a bottleneck then it actually doesn't matter if players have room to grow because they'll never get there. We have great coaches and I give players the opportunities they need to improve, so right now it's all about the facilities.

- But you lost your best central midfielder. That sounds far from ideal.

- Well, yes, you're right. In the short term. And it was a pain in the arse on Monday when two former Chester players lined up against us... and showed us why we should have kept them. Lee played great and another former Seal, Wes Hayward, savaged us. One-nil defeat. We rested some of our key players because we had a vital cup match two days later - the schedule is bonkers - but fair play to Crawley, they deserved that win. We don't have a lot of matches where we don't score. It always bothers me when I see a zero next to our name at full time.

- This isn't a sports show, it's a finance show, so we try not to discuss the actual sport too much but I watched the highlights of that match and yes it was a problem that Hayward was too hot for your defenders to handle but you still created about eight gilt-edged chances. The Australian striker, in particular, had a shocker.

- Dazza? I mean, he had some half-chances but I didn't watch that game and think, holy shit what's he doing? He played well and those chances weren't as easy as they looked. Except the first one. That was a stinker. [They both laugh.] That happens, right, but it got in Dazza's head. He's 21. He wants to, you know, be amazing all the time. What we've got is Colin Beckton, who's 34 and has been around the block and scored hundreds of goals. Colin's got that mentality of you take the shot and whether it goes in or not you sort of set that aside and keep your focus on the next action. Technique, process, repeat, ice-cold. You can't ruffle his feathers, things don't bother him. He told me he worked on it for years and years but it finally clicked when he was about 27. We hope Dazza gets there quicker but if he doesn't, so what? He's doing his job. There were other players who missed easier chances in that match but for narrative reasons everyone focused on Darren.

- Narrative reasons?

- It's the psychology of a match. You can't help but tell yourself a story. A player misses one, then another, and you think ah! He's overcompensating. Most of the time, the layman tells himself a story that's dead wrong. This time, yeah what people were thinking happened was exactly what happened. A stopped clock is right twice a day. [Max laughs.] Okay so losing to Crawley was pretty abysmal, especially because TJ was insufferable about it.

- TJ is the manager of Crawley?

- Yeah. When we played earlier in the season I gave him a bit of a pep talk and he gave it all back to me plus ten percent. Horrible, horrible man.

- He's a mate, is he?

- Yeah. [They both laugh.] We're still four points clear at the top of the table and we won the cup match. Chesterfield 2-1 away in the Vans Trophy. We're three games from Wembley and Chester have never been to Wembley. If I had to pick one match to win and one to lose, I'd have chosen to do it the way we did. Still frustrating but we'll manage.

- The second of the three transfers I've got written down - I've just realised you said four and that's got me worried - is Josh Owens.

- We got Josh from the Exit Trials. For listeners who have never heard of that, it's a sad fact that 99% of young lads who join Premier League academies get released before they turn 18.

- Shameful.

- I agree. One good thing the academies do is what's called an Exit Trial. It's a series of matches made up of those lads who have been released. There are always loads of scouts there from other clubs in England, Scotland, Scandinavia, even American universities. If the lads impress, they can get a second chance at a career. Your star player, Eze, was released by QPR - or was it Millwall? - and got picked up at one of those trials. You sold him for eighty million.

- Brilliant player. It's hard to believe anyone ever looked at him and thought, nah, I don't rate him.

- This is what keeps me driving around the country on my days off. How many eighty million pound players are out there waiting to be discovered? That's what's good about the Exit Trial days - you can see like a hundred talented players in a short amount of time. We try to take as many as possible and I recommend some of the others to clubs where I think they would fit in. We've had good results so far and the sale of Josh makes me determined to keep doing it. Josh is a left wing back who has a long throw. If you're a good player who can throw a ball from the sideline into the penalty area, you know Wrexham are going to be monitoring your progress.

- What I heard is that you didn't want him taking long throws.

- It's ugly, isn't it? Wrexham don't care about aesthetics because they broadcast all their footage in slow-motion, even the live games. [Greg laughs.] Josh is a really talented player with the ball at his feet, and he's determined and hard-working and a good team mate. That's what I wanted to see from him but when the long throw came out I must admit I got dollar signs in the eyes.

- Are you able to say how much...?

- Yeah almost everything we do is public because we're fan-owned. Player wages aren't out there but transfer fees are, with some exceptions. Ones involving kids or when the club on the other side of the deal want to keep the terms private for some reason. Brighton are like that, for example. Everything's very hush-hush with them. They don't want their rivals to know what they're up to. Our fans don't mind being kept in the dark on some numbers if we explain why we can't tell them. Um, yeah so it was Josh I was thinking of when we were talking about release clauses. He had one but Wrexham's offer was half of it, four hundred thousand, which was kind of an annoying amount. It was sort of acceptable and fair but frustrating because I know how good Josh would get if we kept him for another year. But we have two other former academy players at left back and what I'm thinking this window is that okay we're losing some skill and experience but like when a tree falls in a wood, that's just an opportunity for other stuff to grow.

- Did losing Josh cost you any points?

- Ha, no, that was only Lee. Wrexham are in the Championship so Josh might give us a slap next season. I told him he'll have to be patient because they have a quality, quality squad. He's buzzing. Anxious but excited. Everyone who was there the day we scouted him is sad to see him go, delighted he has moved up.

- What do the Chester fans think about you selling a good player to your local rivals? They don't like Wrexham, do they?

- No. Some of them were madder about that sale than me going to play for Tranmere or leaving to guest-manage Grimsby.

- And Bayern?

- I got no pushback from that at all, amazingly. We were top of the league when I left and we're still top now and they were watching the Champions League and saying, hey, that's our manager! Some of them worry that one of these days I'll go somewhere for a month and never come back, but generally they were very supportive of that even before they realised what my true motive was.

- We'll get to that. Okay, the third deal.

- One second. Sorry about this but I got another text. Let me just...

***

Head of Marketing (CZ): Max, the scripts you sent are so funny! Are you serious or is it one of your jokes?

Me: I'm serious. I want to film it as written. Individually they'll be funny but when you put them all together in one video, it'll go hard.

***

- I'm back, Greg.

- We were just about to discuss the third transfer.

- That was Pascal Bochum to a German club called Bochum. One million English pounds. Pascal was at Darlington when I was a player there. I never saw him play but when I went to Chester, the Darlington manager at the time recommended Pascal to me.

They couldn't work out how to use him because he's short and some managers, try as they might, can't think beyond corner kicks. When I looked at Pascal I thought about corners, but I was thinking with this kid I'm gonna score from opposition set pieces. If you send all your defenders into my penalty box and we get the ball, we can move it to Pascal and he's lightning fast and super smart. We scored quite a lot of goals just like that.

He's also brilliant between the lines, which means working the ball from the midfield to the opposition's penalty area. When you're against a very defensive team, he's clever enough to find space or make a move that confuses the defenders. He was really valuable and I know there will be many times I'll regret selling him but it wasn't even a coin toss, really. He had to go so that we could finish the training ground and for his own development.

We also lost an amazing part-time coach who has gone to join Bochum but again, we're happy because he's happy. It's my job to find talented players and staff and get the club to a point where if we want to keep someone like Pascal for another season we can make a compelling argument that his development will not suffer and we'll pay him what another team will pay him. Until then, everyone's for sale at the right price.

Pascal's last day had been pretty teary, but he would be able to dry his eyes with all the Deutschmarks he was getting drenched with; his wages had more than doubled. Also, his parents would be able to move back to Germany. They had only moved to the UK so that Pascal could bypass the work permit rules and get onto the career ladder.

I glanced at one of the numbers I had written on my sheet: 61,000. That was my current weekly player budget. Three of the first team squad were gone and deleting them from my spreadsheet had changed the current spend. It now read: 55,800. I had 5,200 pounds per week in unused salary. Looking at this unexpected bonanza felt like putting on a pair of trousers that were suddenly weirdly loose. Why was I so lean? What could I even do with that money if I didn't have cash for transfer fees?

- I hesitate to ask but you mentioned a fourth transfer.

- One of our Youth Cup winners, Jamie Brotherhood. He's from a footballing family and they think the time's right for him to move on to first team football and you know what? They're exactly right. They're very smart, ambitious without being pushy, and they have contacts, too. Jamie's dad came to me with an offer from Barrow in League Two. Barrow's in Cumbria but they train in Manchester, which is weird but helps them attract players like Jamie who they might not otherwise get. I won't say the fee because he's a young man but it was another win-win, in my opinion.

Barrow had paid 70,000 for Jamie, giving me an effective transfer budget of... drum roll... 70,000 pounds. I had my eye on a couple of young players with high ceilings that I could buy now and use in next season's Youth Cup. Another tilt at that competition would be something to keep me busy while we were doing our consolidation season in England's second tier.

- In theory, Jamie might have got some first-team minutes at Chester but one of our more versatile players came back from Gibraltar and he can play right back.

- I'm just making a note of the word Gibraltar. Would that be a full hour of conversation?

- More. I've been advising three clubs there on transfer moves. College, the team I played a few games for, swooped in to buy a key player from the Red Imps, who are the big dogs in Gibraltar. That's like if Tottenham bought Arsenal's best player. That deal caused some waves, I can tell you. College picked up a really promising left-back, too. The two other clubs have been moving to reshape their squads. Big flurry of activity, players moving all over the place. A lot's going on over there.

- Where do you get the energy?

- I take breaks, Greg. [Pause.] Oh. I thought you would use that opportunity to throw to the commercials.

- I mostly worked on the BBC, Max. My brain isn't wired for ad breaks. Our producer tears his hair out trying to find places to wedge them in.

- Ah, that's why they sometimes drop in the middle of someone's sentence. Okay so those are the deals we have done so far this window. I needed 1.7 million to finish the first phase of the training ground and I got it.

- When you say first phase, what does that entail?

- Basically, phase one we didn't have a training ground and now we do. [Laughs.] We have the buildings - or we will by the summer - with rooms and spaces and pretty facades but lots of it will be empty. The medical space, for example, will have a room for an MRI scanner and an X-ray machine, which we don't currently own. But that's fine. We have the basics and once the buildings are up it'll be easy enough to fill them with all kinds of wonderful gear.

We'll also be doing the paths, putting up the seventy-seven lifesize statues of me that I've insisted on, planting more trees around the perimeter, all that sort of thing that takes it from basic to amazing. I suppose that would be phase two.

Phase three is the real luxury icing on the cake stuff like the scanner, like getting one of those domes that goes over a pitch. The kinds of things a Premier League team needs that a League One team doesn't.

- My mind keeps coming back to a note I made earlier. How are you going to afford all this?

- With difficulty. Transfers is the main one. When we add up everything I've spent on transfers and everything that's come in, I'm up 2.3 million and the squad has been getting better and better. I said I don't need to sell and that's right, but I know for a fact I'm going to get more bids for players in the next three weeks.

Imagine someone bids a million pounds for Dazza, who we talked about before. I'd probably turn that down flat because he's way better than that but on the other hand, if I could replace him with a very similar player for half a million, I'm laughing, right? I would have a good striker plus loads of cash.

The insidious part is that while that's prooooobably possible, the replacement guy is likely to be someone who's out of favour at his current club so he needs time to get fit and match sharp and that could take two, three, even six months. If I had a striker 80% as good as Dazza for the rest of the season... I mean, it's easy to imagine how that would cost us ten points in the league. Can we afford to drop ten points? Of course we can't.

So every decent bid we get becomes a decision. Is it enough money? Can I replace the player? What do we lose in the meantime? Who is next in line in the current squad and are they ready to take their opportunity? With that I'm thinking of Wibbers. William B. Roberts, a great prospect. With Pascal gone, Wibbers will get more minutes, and he's ready to step up.

- So far you have been making those decisions very well, it would appear.

- I see the players every day in training and I know their levels. Some bids are too low and easy to dismiss. No real decision there. If a bid is higher than I expect, great. If it's 50-50, toss a coin and let fate decide. Seriously, if you know the levels of your players it's not hard on a technical basis.

The hard part is that you work with these players, you see how much they put in the effort, you like them and respect them and want to keep them around forever. That's not in their best interests though, is it, if they can double their wages at another club.

- When I asked that question of paying for everything on your shopping list, I was expecting your answer to involve increased commercial revenues. Can you briefly outline what you did in Germany?

- Um, sure. I was the caretaker manager of Bayern Munich for a month while their head coach had heart surgery.

- You're being coy. During a wildly successful stint in charge, you took the team to Budapest where you stuck two fingers up at their autocratic leader and made a mockery of his anti-gay legislation.

- I don't remember saying anything like that, Greg.

- You dressed like a rainbow.

- I like rainbows. I used to draw them in school. There was one a couple of years ago, and this isn't a joke, that was so massive people driving along a busy street pulled over, got out of their car, and filmed it. Rainbows are magical.

- What you did was clearly a statement about the pride movement but if you don't want to talk about it, that's probably wise. It got a lot of attention, the vast majority of which was positive. One negative review came in the form of a police officer who broke your arm, but I believe some good came out of it?

- UEFA have banned the Hungarian club involved from hosting European matches and a youth tournament that was due to be hosted in that country has been moved.

A couple of German companies announced they're withdrawing sponsorship of that team and stadium and powerful people are a lot less keen to be seen schmoozing with the Hungarian Prime Minister.

The manager got sacked and his replacement was from the local league. I know for a fact that the job was offered to some big names but they turned it down because they didn't want the heat on them.

What I did had some effect, yeah. Not as much as I'd hoped but at least it's movement in what some people would call the right direction.

- It's very much the right direction but actually I meant that some good had come out of it in terms of Chester and, indeed, for yourself.

- Oh, I see. I was a bit slow on the uptake there because I didn't do it for money. I honestly thought that incident would be the end for me at Bayern and any other football club except Chester and it didn't really cross my mind we might get sponsors because of it.

After all, most companies are so conservative they would shy away from anyone controversial, and the kinds of companies who would see me as edgy and on-brand are pretty, you know, up their own arses. [Sniggers from Greg. Max audibly smiles.]

But I was wrong about that. The first people who got in touch were Chester Zoo and I was made up. Absolutely buzzing about that. They wanted to work with me but I insisted on doing a joint sponsorship of me and the club because we are two of the three main tourist attractions in Chester and you can't really collaborate with an old Roman wall.

- If anyone could, it's you.

- Ha! I suppose we could get involved with the Chester tourist board but for now I'm loving the zoo thing. That was them texting me a minute ago saying they love the scripts I sent them. Look out for those videos in the coming months, especially when some of the lazier animals wake the hell up.

- Top acting advice, Max: never work with children or animals.

- You're talking to the manager of the current Youth Cup champions. I'm great with kids. Animals? What could go wrong? Literally nothing. Okay so Chester FC plus Chester Zoo has the potential to be a great partnership.

We've been talking to NutriBurst off and on for a while and those discussions have heated up recently. If we get promoted they could become a major sponsor. Brooke's all over those talks but she wouldn't blab about them even to you. Then there was the big one - Pet Pride.

They're based in Warrington, which is in Cheshire, and it's a massive company. I didn't know how big it was until we started talking to them and Brooke told me they did like 1.6 billion pounds in revenue last year.

- Billion? With a B?

- Yeah, they're massive, which means they can scale with us as we get equally massive. That's something I want in sponsors. I don't want to change the kits every season because we have a new deal. I want long-term relationships. Ah, to be clear, Pet Pride won't be the shirt sponsor - that was just an example.

- Ah! Pride. I understand it now. You strut along the touchline wearing a pride outfit and you attract sponsorship from Pet Pride. It makes total sense.

- Why does everyone keep saying I strut? I don't strut. I amble. Sometimes I potter.

- But you got a sponsorship yourself, I read. In addition to, what is your portfolio? BoshCard plus Soccer Supremo?

- Soccer Supremo were really good about what I did in Hungary. They got some blowback from nutjobs but the big cheeses told me they got looooads of comms from staff and customers who were, ah, proud to be associated with, um, me, and the average customer thought the rainbow thing was hilarious and great. I was worried I would lose that deal because I love being the Soccer Supremo.

Okay but you're asking about Ganymede. Yeah, it's a niche range of hair products and quite frankly they are in awe of what's going on up here.

- For the listeners, Max is pointing to his hair, somewhat reverentially.

- Yep. I would try to describe my haircut for the benefit of those who can't see it, but that seems like a task best left to the foremost poets of the age.

- [Greg's cackles become wheezes and then coughs.] Oh, deary me. That got me. Your hair is very nice, Max, and the sponsorship seems apt.

- I didn't really want to do it because they want to do one of those adverts where I'm in the shower getting all lathered up and I gave up on getting an eight-pack, do you know what I mean? It's loads of hassle getting that ripped.

- Oh, I know.

- I told them I'd give them a seven-pack, no more, and they were like okay fine. But I only agreed because it's such good shampoo. I mean, really, I didn't know what I was missing until I gave it a go. Half the Chester dressing room is using it now. It's honestly something I'm happy to endorse.

- I'm glad that you got something out of what you did because it makes me a little cross sometimes when people say hey, why do you like football? It's just a load of silly, uneducated brats kicking a ball around a field.

It's not that. It's community. It's routine. It's having something to talk to with those closest to you - or complete strangers. And when someone like you does something like what you did, it warms the cockles of my heart, Max, it really does. I'd like to thank you for giving me that particular memory because, in addition to everything I just said, as a comedian it genuinely made me laugh out loud, hard.

I'm aware that time's running short so maybe we could race through some of my notes and our final questions?

- Go go go.

- You mentioned loan deals.

- Right. We've got Sunday Sowunmi, a young defender whose loan deal in tier six was going great - he really improved faster than expected like the talent was just desperate to burst out of him - but even though York City seemed ideal I sensed he might hit a brick wall if we left him there, so we moved him to Morecambe in tier five to give him some extra challenge.

There was a difficult decision to be made with Dan Badford. He's on loan at Tranmere Rovers and after a slow start he's getting minutes. With Lee gone, it would make sense to bring Dan back, and just in football terms I should probably have done that, but I had a big chat with Dan and said look, you're just starting to prove yourself at Tranmere and you're never going to go on loan again. You might play the entire rest of your career at Chester and this is the one season you get the chance to see what it's like somewhere else.

We agreed he should stick it out. That's better for him and long-term I think that's better for Chester, even if he'd be pretty handy this season.

- It's brave to take a long-term view like that.

- It's only brave if your job is under threat. Mine isn't so I can plan properly. Do things right. It's an amazing luxury.

- It is, yes.

- Then we had three players in Wales and they have been there for a while together but I was looking at Chester's squad and how our season might play out and I recalled Omari Naysmith, a midfielder. He's great on set pieces and that might be one of the fine details we rely on in tight matches.

The team in Wales won't be much weaker because we sent a lad called Alfie Clitheroe instead. He's a similar level to Omari and he's got a lot of flair and craft. I personally love watching him play and I'm sure he'll have fun in that league.

Omari and Alfie are really similar so it's a coin toss which one you put where. Did I get it right? Time will tell but fans sometimes think there's all kinds of mad science that goes on behind the scenes, and some people - especially in the media - think I'm some kind of wizard but honestly at times it boils down to free kicks versus through balls. Which do we need more in the next five months? That's how that decision was made.

- Such a great insight. Thanks for that. I'm looking through my notes. You mentioned you weren't worried about the Financial Fair Play rules. Why not?

- Because we only spend what we earn and that will always be allowed. The FFP rules are in place to stop owners putting insane amounts of money into clubs and distorting the competition. Whether that's right or not is a different issue, but it won't affect us.

- Ah, here's one. You're looking for investment. What do you want?

- Five million pounds will let me rebuild the South Stand in the style of the new North one. If we get to the Championship the stadium will be too small and we'll be leaving money on the table. The South Stand is for the away fans and the upgrade would bring it to four thousand capacity. In the Champ you've got 23 home matches against clubs like Sheffield Wednesday, Blackburn, Birmingham, and yeah, local frenemies Wrexham. Those clubs would bring four thousand to Chester, easy, and they were just the first ones that came to mind. I have an idea of how to get that finance but it's always good to have options. I can offer a decent return but if the club defaults you don't get equity in the club or anything like that.

- It sounds like you want a bridging loan that you can repay in the summer if you get promoted.

- A bridging loan. Um... maybe. I don't know. We're open to ideas as long as it doesn't endanger the club in any way. If it comes to it, I'll save up and pay cash but it's just a waste to start the season selling 800 tickets to away fans instead of 4,000. Let me do the maths on that...

If we had the bigger away end on day one it would bring in an extra sixty thousand pounds per match. 1.4 million a year extra. It's worth holding out the begging bowl, isn't it? Anyone with five mill lying around can get in touch with Brooke Star at Chester FC and have a chat.

You will see on Saturday when we play Sunderland that we're not a million miles away from being able to put up a fight in the Championship. The stand will be full - if we can build it in time.

- Next question. Are you fit?

- Ha! I think I am but it has only been four weeks since the arm was broken so the medical team are having kittens that I'm even thinking about going on the pitch. I do have to set an example because I lose my shit at players who take stupid risks. For now let's just say that I'll be on the bench and the entire club - men's and women's teams - have been practicing penalties a lot.

- The women have a cup match of importance?

- Yeah, this Sunday. Also in the FA Cup but it's the Fourth Round against Birmingham City. They're a Women's Super League team but they're in last place and we're top of the third tier so I'm hoping there isn't actually a huge gap between us, you know? It's at home so we're hoping for a big, noisy crowd to cheer us on.

We would need it, too, because I wasn't planning on using Bench Boost. If we could beat Brum without it, and if we got a lucky draw in the next round, and if Bench Boost helped us win the following tie, then we would be in the semi-final. As the greatest poets of the age often said, lose to Brum, no harm done.

I bit my lip thinking about Sunday's match. I was strangely confident about winning that one. I had a much clearer idea of a tactic that might work in that match than I did for the men's game against Sunderland.

Greg was asking his next question so I tried to focus.

- How are the finances for the women's team?

- About what we expected. It runs at a loss but that's because I see an opportunity to rush through the leagues and establish ourselves in the WSL so I'm chucking money at it because that money goes so, so far.

There are a few teams like Birmingham who flit between WSL 1 and 2 and I think we could edge above that particular group and once we've got our feet in the door, who knows?

Right now I'm very ambitious for the women's team but there's a chance that as more money pours into women's sport, my advantages will be negated to some extent. For example, we were able to sign Kit Hodges, who's a WSL-level striker, when we were in the fourth tier and I'm not sure how long that kind of thing will continue. The documentary is a big part of the financing and it increases sales of our merch and boosts ticket sales. The show is getting bought by more countries - Germany, for example - so it all feeds into itself and gets bigger, but yeah, there are risks.

We want to get the team to a point where the doc is a bonus and they're doing well because they're doing well, if that makes sense.

- Just a couple more questions. What's next for Max Best?

- Next is a busy weekend of FA Cup magic. In the rest of January the men's team have got five league games and Bristol Rovers in the Vans Trophy. I'll be fit to play some part in those and basically I'm planning to crush six games while navigating the transfer market.

Build up our lead in the table and then find pockets of time where I can go and do things. There's one trip to Norway I need to make before the summer, and I might as well combine that with Sweden.

I'll be doing a hell of a lot of scouting of players in the next few months, looking for bargains. Depending on how the league goes I will stay more or travel more. I can be flexible to some extent because I have a great team around me, but I'll definitely be in town for every FA Cup and Vans Trophy match.

- So you're committed to Chester, then.

- Totally.

- It's just that you're a boyhood Manchester United fan and you have proven you can manage at the top level. You won every match in Germany, didn't you? You have to be tempted by the United job, if it was offered to you.

- I'm sure that would be flattering and I'm equally sure they'd never pick up the phone to me.

- Fair enough. And the final question. This one was for Brooke but I think it will work well on you. What's it like working for Max Best?

- [Laughter.] Okay, first, she doesn't work for me, she works for Chester FC, which means she works for the fans and the community, just the same as I do.

- If I can interrupt for what I hope will be the last time... You are the boss, though. The de facto boss. I saw a photo of a sign in your new terrace. I can't remember the exact wording but it went something like, by order of Max, no crap beer is sold here. We sell good beer that has been thoroughly tested by members of the first team. Stop asking for crap beer.

- What's worse than going to a match and all they have is Heineken? It's undrinkable. I just want things to be good, do you know what I mean? I really don't micromanage every little thing but there are a few key points where I get stuck in.

It's almost to set the direction as much as anything. We need to act like a business and make a profit on an operational basis so that the club can survive long-term. But that said, we're not a business, we're a football club. I don't want us offering a shit product at high prices.

The higher we go in the leagues, the less the matchday revenue is a factor in our profit and loss, right? I hear it on your show all the time. Big clubs put their prices up a shocking amount, piss everyone off, drive away a section of their long-term fanbase, and for what? A million pounds a year? It covers one player's wages for maybe three weeks. What are they even doing?

- Hear, hear.

- Don't let me go on rants, mate. What was the topic? Micromanaging? We're a business but we don't rinse our fans. That's the principle. I try to let Brooke get on with the job but she's still learning about football culture and can't always predict how fans will react. Just a quick example of our discussions. Half-and-half scarves. I resisted selling those at first because if you're a Chester fan you shouldn't be wearing a scarf with someone else's logo on it.

- I didn't think I could love you any more but here we are.

- Yeah, well, she wore me down. She wants to make her numbers go up, Greg, and she pointed out that while you and I, men of impeccable taste, would never wear such a monstrosity, other people love them and will pay ten pounds to get one. And that if we didn't sell them, someone else would. So fine, okay, we can do that but there are some other things that would be way too much for our fans.

Do you remember there was a scandal at Sunderland because they decorated part of the away end in Newcastle United colours? If you want away fans to feel welcome and spend more money it's a great idea, but it's also an amazing way to fucking enrage your own fans.

If Brooke runs things by me it saves us all a lot of needless drama but she's delegating more of that kind of work to employees who are fans of the club while she does the high-level work she's unbelievably good at.

- Building commercial revenues.

- That’s one part of it, yeah. I give my opinion about the sorts of companies I want to be in bed with and she tries to, ah, consider my feelings. It's not that hard, by the way. I say let's give preference to local companies and who do we have? BoshCard, Chester Zoo, Pet Pride, Glendale Logistics. Perfect, right?

- And not a betting company or crypto casino in sight.

- Exactly. To answer the question, I feel like Brooke and I get on well. We've got complementary skills but we're both driven and when we're on a mission, we're really on a mission, you know? Oh, that reminds me of a killer line I wrote. I planned what I did in Budapest like it was a heist, and I channeled Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible. For weeks I was Ethan Hunt, getting the team ready, putting the pieces in place, then executing in style.

- A more flamboyant Ethan Hunt but I take your point.

- Now my role is trying to find a central midfielder who can do what Lee Contreras did, for half the price. I've gone from Ethan Hunt... to Bargain Hunt.

- Very good, Max, very good. I wish we could have talked for many more hours because it has all been so fascinating but we have to end it there. Thank you for your time and for being so open and I sincerely wish you a successful season. Good luck, Max.

- Thanks, Greg. Hey, you live near Wembley Stadium, don't you?

- Not very far, that's right.

- If I get you a cup final ticket, will you teach our captain how to win a coin toss? We want to go first in penalty shoot-outs.

- I'll do that for free. Tails never fails.

- Okay, we'll try it. [Max laughs.] See you at Wembley, Greg.