Became The Premier League’S Youngest Manager [EN]: Chapter 4

4: The End and the Beginning

Fifteen minutes before the official kickoff time.

Helena sat in the director’s box at Turf Moor, Burnley’s home stadium, looking down at the pitch.

By European football standards, it was a small, somewhat modest stadium with a capacity of around 22,000.

However, the sight of home and away fans filling the seats and competitively singing their chants at the top of their lungs stirred something within Helena, who had previously been indifferent to sports. The energy was infectious.

Of course, Helena, being an outsider, could only understand snippets of the Burnley fans’ chants.

“For ever and ever”

“We’ll follow a team”

“It’s Burnley FC”

“We are supreme!”

“We’ll never be mastered”

“By the Blackburn b

***ards”

“And keep the claret flag flying high!”

Helena couldn’t understand why they were singing chants disparaging their regional rivals, Blackburn, when they were playing against Everton. It seemed like misplaced animosity.

John Vanaskewich, who was sitting next to her, seemed to read her mind and explained.

“The fans are happy.”

“Happy?”

“Blackburn is in the Championship [the second tier of English football], so there’s hardly any chance of us playing against them. If we don’t play them, we can’t lose to them, and if they’re in a league below us? Well, it’s practically the same as us winning.”

He tried to sound neutral, but John Vanaskewich’s pleasant face clearly showed his satisfaction at being in a higher league than their rivals, Blackburn, and Helena barely managed to suppress a smile. The rivalry was palpable.

Below, Burnley players were warming up under the direction of Kim and Arthur, while Marcel Brands, Everton’s Director of Football, sitting on Helena’s other side, leaned over to speak to her.

“Is this your first time watching a game at Turf Moor, Helena?”

“Yes? Ah, yes. Actually, it’s my first time watching a football match at a stadium at all.”

It was her first time watching any kind of sporting event, not just football, but Helena didn’t go into that much detail.

The Dutch head of Everton’s football operations smiled at her words.

“It’s a truly magnificent sight, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Make sure you come to Goodison Park [Everton’s stadium] when we play them in the second half of the season. Turf Moor is great, but the fans on Merseyside can really show you what passion is all about.”

“Hmph!”

John Vanaskewich, a native of Lancashire, snorted softly at the praise for the Merseyside fans. The regional pride was evident.

Helena, who didn’t yet have a good grasp of the regionalism and rivalries in England, decided to quietly watch the game amidst the unspoken competition between the two men. She had a lot to learn about English football culture.

***

Located a few blocks from Turf Moor, the home stadium of Burnley Football Club, ‘The Rifle Volunteer Inn’ was a small pub that didn’t serve much food beyond simple snacks, but was beloved by the locals for its homemade craft beer and Guinness. It was a proper local’s haunt.

With kickoff approaching, the pub’s regulars, who had come to watch the game together after failing to get tickets for the opening match, were bustling about, taking up seats at the central bar table and throughout the pub, doing their best to drown their despair in the bottom of their beer glasses. The atmosphere was thick with anticipation and anxiety.

“Damn it!”

Henry Smythe roughly emptied his beer glass in one go and gestured to the bartender for another. He needed a refill, and fast.

The heir to the Smythe family, who had settled in Burnley since his great-grandfather’s time, prided himself on being a true local, born and raised in Burnley for 50 years, married to a woman from Burnley, and raising his children in Burnley. He was Burnley through and through.

And like 99% of men from Burnley, he had been supporting his hometown team, Burnley, since before he could walk. It was practically a birthright.

Although he regretted not having directly experienced Burnley’s heyday when they won the First Division [the top tier of English football at the time] in the 1960s. He’d only heard the tales.

Still, he steadfastly supported his hometown team as they were relegated to the Third Division in the 1979/80 season, plummeted to the Fourth Division in the 1984/85 season, and faced bankruptcy in 2002. He’d seen the dark days.

Finally, in the 2008/09 season, under the leadership of manager Owen Coyle, they returned to the Premier League after 33 years. It was a moment of pure joy.

From 2012, under the guidance of manager Sean Dyche, he had been enjoying their six seasons in the Premier League, with only two seasons of interruption, more happily than during his honeymoon. Dyche had become a legend.

At least, until the damned Americans passed the club’s ownership back and forth like a toy twice in eight months, driving the club to the brink of bankruptcy, and Sean Dyche, fed up with the situation, resigned. The Americans had nearly ruined everything.

“I wonder if we’ll be okay without Sean Dyche…”

At the words of Mitch Tyler, Henry Smythe’s longtime friend and fellow Burnley native, Henry slammed his fist on the bar. The fear was palpable.

“Of course we won’t be okay! It’s all because of those damn Americans! If it weren’t for those damn Americans!”

Both of them had season tickets, but today they had given them to their children and were sharing their resentment and worries at The Rifle Volunteer. It was a tradition, of sorts.

Probably all the home fans inside the stadium were having similar conversations. A shared sense of dread hung in the air.

“The important thing is that we’re definitely going to be relegated this year…”

Another fan, who had been listening to their conversation, muttered gloomily. The pessimism was widespread.

Sean Dyche, who had led Burnley for the past eight years, achieving a miraculous promotion to the Premier League, advancing to European competitions, and successfully remaining in the league, had resigned, and now the fans’ morale had plummeted to rock bottom. The hope had gone.

On top of that, their feelings towards the second American owner, who had replaced the first American owner who had ruined the club’s finances, were beyond worry and into despair. They were trapped in a nightmare.

Nevertheless, in front of the fans who had gathered to support their hometown team, the commentators and analysts broadcasting the game on the large screen, with the volume turned up to the maximum, coldly assessed the situation of their club, Burnley. The cold, hard truth.

[Today, the Premier League opening match is finally here!]

[Yes, today ten of the Premier League’s 20 teams will be playing their first matches, and the most attention is being drawn to Burnley Football Club.]

[With Dyche’s sudden resignation, the opening match will be played under an interim manager. Among the managers who have been rumored as candidates for the Burnley job, Roy Hodgson, who led Crystal Palace excellently until last season and is now a free agent, and Neil Warnock, the promotion magician, are seen as the frontrunners.]

The commentator nodded at the caster’s words.

[Roy Hodgson’s tactics are a bit rigid, but he has a reputation for leading lower-tier teams and steadily accumulating points, and Neil Warnock has been out of the game for a long time, but he is the best expert at promoting teams. Come to think of it, although he hasn’t been mentioned, Sam Allardyce, who managed West Bromwich Albion until last season and is currently unemployed, is also a leading expert in preventing relegation.]

[Roy Hodgson would be expected to keep them in the Premier League, while Neil Warnock would be expected to lead them back up after relegation to the Second Division. Sam Allardyce’s memory of failing to prevent West Brom’s relegation last season is still fresh, so expectations are probably a bit lower, wouldn’t you say?]

[It’s hard to know how Burnley’s new owner, Cartwright Funds, will judge, but Mike Garlick, the former owner who remains on the board, will be well aware that he needs to choose one of those two, or broadly speaking, three.]

[Now, the starting lineups are being announced. Ah, this is… !]

The pub buzzed as Burnley’s starting lineup appeared on the screen. All eyes were glued to it.

[Nick Pope in goal, and a back four of Matt Lowton, James Tarkowski, Ben Mee, and Charlie Taylor from right to left… that’s all as expected.]

[The midfield has all available players. Jack Cork, Ashley Westwood, and Jack Brownhill! Jack Cork is in the defensive midfield position, with Westwood and Brownhill above him. And the wingers are Jay Rodriguez on the right and Dwight McNeil on the left. And Chris Wood is the lone striker up front.]

The commentator added his thoughts to the caster’s words.

[It seems like they’re trying to defend the center against Rafael Benitez’s 4-2-3-1 formation [a common attacking formation]. If so, it’s fair to say that Burnley has taken a defensive approach with a 4-1-4-1 formation.]

[It seems that they’re trying not to lose any points as much as possible under the interim manager. It’s fair to say that they’ve taken an even more defensive approach than Sean Dyche’s 4-4-2 formation.]

[It seems like they’re going to sit deep and hope for luck with long balls to Chris Wood.]

*I hope they can at least avoid a heavy defeat.*

In front of the fans who were praying with their hands clasped for their team, the 22 players from both teams, who had knelt on one knee around the center circle as part of a campaign to raise awareness of discrimination, stood up again as the referee’s whistle blew and the game began. A new season, a new beginning.

And the game that began unfolded in a direction that no one could have imagined. The unexpected was about to happen.