Simon who was sitting in the chairman’s office in the Foster Stadium was surrounded by heaps of paperwork regarding various aspects of the club. He was joined by Silver who was doing a full audit of the financial situation of the club.

Simon was not aware of the club’s internal structure and its specific intricacies from the research he conducted, however, the current situation of the club could only be described as abysmal. The only direct employees of the club were 45 players including first team and youth squad, one coach, two assistant coaches, one director of football, and finally, a groundskeeper.

However, Simon could not believe it when Silver told him that 65% of the club’s income was spent on these people, this came out to approximately 1.9 million pounds in wages per year, not including bonuses, and other operating costs which brought the total up to a 3 million.

Honestly, this wouldn’t be out of the ordinary if one didn’t consider the fact that the club only made 2.3 million a year. Simon immediately tasked Silver who was very good at audits and financial examinations to take charge of figuring out how to reduce this spending so that the club breaks even at the very least.

While Silver was taking charge of the finances, Simon was busy reviewing all the contracts the club was currently in. The first one was the shirt sponsorship contract which was initially with Anderson Motors for a lump sum of 1.5 million per season and an extra 500 thousand in case of promotion with more conditional clauses for cup run, however, this contract was voided as the club couldn’t escape relegation.

Simon was not too disheartened by the loss of this contract since he knew he would be able to land a much better deal in a short while. However, he couldn’t help but be disappointed at the old directors’ lack of insight when negotiating for contracts.

He would not claim to be the best negotiator, but he knew to at least get a clause in there that demanded compensation in case the sponsor decided to pull out before the year was over. But that was bridge under the water, for now, Simon was more focused on the contracts for players as well as the manager.

Simon sis not have much time to follow football closely in his last life, but he knew that after the club was almost destroyed by Siez, the shareholders who bought the club after his departure fired the manager and hired a relatively unknown assistant manager who was in charge of the youth team.

Two seasons’ later and Brandermill FC were consistently outperforming bigger teams before securing promotion to league 1. Simon could not afford to wait for three years, so he planned o bring about the young assistant manager’s rise a little earlier, and hope that he can replicate his success once again.

The current manager of the club was a veteran who served as the head of numerous league clubs. He was hired by the club last year for a whopping 20 thousand pounds per week. The manager’s wages alone made up about half of the entire wage budget of the club which was simply unacceptable to Simon.

He immediately perused through the manager’s contract to look for any performance dependent clauses that he could use to sack him. He immediately found one clause that stipulated a review by the board of directors at the end of each season to determine whether his contract would be extended or not.

Since Simon was the sole shareholder, he immediately decided that he was not up to par as he simply jotted a NO at the bottom of the contract. He then proceeded to look through the player’s contracts but found nothing of note.

After being done with that, Simon pulled out his little, dark journal and flipped to a certain page which included some information about the club. He immediately saw the name James Pelletier. This was one of the current assistant managers of the club and the head of the youth squad.

Simon saw about half a dozen names next to him which were players that were instrumental to the club in his last life, but he was in no rush to try and play them since he realized that there might be a slight discrepancy considering that he was putting this assistant manager under the limelight sooner than his past life.

Simon who was caught in his thinking was immediately pulled out of it by Silver’s voice that sounded out in the office:

“Am not looking through these financial statements. I have to say things are not looking good for the club Simon. They have accrued about 1.7 million in debt with very high interest. I also couldn’t help but notice that they underperformed in merchandising and matchday income this last season when compared to the seasons before that.”

Simon simply nodded his head while speaking:

“Makes sense. The club simply had no notable achievements this season, languishing at the such a low tier caused the supporters to simply become disenchanted. I’ll see what I can do about that this coming season.”

Simon turned back to his musings as he wondered what he needed to do next while continuing to go through all the contracts. The club’s relegation voided numerous player contracts since some of them were not willing to play below league 2.

Simon was not too worried about this since he knew this was very much to his advantage because he could renegotiate for better contracts when the club returns to the League 2. Simon cast a glance at the calendar in anticipation.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

June 5th, 2012. Two weeks after Simon took sole ownership of the Brandermill football club. In these two weeks, the club saw a number of changes that was extremely unprecedented. The first thing was the sacking of the club’s manager with inadequate performance cited as the reason.

Next was the club’s announcement of the appointment of one James Pelletier as the new manager of the club. Pelletier who is 39 this year was the head of the club’s youth squad. A strict disciplinarian with tendency to lose his temper at the smallest of issues, Pelletier’s appointment was a surprise to all the club’s supporters.

However, the biggest piece of news that came not from the club, but rather from the Football Association which announced that thirteenth place Port Vale would be placed in administration and docked fifteen points.

Everyone was shocked by this announcement, since this meant that Port Vale which was ahead of Brandermill by 14 points would now be below them by one point, meaning that Brandermill was no longer being relegated. The person who was most stunned by the news was none other than Charles, who could not believe that Simon’s ridiculous prediction actually happened.

However, Simon didn’t have time to gloat to this friend of his since he had bigger things to worry about. For example, Brandermill FC was now a league club without an official sponsor, which meant there were numerous mid-sized businesses flocking to them to try and sign a sponsorship deal with them.

Simon, however, was in no hurry to accept a deal since none of them was satisfactory. In fact, the best deal came from Anderson Motors which offered a 2 million, but Simon refused. He was waiting for the same deal that Siez got in his last life which was much better.

However, the thing that occupied Simon’s mind the most was a series of numbers written at the last page he wrote before losing the ability to go back and forth between realities. This was a set of seven numbers that Simon wrote in an attempt to win the largest euro-million award this year.

At the time, he only wrote down the nearest large prize because he didn’t anticipate the loss of his ability to travel between realities, but now, he was more worried about the possibility that his actions might have changed things enough that these numbers were no longer winners.

The draw was at exactly 11 at night, which was why Simon was currently sitting in his study at home staring at the screen of his laptop as he waited for the clock to hit 11. If this worked, Simon would have enough assets immediately to accomplish somethings quickly, if it didn’t, then he would have to be a bit more restrained. Either way, he already went further than he ever had in his past life which could be considered a victory.

After what felt like an eternity, the clock finally hit 11 prompting Simon to refresh the webpage to see if his numbers match. Naturally, the page was not updated exactly on time, which caused Simon to refresh the page in frustration a few times before the winning numbers came up.

Simon immediately looked at the numbers on the screen and then at his little journal and continued to do this for a few times before a look of utter delight flashed on to his face. He immediately stood up and laughed loudly as he stared at the huge prize of 112 million euros.

This was perhaps the happiest Simon has ever been, in fact, he wondered if this is how gamblers felt all the time. Even though he had a much higher chance of winning because he knew the numbers that won last time, the fact that this was the only lottery numbers he wrote down coupled with the fact that he wasn’t even certain he would get it caused him to feel extremely happy.

He sat back down to stare at the screen for a few more seconds as if trying to make sure that he didn’t misread the numbers. However, he could still feel his heart pounding loudly in his chest in excitement.

He proceeded to claim his reward while choosing to be anonymous of course. He knew that this money would allow him to accomplish much more than he could have if he used the funds he already had access to.

He immediately made a promise in his heart that he wouldn’t squander this opportunity.