The game of their lives: Marine v Mourinho, the complete story
Simon Hughes Jan 11, 2021
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The Kings Suite number 2 at the Radisson Hotel in Liverpool’s business district is quiet when Jay Devine asks an open question to the floor.
“Anyone else pooing their keks yet?”
Niall Cummins, sat at another table, chirps up first. He is Marine’s captain and flanked by the other most experienced players in the squad. David Raven is on one side and Anthony Miley and Kenny Strickland are positioned on the other.
“Mine’s liquid,” Cummins jokes.
With that, the tension breaks. Everyone laughs.
The biggest game in the lives of nearly all this squad of 19 semi-professionals footballers is two and a half hours away. Behind the players, a projector shows the BBC advert for the event, featuring Antony Gormley’s Iron Men on Crosby Beach as well as some inspiring words relating to the slaying of giants.
What is about to happen suddenly feels more pressing. Last night, Marine’s squad were excited, but they were also relaxed. Unbelievably so. Now, the atmosphere has changed. Marine’s players know what is coming. There isn’t much time left. They are waiting.
Neil Young, who combines managing Marine as well as Merseyrail’s sites across Merseyside, has done all of his tactical preparation, drilling his message home over again and again. His Obama speech was yesterday. In the changing room at the Marine Travel Arena, he will not try to rouse the team by shouting and balling — attempting to get the players wound up by riding the significance of the occasion. That is the time for quiet words of reassurance in the ear with those who need it most. Now is the moment for simple, quick, reminders of the very basic things he expects. The more complex stuff has been and gone. The coach to the ground is leaving shortly.
“From the kick-off — if it’s ours — we have to get it right. The ball goes back, the next pass — it’s not flat, it’s clean and it’s clipped,” he stresses. “It’s dead easy, and we go and squeeze them in the corner. We don’t want to have doubts from the very first touch. Get it right. We want to get off to a good start tactically and we want to get off to a good start mentally.
“All we can do is be the best we can be,” he continues. “We can’t be asking ourselves in a week’s time whether we could have given any more. Don’t leave anything in the tank for later. I’d rather have 60 minutes of running and being in people’s faces and being knackered. If you wait for later, the game will be gone.
“We can’t allow the two sixes to switch the play,” is something he’s been saying again and again. “But if preventing the switch means going to press someone and leaving the 10, then we don’t do that. We sit off, we get our shape and then we break from our shape.”
Young is using a tactics board to reinforce the points he’s trying to get across for one last time.
Young wants Marine to get through the first 15 minutes at 0-0
“This is the perfect picture so they’re gonna find a way. After that, it’s my job to try and find another way, with Alan and Gary. But we’re starting with this approach because for the first 10 or 15 minutes, it’s imperative that it’s at least 0-0 or we’re winning 1-0…”
A couple of the Marine lads blow into their cheeks at that thought but they seem to like the idea.
Behind Young, Alan Morgan — one of his two assistants — is setting up his presentation, pressing the buttons on his laptop. He also works at Tranmere, where he is an under-18s coach. His Friday evenings are usually spent preparing for two games: Tranmere’s boys in the morning and Marine in the afternoon.
One of the puzzles he really likes working on is figuring out the best way to approach set pieces. This season, he has taken inspiration from a New York Red Bulls free kick. Earlier in the week, Palmeiras had scored from a routine Marine had used on their run through seven rounds of the FA Cup, only this was in a 3-0 victory over River Plate in the Copa Libertadores semi-final first leg. Morgan gets some ideas from clips on Twitter and puts his own stamp on them.
Understandably, there is more of a focus on what Tottenham might do with their attacking opportunities. Raven — a 35-year-old defender — played four first-team games for Liverpool and he still has friends there. This led to a meeting between Young and a member of the Premier League club’s analytics team at Raven’s house on Wirral before Christmas. Liverpool proceeded to help Marine by studying Tottenham’s games in the Europa League and the League Cup. Young spent Friday morning and Friday night looking at what they did in a 4-0 victory at Stoke City and came up with a few of his own ideas.
One of the messages from Anfield related to Tottenham’s success rate at as many as four corner variants. As it turned out, Spurs would force just two corners, compared to Marine’s one. When attacking them, Morgan had proposed that two players spin from the front post to the back post and be replaced by runners. One of Tottenham’s soft spots was just in front of the goalkeeper, where they sometimes leave space. When defending them, Young reinforced the voiceover in the presentation: “They aim to make first contact at the near post, always.”
Tottenham’s threat also came from what was labelled at Liverpool as their “spot and play connection”. This is when a defender or midfielder sees a gap from a set piece in a deeper area of the pitch and takes a quick chance.
“Tottenham’s players are constantly switched on, they’ll chip one in behind and turn you,” warned the tutorial from Liverpool. Further assistance also came via John Achterberg, Liverpool’s goalkeeping coach, who used to play with Young’s other assistant Gary Jones at Tranmere. This relationship has paved the way for Marine to loan two Liverpool goalkeepers in the past. Ahead of Tottenham, Achterberg offered guidance on how Liverpool prepare for late afternoon kick-offs on a Sunday. Marine’s routine went like this: breakfast, a 30-minute walk in the direction of Exchange Flags, a rest, the final meeting and away.
Young had the final say. Before boarding the coach, he reminded Marine’s players that they were not tourists and this meant turning off their mobile phones and avoiding any temptation to take photographs of the scenes as soon as they arrived at the ground.
“High alert at all time, boys. High alert. But it doesn’t mean we can’t hurt them. Let’s go…”
My career in journalism began by covering Marine for the Crosby Herald. That history, as well as The Athletic ’s decision to sponsor the back of Marine’s shirts for the game with Tottenham, gave me the opportunity to realise in the course of a week spent with Marine’s coaches and players that the sporting operation at the club is professional in everything but its official status.
It is understandable why there is a focus elsewhere when Gareth Bale faces a binman but that ignores the high standards and intelligence of people like Neil Young and his staff, as well as the talent and impressive football backgrounds of those representing him on the pitch. Losing to Tottenham would not be explained by a lack of thought or preparation.
The week after the third-round draw was made, Young started his research by watching Amazon’s All or Nothing series that features Spurs. From that, he realised he likes the way Jose Mourinho approaches change: his manner of introducing a new steel to the culture of the club without the players necessarily realising it. By setting subtle traps, Young concluded he avoids the threat of the process seeming like it is too big for them.
“He’s as straight as a die,” Young told me in early December, as he contemplated the challenge of managing a non-League football team compared to one designed to be challenging for European honours. Mourinho is successful, he thinks, because he is honest with players.
“If you start telling them lies, you forget how many lies you’ve told, and they’ll be onto you because players are streetwise, and they have long memories,” he says. A lot of internal problems at all levels of football arise because of selection. “If you’ve left a player out, it’s better to have told them the real reasons why because players always remember, and they always talk amongst themselves. It’s always better to revert to your conscience. Months later, you don’ want to be thinking, ‘What did I tell him?’”
Initially, he learned a lot about Spurs by watching their draw with Crystal Palace on TV, an outcome which made him appreciate the benefits of using a narrow defence. After a five-week build-up to the most important game in Marine’s history — one which represented the biggest gap ever between teams at the third-round stage of the FA Cup — Young revealed his plan to the Marine squad last Tuesday night in a training session that took place at the home of Vauxhall Motors, beside the roar of the M53 and beneath the fug of Ellesmere Port’s oil refineries.
Marine’s pitch had been covered since Sunday and this explained a search for alternative venues. When the third national lockdown announced on Monday removed the possibility of a session at Jericho Lane in the south end of Liverpool that was suddenly closed to the public, Vauxhall – the club where Marine’s pre-season started with a 1-1 draw on a hot summer’s day – did a Young a favour.
Young knows the facility’s groundsman and the floodlights went on at 6pm, just as the players started arriving having travelled separately, knowing the all-important COVID-19 test, that would determine whether they would be able to play against Spurs, was coming two evenings later. Most of them had come directly from work and with dressing-room doors shut for safety reasons, this meant getting changed in their cars and vans.
Young and his assistants Morgan and Jones chatted away from the players as they warmed up with a three-lap jog around the 4G pitch. When Marine’s manager beckoned them over, he did not mess around: “Right, the serious stuff starts here,” he says. “Three training sessions, then the fucking biggest game most of you will ever play in…”
He saw his own job and that of his staff to ensure that the team delivered a performance that, irrespective of the scoreline, they could all be proud of.
“You know what’s coming, you know the size of the task,” he continued. “But at the end of the day, it’s 11 v 11 on a shit pitch.”
Young and Jones start work on the “serious” stuff
In a league game, Marine would attempt to take the initiative and play more football. “If we try and go toe-to-toe with them we’ll be dead inside 15 minutes,” he says later. This was about running, filling spaces and regaining positions. Imagine a plumber facing his worst water leak. Marine were used to playing this way also, having beaten Colchester – though that victory included a third striker in Mo Touray, who had since been recalled by his parent club, Salford City.
“We have to make sure we are as horrible as we possibly can be,” he stressed to his players on Tuesday. “But we’ve also got to be organised…”
It was a freezing night and the specialised defensive and midfield coaching that followed involved lots of listening. Yet it had to be done this way for Marine’s players to appreciate the space around them and therefore to really understand what the manager expected from them out of possession. “I want the defence to be as compact as possible and to force Spurs out wide,” he later confided in me.
There would be further training sessions on Thursday night and Saturday afternoon. Young said that he wanted his players to finish each one feeling better prepared than when they started.
“What I don’t want is to go out there and embarrass ourselves because we’ve not listened and done things that are foreign to us,” he stressed. “If Sunday comes and we’ve got it wrong tactically that sits firmly at my door.
“Our aim, remember, is to get through the tie. We should never forget that. But realistically, we first and foremost want to look like we know what we’re doing. I want us to go out and make ourselves difficult to break down. For that to happen, we need that fucking effort, running, the desire to win tackles and headers and second balls. Everything we’ve done against Chester, Colchester, Havant — that’s got to be there and then some. That’s where you’ve got to get to… it’s another thirty per cent at least.”
Young reminded his players that he would need the help of the 18-man squad. Both of the previous rounds had included extra time and at least two players had to be substituted because of cramp.
“We’re playing Tottenham, so there’s a great chance that we’re gonna have more of you going down,” he says. “If you’re on the bench, you really need to know what your role and responsibility is. We can make five subs. If you’re not sure about anything, ask the question. ‘What if, what if…’”
At this point, Young would normally begin work with the players he expected to start with but on this occasion — amidst the uncertainty of COVID — he decided to bring all of the defenders together. “I won’t know until Saturday morning who I’ve got to choose from,” he explained the next day.
Right-back Josh Solomon-Davies, central defenders Raven, Miley, Danny Shaw and Adam Hughes, as well as left-backs James Joyce and James Ellison were pulled away from the rest of the squad who were led by Morgan in a crossing and shooting drill.
Young moved on quickly to his next point. “OK, we’re going to play five at the back,” he revealed in a businesslike way. The players standing in front of him were used to operating in a four-man defence but nobody appeared to flinch at the development. Young proceeded to explain how he’d watched games against Royal Antwerp and Stoke and had seen how many chances had been created by Tottenham’s wide threats cutting infield. Even when defending, Mourinho had left three high up the pitch and the most advanced midfielder remained. This allowed Spurs to punish both opponents using the counter-attack.
Marine’s defensive strategy was designed to congest and stop holes appearing in the centre of the pitch, particularly in the area where Dele Alli was likely to operate. Yellow cones reminded Marine’s central defenders of their limits when following Tottenham’s forwards if they dropped deeper. The cut-off point was roughly 10 yards in front of the edge of the 18-yard box. When penned back, Young was wary of Marine’s defenders being rolled by Tottenham’s strikers. “They’ll back in from the side on and create the room to receive a pass and shoot instantly,” he warned.
Out of possession, Marine’s defence would be a flat back five but in possession, the full-backs would become wing-backs. Yellow cones were used again to illustrate at which point Young wanted them to go and meet Tottenham’s attacking full-backs.
There would be another revelation. The defence would have the support of two midfield “screeners” whose primary responsibility would be to prevent Tottenham’s overload by offering protection and shuffling from side to side rather up and down the pitch. Usually, Marine play with one defensive midfielder.
The screeners were later told, “You’ve got to run like fuck to fill those gaps — the work you will do will be phenomenal.” They formed the basis of a “box midfield”, with two more attacking midfielders also having defensive tasks in pressurising Spurs’ deepest midfielders. Right-footed Neil Kengni would approach from the left and Young impressed upon him the importance of hustling Harry Winks — who was expected to play — by making it as difficult as possible for him to turn and pass towards Tottenham’s left.
On the top of Young’s notepad in red ink was the reminder in capital letters: PREVENT THE SWITCH. “The more they do that, the bigger problems we’ve got,” he announced. “It’s easier said than done.”
The best Premier League teams, he concluded, were masters at this process: slowly building up possession on one side of the pitch — sapping the energy of the opponent — before springing a crossfield pass that causes a two or three versus one situation where the defender can do very little to stop what happens next. It was pretty clear that Solomon-Davies would start the game as he has done when available all season. He wanted the right-back, a former schools’ athletic champion over 100 metres, to be aware of this threat and push right up against the winger, partly because he has the pace to recover if something went wrong, but also to try and make whoever was attempting to switch the play doubt what they were doing.
Young wanted to convince the defence they would have more time on the ball than they think. Cummins, the lone striker, whose goal against Havant in the last minute of extra time, is 33 years old. He did not start in the fourth qualifying round because Young wanted faster forwards to pen Chester’s central defenders. Against Colchester two weeks later, Cummins was asked to mark the League Two team’s left-sided centre-back because of his passing ability. This turned out to be a tactical masterstroke because Colchester’s play instead funnelled to his partner, who was not so good in possession, and it meant Colchester struggled to build momentum from the back.
Cummins was not involved in specialised coaching on Tuesday night because Young wanted more time to come up with a strategy for him. “My biggest worry is how we get further up the pitch,” Young says the next day. “If we have to release the ball quickly, Niall needs to be standing in a certain area. At least then, the defenders will know exactly where he is if we have to get rid of the ball. If we kick it aimlessly too often, we’ll just be inviting pressure.”
Young’s decision to use 5-4-1 was a departure from what the players were used to. For most of the last two seasons, Marine’s formation has been 4-3-3 in possession and 4-5-1 out of possession.
“I was quite surprised with the decision to start with 5-4-1,” Raven says. “But Youngy has got the trust of the lads now because he’s got it right in previous rounds. If he says that this is the way to go, then we’ll all go with it.”
Raven is the most experienced player in the team having scored the winner in a Scottish Cup semi-final against Celtic six years ago. “The lads know that we’ll make mistakes and be out of position from time to time,” he confesses. “When that happens, everyone else needs to react, react, react. We have to fill the gaps. It will probably be intuition rather than shape that matters most for us on the day because they’ll try and move us around so much.”
James Barrigan, an energetic midfielder who was likely to start in one of the screening roles, was relishing the task in front of him.
“We’re parking the bus against Jose, aren’t we?” he grins.
Barrigan had clocked on at 6am earlier that day. His shift as a refuse collector began in the dark, just as the sleet came down. From his depot in Kirkby, he spent the next six hours on the road, jumping on and off wagons: picking up bins and putting them back roughly where he found them.
“It’s the first job I’ve enjoyed doing,” he admits, after the end of his shift. “For the last three years I’ve bounced from job to job and there have been long periods where I’ve had no job.”
He’d worked as a delivery driver for Amazon and DPD, as well as informally at a factory that produces fabric. Being a binman was much better. “I’m on my feet all the time and it keeps me fit,” he explains. “There are days when it pisses down, and you get soaked but I don’t mind because it makes me feel alive. I’d rather do this than sit behind a desk and get fat.”
Barrigan the binman and Marine’s No 11
Young had said Barrigan is a straight-talker. He is Marine’s No 11 who signed for the club two summers ago as a winger or a forward but has gradually found positions further back the pitch, settling more recently into a central midfield role. His looks are deceiving because he is blond and thin but when he plays football he is aggressive, relentless and extremely vocal. Not many naturally wide players tend to enjoy the defensive side of the game, but he does. He also relishes the needle. When Havant and Waterlooville were reduced to ten men in the last round, Barrigan waved their captain off the pitch in an unnervingly calm sort of way. “He was doing my head in, every time one of our players put a tackle in he was in the ref’s face trying to get us into trouble…”
He is 22 now and three years out of professional football. From Marine’s expected starting XI, seven players had been at Football League clubs (four of them with Tranmere) before experiencing the whiplash of rejection through release and subsequently exclusively spending their careers in non-League. Academy football has changed the landscape of non-League football dramatically over the last 20 years. Whereas before, the players were non-League to their bones having worked their way up from the amateur scenes, the game at this level is now populated largely by those on their way down and are attempting to summon the courage to find a way back up.
Barrigan had been shocked by the physicality of non-League during a loan spell at Warrington Town. “It made me realise you’ve got to run for 90 minutes and put your foot in,” he says. “With the under-23, the games don’t get as hyped up as they do at this level. They’re not as competitive because the points don’t count so much. In non-League when you make a big tackle and you can hear all the fans cheering, I love all that.”
Barrigan had been at Wigan Athletic, where he had shaken Mourinho’s hand at the end of a pre-season friendly with Manchester United – a photograph he now uses as his Twitter profile. Mourinho had told him that he’d played well in a 25-minute substitute appearance, “but there’s no chance he remembers…”
Barrigan has a picture of himself and Mourinho as his Twitter background from a previous meeting
There were a couple of competitive first-team games in the EFL Trophy but Barrigan left Wigan in 2018. There were people there who tried to help him find another club, but he was not in the mood. Other than a couple of games of five-a-side, he stopped playing football for six months.
“I fell out of love with football,” he admits. “It hit me quite hard. A lot of my mates had finished college with qualifications, but I came out of footy with no contract and a coaching badge, but I didn’t really enjoy coaching. I felt pretty useless.”
A kickabout on a beach changed his outlook. He enjoyed himself again, but he was out of breath and it clicked in his head that he needed to start playing again, if only to get fit. Through an agent, he met Alan Morgan who is now one of Young’s assistants at Marine but was then in charge of Colwyn Bay. “I had a really good season there, but Alan left and, eventually, I followed him to Marine.”
There are younger players in Marine’s squad and some of them see the game against Tottenham as a potential route back into the professional game. Barrigan says he’d like to return to full-time football, but he’s not obsessed by the pursuit any more. “I don’t like to think about it too much because I want to enjoy my football. You can put too much pressure on yourself.”
He was itching for the Spurs game to start so he could get that first pass out of the way. He dreams of winning and gets goosebumps when he thinks of the moment Cummins scored the goal against Havant that sent Marine through. His closest mate in the team is Jay Devine who, judging by Young’s Tuesday night session at Vauxhall, would act as the other midfield screener beside him.
“Before every round, one of us has said to the other: ‘Imagine if we win…’
“I did it the other day.
“Jay replied, ‘Don’t…’”
Barrigan grew up in Norris Green but now lives with his girlfriend and their 14-month-old daughter in a terraced house close to Marsh Lane, an area of Bootle associated with Jamie Carragher. Another Bootle resident is Anthony Miley, the defender who scored at Colchester. He grew up in Litherland but went to school at Holy Family in Thornton and as he rightly puts it, “Thornton is basically Crosby.”
Miley’s first drink was in Crosby, in the George Hotel — where everyone from Crosby, seven miles north of Liverpool, seems to drink for the first time. Whenever he goes for a pint now, though, it’s in the Birkey, which historically has had a curious identity given there was once one room for the bikers and the goths and another room for the scallies and the wannabe scallies.
The Birkey in some ways personifies Crosby, given its mix of views and, indeed, the way it is viewed. Those from closer to Liverpool’s city centre might claim it is wool — which locally means, it is not very Liverpudlian at all. Yet Crosby does have an L postcode, unlike woollen areas in the surrounds of West Lancashire. In the 1980s and even into the 1990s, Crosby had a Conservative MP, with Malcolm Thornton in office for 14 years until New Labour came along. The Tories haven’t had a sniff in Crosby since but the most politically-minded people in Liverpool — which from 1979 onwards became a Labour stronghold — remember Crosby’s past.
Anyone who knows anything about non-League football on Merseyside associates the Miley surname with Bootle FC and Bootle the area, which is only separated from Crosby by Seaforth and Litherland, is one of the safest Labour seats in Britain.
Anthony played for Bootle FC as a junior where his father Dave was the manager. He then made his debut for the first team at 16 and played more than 100 games before moving into Welsh football. Anthony’s brother, also called Dave, is now Bootle’s chairman. Yet he signed for Marine the summer before last because of a conversation at Wilding’s barbers on the fringes of Crosby village. Craig Wilding had served his apprenticeship at another barbers, W.E. Twentyman’s, and William Twentyman is the son of Liverpool’s legendary former chief scout, Geoff Twentyman.
Craig was cutting Anthony’s hair when Dave Moran — the nephew of Ronnie — walked in for his appointment. Dave is also the cousin of Ian Johnson, who was then Marine’s first-team coach. “Dave said casually, ‘What are you doing next season, lad?’ Within a week or so, I’d signed for Marine.”
That is how it often works in Liverpool and, indeed, Crosby. Everybody seems to vaguely know everyone else, somehow. And yet, it is a sign of the times that even though Crosby’s passion for football is as acute as anywhere else in Liverpool, no one who started the game against Spurs actually comes from Crosby. Barrigan and Miley are the closest. Josh Hmami travels furthest, all the way from Oldham.
Non-League attracts local spectators, but players will drive for better money. Miley’s career, for example, sounds like a camping trip on the North Welsh coastline: Conwy, Colwyn Bay and Bangor. Then there was a season in the shadow of the mountains, with Bala Town. His dad would escort him to every home game. “He only did it because he wanted to be there. He still comes to as many as he can. That’s why I’m gutted he can’t be there on Sunday. He’s done some miles for me and I wouldn’t have stayed in Wales for so long if it wasn’t for him,” he says.
Miley began a week that would end with the biggest game in his life by starting a new job. He works as a support engineer for Virgin Media out of Brunswick Dock, close to Liverpool’s city centre. Before Tuesday night’s training session, his dinner was a pasta salad, gobbled down in his car in a lay-by at nearby Jamaica Street.
He posed for photographs for The Athletic by standing in front of a Jurgen Klopp mural and this reminded him that, 19 months earlier, he’d travelled to Madrid as a Liverpool fan when they defeated Spurs in the Champions League final, staying at a hotel on the Gran Via. His sister had booked accommodation in advance for just £200 but the whole trip cost way in advance of a grand.
Miley watched Spurs play Liverpool in Madrid. Now he would get his own chance against them
Suddenly, it might be his responsibility to mark Harry Kane. “The bit I’m looking forward to most is seeing the Tottenham players in the flesh,” he says. “You see them on the telly but they’re always bigger in person.”
Come Sunday, the immediate challenge for Miley was to avoid conceding early — like Skelmersdale did in their first-round tie at Harrogate Town.
“Are we scared? No. We’re not going into the game think, ‘Shit, we’re gonna get battered here’. Are we nervous? Probably, yeah. We don’t wanna get embarrassed live on telly.
“We do know that we’re gonna have to have the best game of their lives and they’ll probably need to have their worst.”
On Friday night, Dave McMillan was sitting in front of his computer screen pressing the refresh button over and over again.
The squad’s COVID-19 test results had started to filter through onto a database late in the afternoon but around 5pm, the flow of information stopped.
“It was almost as if someone had decided to go home for the weekend,” says the club’s vice-chairman, who became a Marine fan by accident. One Saturday afternoon more than 40 years ago, he was due to play badminton at the hall of the Blundellsands Methodist Church at nearby Brompton Avenue when he saw a note on the door saying the gathering had been cancelled.
He heard a roar from Rossett Park, as it was then, and he wandered in with his racquet. McMillan also needed a COVID test because he’d be working in the ground’s red zone come match day.
A positive result would have kept him at home in Formby. “To say I was very nervous would be an understatement,” he admits.
The first result to arrive was Brian Lawlor, the club’s solicitor and long-serving committee member, who tested negative. Second, was Tony Mawdesley, the kit man.
“We were thinking, ‘Well at least we can have Brian up front and Mex on the wing,” James Leary, Marine’s chief executive, later joked.
In the month between the draw and the tie, Young had suffered from nightmare visions of watching the biggest game of his life from his living room in Prenton. “I’m not sure I’d have been able to,” he admitted in the middle of December.
He was safe, though. Solomon-Davies and Ellison were next, then Hmami whose surname appeared as Martinez. This caused some stress among the club’s volunteers because nobody knew for certain what had caused the misprint, but it turned out everything was OK.
By 5pm, all of the names to come through had passed but six players remained without an answer, Kengni, James Joyce and Barrigan among them. “My worry was, they were holding back because of a problem,” Leary says.
It was decided that all of the players would receive the same information at the same time. Devine had spent the week living out of his grandmother’s house in Fazackerley because he considered it the safest place to be. He hadn’t been anywhere else other than to two training sessions.
“I haven’t been able to think about the game,” he says. “A few of the lads have said the excitement hasn’t been there. You can’t think past two tests. If the result came back positive, you’d be devastated. If it happened to one of the other lads, you’d feel just as bad. Everyone has been on this journey together.”
Marine’s players have two WhatsApp groups. One for the players and another for the players and the manager. Bayleigh Passant, the goalkeeper, was one of the calmer members of the squad. Having waited up, he’d fallen asleep by 11 on Friday night and did not wake for almost 12 hours. “But the first thing I did was reach for my phone and look at the WhatsApp group. Everyone from 8.30 in the morning had been saying, ‘Get in, get in!’ And there’s me having an extra two hours in bed…”
Considering each of Marine’s players not on loan from Football League clubs have full-time occupations while most of the volunteers have jobs to go to, it was incredible that the club made it through Christmas and two rounds of testing with everyone who had already played a role in this season’s FA Cup still involved. At the training session at Liverpool’s academy on Saturday afternoon, Young told the players that he was incredibly proud of this. “It shows how determined and focused all of you are,” he says.
“It was a massive relief,” Leary says. “In the law of averages, from 18 or 19 players there’s always going to be one or two but there wasn’t…”
Eighteen, indeed, became 19 because Young decided to make a late “left-field” signing. There was still one place available on his substitutes’ bench at the start of the week and he wanted to bring in a midfielder. Yet his options were narrow because it was uncertain when the Northern Premier League would start again and no manager at a higher level wanted to loan out a player for just one game when the minimum amount of time a loan can last for is 28 days. Meanwhile, most of the decent non-League midfielders were already cup-tied.
Young discussed his frustrations with Carl Garner, the chairman of Clitheroe. Garner had worked for Young at Stockport as head of recruitment. That was when Garner suggested, “Why don’t you take our manager?”
David Lynch was, in fact, Clitheroe’s player-manager. He was sitting at his desk in Blackburn, where he works for his father’s security supplier firm, early on Tuesday morning when he saw Garner’s number flash up on his phone. “I couldn’t believe what he was suggesting,” Lynch conceded.
Young had signed Lynch for Altrincham and later brokered a deal that took him to Halifax. He was still only 27 but had taken the plunge into management because Clitheroe was his local club and he was tired of travelling to Alfreton in Derbyshire for home matches. Success with Sunday League team Crown Paints had given him a taste for management.
Lynch had assumed, however, his FA Cup story this season had ended in September. His first game as a non-League manager had ended in a humbling defeat, with elimination at Warrington Rylands, a tie where he’d left himself on the bench and resisted the temptation to go on and try and change things. “It was the lowest I’ve ever been after a football match.”
Young needed to convince Lynch to join Marine on a temporary basis because he was concerned it might seem like he was trampling on another group of players success. He sold a deal to him on to basis it would allow him to learn more about management.
“I’ve been brought up to think you only get out of the game what you earn,” he says. “I haven’t earned this.”
On Thursday afternoon, Marine had nowhere to train. They had planned to use Bootle’s pitch, only to be informed it was unplayable because of frost. Offers of help came from Everton and Liverpool. Sessions followed at Finch Farm and Liverpool’s academy in Kirkby. At the latter, there was a greater bounce among the players following the positive news about test results. Each one’s involvement in some way was now confirmed. Young began with some important news.
“OK, listen in. Like we did last round I’m going to start by naming the team. As I said to you on Tuesday and Thursday night, it’s so important that everyone understands their role and we’ve got five substitutes. We’re playing Tottenham Hotspur so there’s a good chance we’ll have to use those five substitutes because of the amount of possession they’ll have and the way they’ll move us around. We had cramp against Colchester so we’re definitely going to have cramp against Tottenham.”
He proceeded to read the starting XI. Devine was uncertain whether he’d get selected, having been on the bench against Colchester and Havant. He’d played well since in the league and FA Trophy games in place of Salford loanee Alex Doyle, who was injured against Havant. “I’ve been able to accept being left out in the previous rounds because the lads in front of me have been performing so well,” he confided, as we walked from the car park at Liverpool’s academy to the training pitch. “But if I’m not in the team this time, I won’t be happy.”
Marine’s players wait to discover whether they will start against Spurs
He remained expressionless when Young mentioned his name in one of the midfield slots. Doyle, who would start as a substitute, nuzzled his chin into his training top.
“This is gonna be a massive squad effort,” Young reminded. “Don’t think, ‘I’m not playing…’ You need to think as if you are playing and be prepared for what is expected of you.”
Young had decided to tweak his original tactical plan, abandoning the box midfield. The training session at Finch Farm on Thursday had made Young realise Cummins needed more support when carrying out his defensive duties. Some of the players had spoken to Alan Morgan after the session about their concerns.
It was decided that Marine would attempt to “lock on” higher up when Tottenham’s full-backs had the ball. This meant Barrigan would not be in front of his back four but rather a step higher up the pitch. The formation would essentially become 5-1-3-1. Whenever Barrigan pressed, Devine would scamper across and cover the space behind him. “It allows us to engage them wider,” says Young, who was concerned about the impact the decision might have on the other side of the pitch if Tottenham switched it. He expected Lucas Moura to start, “and he likes to hug the touchline before darting infield.”
Young did not want centre-back Raven to effectively play as a full-back in this phase of play. This had implications for Hmami, on the right side of the midfield three. Young wanted him to engage the left-back, who he thought most likely would be Ben Davies, but there was a cut-off point. If possession was switched and Hmami found himself closer to Tottenham’s goal than Davies and the ball, rather than chase Davies back, he asked him to regroup quickly in the centre. Though Young wanted his central defenders to be as tight as possible, he reminded them: “You can’t have every fucker around you. We’re playing Tottenham Hotspur. At some point, they’re going to get space. What I’m trying to do is protect the middle of the pitch.”
Young outlines the updated tactical plan, with all counters located
Young illustrated his thoughts using a tactics board. Briefly, Young could not find the magnetic counter for Devine. “He’s followed Dele Alli to the toilet,” joked Cummins. “Got cramp already hasn’t he?” Raven joined in. Young wanted Devine to engage Davies instead of Hmami but only when Barrigan was near, allowing him to fill the space behind where Alli was likely to be. If Davies was higher up, contributing in Tottenham’s attacking final third only then would it be the responsibility of Solomon-Davies, Marine’s right-back, to go and close him down.
Young used exaggeration to explain what he wanted Solomon-Davies to do from there: “Then, you stick him and the ball into one of the gardens on Rossett Road.” He expected Lucas Moura or whoever was playing on the left of Tottenham’s attack, to, “roll in at this point, expecting the pass from Ben Davies — and this is why we’ve got Ravo in a back three and Jay Devine just in front of him — we want to make it as crowded as we can.”
There was one final tactical warning. Young had watched Liverpool beat a young Aston Villa team the night before. “It reminds you that at the very top level, when you think you’re tight they still get shots off. And that’s what’s gonna happen on Sunday. Stop the shot, stop the cross. These fellas, it’s out their feet — bang, and in.”
Young asked his players for their views on which area of the attack Cummins should wait for clearances. He wanted his team to pick passes and take their time but realised that would not always be possible. Even if there was panic, at least they knew of a default setting.
Raven suggested pausing that decision until Tottenham’s team was revealed. When Young said, “OK, we can wait and see which is the shittest defender out of the two internationals,” everyone around him laughed but the scale of what Marine were up against sharpened once again.
Throughout the week, Young had skillfully navigated his way through giving his players confidence without being unrealistic, while also impressing upon them how well they would have to play without inspiring fear. He’s a pragmatic manager who would play more football and attack more willingly if he had the players to meet Tottenham’s level.
He becomes serious again. He reads a lot and has worked with a company called Matter of Choice, which has helped him clear his thoughts and make better decisions. “It’s the biggest game of our lives, the biggest opportunity. That’s how I see it,” he says. “There’s no pressure in terms of expectation on us to win the game but there’s pressure in performance. When you’re with your mates in the hotel tonight, have a think about what tomorrow means to you.
“Visualise yourself and the good moments in your life and think about what it will mean if we do really well. Don’t come away from the game tomorrow — whatever part you’ve played in it — and think, ‘I could have done more…I should have done this…’ They’re two of the worst sayings in football. The chance might not come again.”
The tension needed cutting once more. Marine would sell north of 30,000 virtual tickets. In the space of 24 hours across Saturday and Sunday, the figure doubled. “We’ve made the club hundreds of thousands of pounds,” he says. “And look, the great thing about that is, our bonus is a £2.99 meal deal from Marks and Spencer.”
Kenny Strickland is the vice-captain and Marine’s longest-serving player. His association with the club goes back a decade having played in one game before returning four seasons ago from Skelmersdale, where he lives. Later, as the Marine squad gather in a function room at the Radisson Hotel in Liverpool’s city centre, he positions himself on the same table as David Lynch, who was previously sitting alone.
Young had asked him to make Clitheroe’s player-manager feel comfortable in his new surroundings. Even though Strickland was not in the starting XI, he still had an important role to play behind the scenes. There was every chance he’d get on at some point against Spurs, as he did at Colchester — playing an important role in the shock victory having headed a goalbound effort off the line with only seconds remaining.
Strickland was called Kenny when he was born 30 years ago because his father idolised Kenny Dalglish. Yet he joined Manchester United and played in the same team as Danny Welbeck, Danny Drinkwater and James Chester, before moving on to Chelsea, where Frank Arnesen signed him initially as short-term reserve team cover before impressive performances earned him an extended contract until the end of the 2009-10 season, which finished with Chelsea as Premier League champions.
Carlo Ancelotti gave him the chance to train with the first team. He remembers driving across Cobham on a golf buggy and being asked to fill in for John Terry, who’d pulled up with an injury. In that session, he was part of a defence that included Paulo Ferreira, Ricardo Carvalho and Ashley Cole. “The next thing, they put the strikers in and Didier Drogba comes and stands next to me. I was thinking, ‘I’m a 19-year-old lad from Skem and he’s one of the best players in the world…’”
Strickland later scored a volley in the training session that prompted compliments from Joe Cole. It turned out Cole knew all about Skem because of his friendship with Ian Armstrong, a former Liverpool youth player, who he shared a room with at Lilleshall. In a previous life, Cole had even been for a pint at the now burned down Silver Birch pub and played Wembley at a row of shops called The Parade. Cole confided in Strickland that he’d almost joined Everton before moving to Chelsea from West Ham.
Strickland and Raven have tasted life at two of England’s biggest clubs
All these years later, Strickland works as a self-employed painter and decorator with his dad. Ahead of Spurs, he’d had the whole week off because he’s currently sub-contracted to a company working at John Moores University and they can’t get in. “It’s fallen quite well because I’ve been able to stay away from people.”
I was interested to know how Strickland dealt with the prospect of starting the most significant match of his adult life on the bench.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m disappointed,” he conceded. “But the lads have done great, so I’ve got to prepare as if I am playing. We’re up against a team who are far fitter and stronger so there’s every chance I’ll be needed at some point. You don’t want to come on and embarrass yourself.”
Strickland bounced around clubs as a teenager, trying to earn contracts. Before Manchester United, he could have joined Blackburn. His non-League career amounts to spells at just two clubs, at Marine and Skem. Such long-term allegiances at this level are increasingly rare.
“I’ve tried to stay in one place; if a manager is loyal to me, I’ll show loyalty back,” he says. “The manager here has told me I’m still in his plans even though I’m not playing every week at the moment. He thinks I offer something off the pitch.
“I realise that the lads who are playing deserve to be there because they’ve been winning. The way I look at it, I’ve got to work harder to get back in the team. A lot of lads take the easy option and move on. That happens a lot in non-League now. But that’s not really challenging yourself in my eyes.”
Strickland does get on and in the last 15 minutes — like the first 15 minutes, as Young had hoped — Marine do not concede a goal. The in-between bit is the problem, particularly the 13 minutes midway through the first half where Tottenham score four, adding to their tally on the hour mark. Cummins, it turns out, tries to play on Joe Rodon, an £11 million summer signing from Swansea City. The alternative was Toby Alderweireld, who has 104 Belgium caps. For a short while, Barrigan and Devine cover each other well. Hmami sprints backwards and forwards. Marine’s players restrict the switch. Yet they can only do so much for so long.
Watching the game from the side of the pitch on the one-step Jubilee Road terrace, it is clear that planning and spirit will get a part-time team only so far against a Spurs XI that go 5-0 up before involving Gareth Bale. The last time he featured against a club from Merseyside, it was similarly as a substitute. In the Champions League final of 2018, he proceeded to score an overhead kick and win the game for Real Madrid.
Devine looks Bale up and down when he comes on and sees a giant of a man. “Fucking massive,” and when he asks him, “what are you doing here, lad?” Bale sums up why his career has been so rich in success by replying calmly, “Why not?”
Bale, looking “fucking massive”, prepares to come on (Photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Young is forced to abandon Marine’s shape and goes 4-5-1, just at the point when Tottenham’s victory seems like it might be a landslide. He is frustrated the game is out of sight by half-time but philosophical about why it happened. Starting with the formation Marine ended with following an improved second-half performance could have meant more open spaces for Tottenham to exploit even earlier in the match. “You can’t go man for man against a Premier League team,” he says. For Young, it was always about hanging in there for as long as possible and hoping a chance might come Marine’s way.
He had talked to Mourinho for half an hour on the pitch beforehand. The Portuguese gave him two gifts, a Tottenham shirt with Young’s name on the back and a dossier on Marine’s team. It showed just how seriously the Premier League side had taken the tie.
“Their movement was so good, and we couldn’t engage high enough up the pitch to stop their rotations in midfield,” Young reasons while eating a bourbon biscuit in his tiny office just behind the Marine Travel Arena’s main stand.
Elsewhere, Marine’s players have taken up the space in the club’s function room where Tottenham’s just vacated, eating pizza from Il Capitano’s restaurant on St John’s Road. “I’m not defeatist but I am realistic,” Young adds. “There’s only so much you can do against such quality. We tried our best.”
Marine’s players enjoy their post-match pizza
“You go up tight against them and, suddenly, they turn you,” says Raven. “They’re quicker and stronger and their touch is better. We didn’t let them run past us, they just did. It was a long first half. It wasn’t nice.”
Dele Alli’s movement caused all sorts of problems. Lucas Moura’s pace was frightening. Moussa Sissoko, “You’d think you have a chance of intercepting the ball but then you bounce off him,” Raven continues. “They take Ben Davies off and bring on Spain’s left-back…”
Michael Oliver, the referee, had asked Raven to try and calm his team-mates down. “We started losing our heads with each other. But in fairness, nobody has ever played against this level. Moura didn’t break a sweat against me. I couldn’t get near him.”
Raven was being harsh on himself because he performed well. From the bench in the first half, Strickland could not believe what he was seeing. It seemed like Alli was consuming the entire pitch.
“You see him on the telly and you think he’s a tall lad but he’s a bit skinny, scrawny. What you don’t realise is, with training every day — core strength and conditioning — these lads are elite. If they look small, they’re not. Looks can be deceiving. The pace they move the ball, you think you can get there and tackle them. But before you know it, the ball has gone.”
Marine’s bus trundled back into Liverpool and the players picked up their cars and drove home. Young travelled through the Birkenhead Tunnel with Jones and Morgan and was back in Prenton with enough time to replay Tottenham’s goals before he went to bed at about midnight.
He felt that Marine could have done more to prevent them happening, so a sense of regret lingered the following morning.
That was when the comedown started. Tottenham had consumed his life since the draw was made at the end of November.
Yet on Friday, it had been announced by the Northern Premier League that the organisation was applying to null and void the season.
Marine had played just nine league games and were aiming for promotion. Would clubs from higher leagues that are carrying on want to come and take their players away? “You cannot blame young lads for wanting to play,” he admitted.
Young was aware that when football does start again, the possibilities for him and Marine increase considerably. A conservative estimation of the club’s earnings from their cup run would be half a million pounds.
Suddenly, though, there was nothing to immediately plan for. No interviews to do. No calls from Ian Wright, who simply wanted to wish him well on behalf of all Arsenal fans, presumably.
A vast, indeterminate emptiness emerged.