Became The Premier League’S Youngest Manager [EN]: Chapter 1

1. The End and the Beginning

No one likes us

We don’t care

We are Burnley

Super Burnley

We are Burnley

From the Moor

– Burnley Football Club chant

(*A dual expression referencing Burnley’s home ground, Turf Moor, and the local moors, a type of swampy terrain.)

[Goal! Another goal!]

The commentator’s excited voice echoed from the TV.

[In the 79th minute of the second half, Burnley’s left-winger Dwight McNeil completes his hat-trick, successfully scoring Burnley’s third goal! Burnley is staging a major comeback against Manchester City with three goals in 10 minutes!]

[Look at the expression on Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola’s face. He looks defeated, beyond anger. Let’s watch the replay one more time.]

The commentator took the caster’s words and explained the goal scene.

[Burnley’s defensive midfielder, Nicolas Seiwald, lofted the ball forward from the center of the halfway line. Central striker Wout Weghorst won the header against Manchester City defender John Stones and headed it on to McNeil, who was making a run from the left. McNeil powerfully half-volleyed the bouncing ball into the bottom left corner of the goal!]

[Manchester City’s goalkeeper, Ederson, was caught off guard and couldn’t move.]

The commentator elaborated on the caster’s point.

[The problem was that Manchester City’s right-back, Kyle Walker, lost track of McNeil. However, Burnley’s right-winger, Karim Adeyemi, continued to make penetrating runs from the right. It seems that Juan Cancelo and Aymeric Laporte, who were responsible for Manchester City’s left defense, were tied up and couldn’t provide support.]

The excited caster and commentator quickly exchanged words, assessing the impact of this game’s result on the entire season.

[Ah, it’s a game that doesn’t affect Burnley’s ranking, but they’re really throwing a wrench in the works for Manchester City, who could have secured the championship with just a draw here.]

[Burnley’s young manager, who has openly stated that he is a Liverpool fan, presents a surprise gift to his favorite team in the final game of the 2021/22 Premier League season!]

[Liverpool, Manchester City, and Arsenal were the three teams involved in the fierce title race, and Manchester City competed until the very end. However, they are tripped up by Burnley, who are having a crazy May, in the last game of the season, and they hand over the championship to Liverpool!]

The caster and commentator, excited about the upset that occurred on the last day of the thrilling Premier League race, continued to speak while looking at the agitated Manchester City bench.

[Ah, Guardiola is ordering substitutions. But now there’s too little time left. In fact, Guardiola may feel it’s unfair because he was preparing to substitute players as soon as they conceded the equalizing goal, but they conceded two more goals while they were warming up.]

[They were caught out by Burnley’s bold substitutions. Ah, the assistant referee is raising the substitution board. Defender Aymeric Laporte is being replaced by attacker Raheem Sterling, and central midfielder Ilkay Gündoğan is also being replaced by attacker Riyad Mahrez.]

The commentator and caster, who were watching the instructions and formation changes being frantically conveyed to the Manchester City players ahead of the kickoff, analyzed the situation.

[With only John Stones left at the back, midfielder Rodri and Juan Cancelo, who moved up from the left-back position, are standing side by side in midfield. He is gesturing to right-back Kyle Walker to join the attack.]

[This means that Manchester City will launch an all-out attack with seven players in the remaining time: their existing attacking line of Gabriel Jesus, Jack Grealish, Phil Foden, and Kevin De Bruyne, plus Sterling and Mahrez, who were brought in as substitutes, and Kyle Walker, who has moved forward. Should we call this a 1-2-7 formation?]

[Manager Guardiola, who usually plays beautiful soccer, is putting everything on the line and going all-in on attack at the final point that will determine the success or failure of this season. But with only 10 minutes left, can they close the two-goal gap?]

[Rather, Burnley’s wingers McNeil or Adeyemi may be able to counter-attack the space behind them. Manchester City will try to block defensively with Rodri, Stones, and Cancelo forming a de facto back three, but it doesn’t seem easy for Manchester City to turn this game around.]

[But more importantly, before this season started, Burnley was widely expected to be relegated. Who would have imagined that a season that started with such bleak prospects would end like this?!]

***

Late at night.

The night view outside the large window on the 30th floor, overlooking the entirety of Wall Street, was breathtaking no matter how many times you saw it.

But Helena Cartwright, while looking down at the night view that she had admired every time she visited her father’s office since she was a child, felt a serious sense of doubt about her childhood decision to join the family business that had been passed down for three generations from her grandfather to her father and then to her older brother.

“Dad, I don’t even know football [soccer] very well. But soccer?!”

Even with her voice rising a tone higher in astonishment, her father, sitting at his desk with the large window behind him, didn’t budge.

As always, he was wearing a custom-made, top-quality suit, and the blonde hair that had been passed down in the Cartwright family was now clearly turning gray.

However, Ian Cartwright II, who had made a name for himself as a cold-blooded figure on Wall Street with his neatly styled hair, looked steadily at his young daughter, a rising star in the Cartwright Special Situations Fund who was being recognized on Wall Street and in the private equity industry.

“Helena. I’m not telling you to go and play soccer. This is just a business. I’m telling you to go to a distressed company and monitor and support the professional manager so that they can do well. Anyone in our fund who can’t do that isn’t qualified to be a director.”

“Even so, you need at least a minimum understanding of the industry, right?”

“That’s why I prepared these materials for you, right?”

Helena looked down at the books on her father’s desk with an absurd expression.

A biography of Pelé, whose name even she, who had no interest in sports, had heard of.

A book about the Spanish national soccer team (did Spain even have a national soccer team?) written by a reporter she had never heard of.

And a book with a picture of a stout, bespectacled grandfather frowning on the cover.

Marcelo…Bilsa? Bielsa? What is Leeds United anyway? What’s so beautiful about it?

While Helena was confused, Ian Cartwright began to wrap up the conversation as he always did, in his own way.

“I had Gina prepare your plane ticket, so if you depart from JFK [John F. Kennedy International Airport] tomorrow morning, you can go. There are no direct flights to Burnley, so if you go to Manchester Airport, the club will send a car to pick you up.”

Half resigned and half dumbfounded, Helena gave up answering and began to gather her books, and Ian continued.

“Oh, and be sure to say goodbye to your grandfather before you leave.”

“…Yes, Dad.”

Just a few hours later, Helena, sitting in first class on a plane bound for London from New York, sighed and opened her laptop to start reviewing the materials.

Her mother, who had heard about her sudden long-term business trip to England, made full use of her experience in supporting her father-in-law, husband, and eldest son to pack her daughter’s luggage for her indefinite business trip in just a few hours.

Of course, Helena also stayed up almost all night packing her luggage with her mother (or rather, reducing the excessive amount of luggage that her mother had piled up), but it was important to grasp as much information as possible before she arrived in England, as she would be working hard from the moment she arrived.

She had learned painfully from the Brazilian mine and the Detroit auto parts company she was in charge of how important the first week was in managing distressed assets, so she had to put as much information into her head as possible.

Opening the data, she quickly began to reread the background of the acquisition.

Of course, as a director of the Cartwright Fund, she was well aware of the big picture behind the fund’s involvement in this situation, but it was important to understand the details now that she was in charge.

Just two weeks ago, rumors circulated on Wall Street that ALK Capital had failed to pay interest on the £80 million bond it had issued to acquire an English professional soccer team, causing the bond to become distressed.

Helena was lukewarm to the rumors, but unlike her other family members, she had little interest in sports.

Moreover, the total size of the distressed bonds was only £80 million, a relatively small amount compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Cartwright Fund usually handled.

At least until Michael Dell, the owner and head of MSD Group, which had acquired the bonds issued by ALK Capital, contacted her.

Until Michael Dell, a close friend, contacted Ian Cartwright III, the head of the Cartwright family, who is considered the best at reviving distressed companies, and offered to sell him a very good item cheaply.

She didn’t know what he was hooked on, but her father personally led the research team from that day on and completed the asset review with overnight work for a week.

He then pulled off a deal last week to acquire an English professional soccer team, which had been sold for $260 million just eight months ago, for just $20 million.

Acquired £80 million of bonds from MSD Group, which had legally defaulted due to non-payment of interest, at a 75% discount for £20 million.

Seized all of the shares of the intermediate holding company that had been provided as collateral by ALK Capital, which originally issued the bonds.

And by converting the previously acquired bonds into shares, it became the sole shareholder of the intermediate holding company.

The Cartwright Fund, which specializes in reviving distressed companies, mobilized the know-how and various legal means that it had accumulated over three generations.

But whatever the method, it was a great deal that generated a 1,300% profit on the Cartwright Fund’s books.

And it was also the moment when the Cartwright Fund became the sole shareholder of ‘Burnley Football Club’, located in Burnley, a rural town in northwestern England that Helena had to search for on Google Maps to find its location.

However, from the Cartwright Fund’s perspective, in order to realize the enormous profits recorded on the books, they had to resell the distressed assets they had acquired at a fair price, but the reason why distressed assets can be bought cheaply in the first place is because no one wants to buy them.

And it was also the point at which the true power of the Cartwright Fund, which is recognized as the undisputed leader in normalizing distressed assets on Wall Street, had to be demonstrated.

Of course, what was frustrating for Helena was that, from a long-term perspective, she, who had been completely uninterested in soccer, or even sports in general, had to throw herself into preventing the club from collapsing, without even having a professional manager selected to normalize the acquired assets.

As Helena sighed once again and tried to immerse herself in the ledger on the laptop screen, she suddenly heard a familiar word.

[…Sean Dyche, the club’s manager, has finally announced his resignation. He expressed concern about the club’s financial situation due to the rapidly increased debt and the club owner, who has changed abruptly twice in the past year. Most of Dyche’s staff also followed him…]

When Helena turned her head, the face of a man with a bald head and a short red beard appeared on the screen next to her, along with the BCC News [British County Council] logo.

The passenger next to her, misunderstanding her icy blue eyes staring at the screen, apologized and quickly put on headphones to eliminate the sound coming out.

But Helena, struggling to hold back the curse that was about to burst out of her mouth, hurriedly opened the folder containing information about Burnley Football Club on her laptop with trembling hands.

The financial situation of Burnley Football Club for the past 5 years.

Financial forecasts for the next 3 years, with all sorts of predictions, expectations, and hopes mixed in appropriately.

The past and present player roster.

Among all the files with carefully written titles, there was a PowerPoint file that summarized the ‘list of key personnel’ that the Cartwright Fund’s capable research team should never miss.

Suddenly, she felt like she was going deaf from the pounding of her heart, but Helena hurriedly opened the file.

The face of the man she had just seen on the news was staring at her from the front of the file, which organized key personnel by page.

While a corner of her suddenly dazed mind recognized that the man’s green eyes were pretty, the red letters, emphasized in bold and kindly underlined below the photo, caught her eye.

‘Sean Dyche. First Team Manager. Absolutely Do Not Miss!’

“…Shit. I’m screwed.”

In the end, Helena couldn’t hold back and cursed.