Chapter 124: What Do You Think Of Me?

"Chelsea are one of the best sides in the country, and Martin Hallam is one of the best managers in England." Facing the media, Saint once again said something very similar.

"Oh, for goodness’ sake," the reporters muttered. They had hoped it would not happen again, but when Saint spoke the line they still couldn’t stop themselves from cursing under their breath.

"Mr Maddox, are we to understand that you’re fobbing us off?" Finally, one reporter could take no more and asked it out loud.

It was an old acquaintance, a journalist from a national daily called Colin Marsden.

"Mr Marsden, you’re being unfair to someone who is answering your question in good faith." Saint tried to put on his most sincere expression.

It was obvious, though, that these reporters were not on friendly terms with him, and that neither the national nor the local press believed a word of it.

"Are Chelsea one of the best teams?" Seeing that nobody trusted him, Saint could only try to persuade them with facts.

"Yes," Marsden answered.

"And is Mr Hallam one of the best managers in the country?" Saint asked again.

"Yes." Marsden’s face darkened.

"So are you fobbing me off as well?" Saint’s sincere eyes suddenly turned sharp.

"No, Chelsea are one of the best teams in England and even in Europe, and we all know Mr Hallam is among the best managers in the game today." What Marsden had left unsaid was written all over his face. This is an accepted fact, so why are you calling it nonsense?

"What would you like me to say, then?" Saint said, glancing around the room.

"That we’ll beat them at Stamford Bridge? That Hallam is a great manager but I’m better? Is that what you want?"

"Or that last season’s results say it all, that Chelsea are no longer the force they were, and that Hallam has proved he isn’t as good as people make out?"

"If you want me to say any of that, I’ll say it, but you’ll have to write the headline for me first." Saint looked around the room one last time.

Silence. Absolute silence.

"You see, I gave you a chance, and you didn’t take it. I’m sorry, but I have to get back and prepare for the match. We’re a promoted side, so we’ll do our best at Stamford Bridge to stay up." The corner of his mouth gave away what he was really thinking.

The reporters had known Saint long enough by now, so even if they were slow to react, the thought came to them eventually. They had been played again by this blighter.

They were furious. But there was nothing they could do about it. Since the day Saint took over, not one of them had managed to land a punch.

His results? Saint had taken Villa from the edge of the relegation places to the Premier League. His summer recruitment? So far, every one of the signings had delivered, and the form showed up on the pitch and in the table.

Still, the reporters stayed calm. They were not particularly worried. The season had only just started, and the Premier League was nothing like the Championship; you could call them two different worlds. The Premier League was the richest league on the planet, home to some of the best players in the world.

Saint had not provoked Chelsea, and Hallam had said nothing, because the tradition of respect between managers was not something he was going to throw away. As a famous name in the game, Hallam wanted to preserve his dignity. Not everyone around him felt the same.

Neil Cartwright, for example.

"Mr Hallam is the best manager in the country. How can anyone compare a thirty-one-year-old with Mr Hallam?" Everyone knew Cartwright was one of Hallam’s most devoted followers, and in his eyes there was no manager better than the man in the Chelsea dugout.

"Villa? If I remember right, we saw them off a few years ago." The Chelsea defender said it with obvious contempt.

"Birmingham? Lovely city, I hear the nightlife is brilliant," said Jack Rennick, a player who had once been a bad boy of English football.

Chelsea’s players were entitled to be proud. For years the club had been a power in the land, and although they had finished only eighth the previous season, nobody could underestimate their strength.

Everyone knew what Cartwright was like. Whenever Hallam was involved, the man became a completely different person.

As for Strickland, he was the pride of London, one of the best attacking midfielders in England, and ranked among the best on the planet.

And Rennick? The Rennick of today was no longer a bad boy. These days he was setting the league alight with his talent alone.

"Chelsea are a Premier League side, and so are Villa." The first man to stand up for the club was Rocher.

Hallam had his devoted followers, and so did Saint. Rocher had not said anything harsh, but in training afterwards he worked with a ferocity nobody had seen before. The Frenchman clearly wanted to prove himself on the pitch, to find his place beside his manager.

"Perhaps some people have forgotten that Chelsea lost to Villa five years ago." As captain, Conlan could not afford to look weak.

And, to be honest, Conlan had a rather special grudge against Chelsea. His father had been a legendary Chelsea player and had served the club all his life.

Conlan had trained at Chelsea from a young age, but in the end he had fallen out with the club, and with his father. Now he was Villa’s captain, and a genuine enemy of Chelsea.

Perhaps the Londoners did not think Conlan qualified as an enemy, and perhaps they did not think Villa did either.

In the minds of Chelsea’s fans, their real enemies were Arsenal and Tottenham, and the big sides in the north. Even Villa could only be called a half-enemy at best.

Villa’s counterattack in the press drew in more and more Chelsea players, and the Villa squad were not going to back down, so over the next few days the war of words between the two camps grew louder.

In the end players and fans from both clubs were all dragged into it, and even former Chelsea players joined in. Only one pair did not take part, the two managers.

The funny thing was that although they never joined in, neither of them stepped forward to stop their players either.

Back at the training ground, Cadman showed Saint a stack of printed headlines, each one more outrageous than the last. Saint skimmed them, snorted at one, and handed the pile back.

"Pin the best ones up in the dressing room," he said.

"Gaffer?"

"Let the lads read what people think of them. I’d rather they heard it from the papers than found out on the pitch."

Cadman grinned and went to find a drawing pin. By the afternoon session the corridor outside the home dressing room was lined with cuttings, and the players walked past them in silence, reading every word.

Conlan stopped in front of one particular headline for a long time. Then he tore it off the wall, folded it into his pocket, and went out to train harder than anyone.