The madness of celebrating Nottingham Forest’s return to England’s top league persisted for a full three days on the old streets of Nottingham City. The Town Hall Square in the middle of the city was overcrowded. In most of the media articles published, it was said that this once again made people recall the first time when Nottingham Forest had obtained the UEFA Europa League championship title in 1979. At that time, many people from Nottingham City had gone to receive the team, and the crowd extended all the way from Birmingham Airport to Nottingham. During the journey back to Nottingham City, the streets on both sides of the coach bus had been filled with Nottingham Forest fans.
Of course, Nottingham Forest, which had only obtained second place in League One, did not need such a parade. Doing so would be mere arrogance.
Despite this, Nottingham Forest still held a small celebratory dinner party on the night of the match. Evan Doughty fulfilled the promise that he had made, and treated all the players and staff to the most famous Chinese restaurant in Nottingham. At the dinner party, all rules disappeared and alcohol could be drank freely. Even if they got very drunk, nobody would blame them.
Evan Doughty was thrilled too, but he was the chairman of the club; with him around, nobody could enjoy themselves to the fullest. After realizing this, he simply congratulated the players and gave out the prize money that he had promised, before finding an excuse to leave. Of course, he had his own celebratory activity, but it was just that the people who were attending that event were completely different from these noisy players—it was a very small-scale dinner party, but everyone that should have gone, went. The guests were very well-dressed, and they carried themselves in a graceful manner. These people were perhaps not football fans, and their motive for attending was not to celebrate Nottingham Forest’s return to the Premier League. Instead, there was something else much more attractive waiting for them.
After Evan and Allan left, Tang En took the lead, and they all acted crazily. He was forced to drink by at least fifteen people, and by the end of it, Tang En completely lost track of how many bottles of beer he had drank. In any case, the beer can in his hand never seemed to be empty. So when he woke up in bed the next day, his temple was throbbing with pain.
The rest of the day was filled with all kinds of congratulatory phone calls. There was a phone call from Yang Yan, and also from Kenny Burns. On the night of the match, he had dedicated his stomach to the team. Tonight, he would go to Forest Bar instead, to participate at the free event hosted by Burns, in order to celebrate Nottingham Forest’s return to the English Premier League. At the same time, he had to thank the fans who had supported him and his team all that time.
In any case, it was yet another day of being hungover until late at night. Two consecutive days of drinking had caused his complexion to become pale, and as a result, his spirits were affected as well. He did not feel particularly excited, and felt slightly exhausted.
He was thinking about the team’s last meeting of the season that would be held later in the morning, where he had to make a speech. He specifically spent half an hour showering in order to make himself look as unlike a drunkard as possible.
May 11 was a beautiful morning that had bright sunlight and a cosy breeze. With that weather, Tang En’s spirits finally recovered.
This was probably the first time that Tang En had arrived later than the players. By the time he rushed over to the training field, there were already groups of players on the field, gathered together and chatting casually. This was not a training day, so naturally, no one had gone to the changing room to change into their training jerseys. They were wearing casual T-shirts and shorts, and not a single tinge of nervousness could be seen on their faces. Crouch was the most extreme; he brought a large leather suitcase to the training grounds, and wore a fanciful gridded top and shorts.
Tang En sized him up for a while, causing him to feel embarrassed. Only then did Tang En furrow his brow and mutter, “The heck, Peter. You must be in the wrong place. This is Wilford, not Hawaii.”
Amidst the laughter in the background, Crouch said, “Boss… Actually, I bought a plane ticket to Barcelona at noon. I was thinking of going to Burmington Airport directly from here.”
Tang En arced his eyebrows and continued. “In that case, I’ll keep this short, or else you would miss your flight. If you missed your flight, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy Spain’s sunshine beach and nude beaches! Those passionate Spanish girls have already opened themselves up, and are all waiting for you, right? But if you don’t get on the plane, all of that would be for nothing… You’d be pretty sad, wouldn’t you, Peter?”
“No… That’s not what I meant, Boss…” The awkward Crouch did not know how to explain, afraid that the manager was actually angry at him.
“Alright, I won’t take up too much of your time. Compared to a middle aged man like me rattling on and on, naked Spanish girls are much more attractive, I know.” Tang En purposely said it in a very disappointed tone, and the laughter sounds surrounding them became slightly softer; they already had lost the energy to laugh loudly. “Actually, you can interpret it as the jealousy of an old man, who couldn’t even find a girlfriend till now…”
Right after he said this, Tang En himself started laughing, too. He could no longer keep up the stern look on his face, especially looking at Crouch’s blushing.
“Is everyone here?” He swept his gaze across them, and Walker answered from the side cooperatively. “Everyone’s here, Tony.”
“Very good. In order not to delay the tall and handsome Mr. Peter Crouch’s trip to Spain in search of love, let us begin.” Hearing Tang En say this, everyone gathered around while laughing.
“The weather’s great,” Tang En said as he stood in the middle of the circle, squinting his eyes as he raised his head and looked at the sun in the sky. Standing beside him, Walker’s hands were completely empty, not holding anything like a tactics board. “My mood is great too. I’m sure that when all of you woke up this morning, regardless of what the first thing you saw when you opened your eyes was, or who was lying beside you, the first thing you did must have been checking your wallet and heaving a sigh of relief. ‘Santa Maria, the prize money is still here!'”
Everyone burst out in laughter.
“I say lads, you guys finally don’t have to worry about being punished for coming late to trainings. Even if you guys slept all the way till midnight, you still wouldn’t receive the club’s love call: ‘Hello! Little baby, lazy bones, time to wake up! You’re going to be late for school…'” Tang En titled his head, imitating the scene of a mother making a call. After which, he suddenly screamed. “No! You’re already late, you naughty boy, what were you doing last night?!”
Another louder wave of laughter erupted. Ever since Tang En had returned to City Ground Stadium, he had made a series of rules restricting the players, and there was this rule amongst them: if a player was late for training by half an hour, the coaching staff would directly make a call to “convey their greetings,” asking the player why he did not come for training.
After Tang En was finished with the joke, and those who had yet to fully wake up became more alert, he decided to move on to the more serious matters. He turned around and looked at the entire coaching team standing behind him, before saying to the players, “This season had a terrible first half, and a second half that I couldn’t have asked for anything more from. To be able to attain such glorious results under such unfavourable circumstances… Well, I want to thank my coaching staff, thank the team doctor. Thank everyone who works for the team. Without your support, I would have not been able to lead the team towards victory.”
Clapping erupted from both sides.