Chapter 14: Winter Break

"What the hell was that? You win a few games and suddenly you think you’re untouchable?" Saint’s voice carried through the away dressing room, sharp enough that a couple of the younger lads visibly flinched.

Villa’s U21s had just lost 0–2 to Forest’s academy side, the exact mirror image of the first team’s result against the same club the week before.

A defeat on its own wouldn’t have set Saint off like this. What actually had him furious was the attitude that had produced it.

Young players’ biggest weakness is almost never ability; it’s temperament. And tonight’s loss had been entirely a temperament problem. Saint had assumed Rocher and Lavelle, given everything they’d already been through, would be more grounded than most lads their age.

He’d been wrong. The two worst offenders tonight were exactly those two. After the write-up in the local press following their last win, both had gotten visibly ahead of themselves.

It wasn’t hard to understand why. Both had spent years being told, one way or another, that they weren’t good enough; one scraping by in the lower leagues, the other cut loose entirely. Being praised in print for the first time in their careers was bound to go to their heads a little.

Saint understood the impulse better than most; wanting to be recognised was something he knew plenty about himself. But understanding it didn’t mean he could let it slide. He’d rerouted both of their careers with his own hands. That came with an obligation to actually finish the job properly.

"Boss. My fault." Rocher, in particular, carried most of tonight’s blame. His dribbling, the single biggest weapon this side had, had been on full display, but every time he beat a man, he’d kept going for the spectacular option instead of the smart one. Showing off, instead of finishing the job.

Lavelle hadn’t been much better, and the sloppiness had spread through the rest of the group too, everyone just a little too pleased with themselves after four straight wins.

Saint let himself be angrier about it than the result strictly warranted, on purpose. If nothing else, a defeat like this gave him a legitimate excuse to reset the mood; and to cement, once and for all, exactly whose standard this group answered to.

By the next day’s session, the difference was obvious. Rocher and Lavelle in particular trained like men with something to prove. Saint didn’t need to say another word about it.

From the U18s, to a brief taste of the first team, to running the U21s outright; it had been barely six months, and the ground had shifted under Saint more than once in that time.

He’d taken plenty from all of it, though. The first team had shown him, properly, what professional football actually demanded; the Championship might not carry the Premier League’s shine, but England still ran the most relentless, physically brutal top-to-bottom football pyramid on earth, and every level of it was unforgiving in its own way.

The U21s were where he’d finally been able to build something entirely his own. Running U18 sessions as an assistant, however much real authority he’d been given informally, was never the same as holding the title outright. That difference showed up in the details now; the U21s ran Saint’s system, precisely as he’d drawn it, and the group trusted him for it.

It was, frankly, a satisfaction unlike anything he’d felt before, and Saint found himself wanting more of it; wanting, if he let himself admit it, the first-team job itself, sooner rather than later.

He knew, realistically, how far off that still was. Even setting his age aside, English football simply didn’t hand out a manager’s chair to someone with his profile; no playing career, barely a few years of any kind of coaching experience.

Late at night, alone, he sometimes wondered whether he’d landed in the wrong sort of story altogether. Wasn’t a second life supposed to come with player-level talent, not a coaching license and a stubborn old manager who wouldn’t look at him?

He’d asked the system that exact question more than once. It never answered. Some nights he genuinely wondered whether there was still anything listening on the other end at all; since that first reward, back at the very start of all this, the voice in his head had never once spoken unprompted.

"I know, I know... I’ll come round properly once the paperwork’s sorted, promise." Saint wasn’t entirely alone in England, whatever else had changed about him. His aunt still called every so often, mostly to check he hadn’t worked himself into the ground.

There was a stack of old documents tied to the restaurant site that still needed sorting; nothing urgent, but the kind of thing that had a habit of piling up if he let it. With the league heading into its winter break after the next round of fixtures, he’d finally carved out time to deal with it properly.

Alongside the paperwork, there was a wedding to get to. Rocher and Camille had been engaged for six months already, and the date had finally landed right in the middle of the winter break.

Which made the last fixture before the break feel a little more loaded than usual; walking into a wedding on the back of a win beat walking in on the back of a loss, every time.

Once the call wrapped up, Saint turned his full attention to the U21s’ final opponent before the break: Scunthorpe United’s academy.

Scunthorpe wasn’t a name with much weight behind it; a club with barely any real history to speak of. But anyone who followed the English game properly knew one thing about them: Kevin Keegan had come up through their youth ranks before Liverpool made him one of the great names of his generation.

Beyond that solitary claim to fame, Scunthorpe had spent most of their existence exactly where you’d expect: lower leagues, modest crowds, little to shout about.

Their U21 side reflected all of it. Scouting them beforehand, Saint hadn’t found a single player worth grading above C-level.

Against that kind of gap in quality, the result was close to a formality before kickoff; though Villa’s group, still stinging from the Forest defeat, played with something to prove regardless. Rocher especially, with a wedding of his own days away, wanted to leave the year on the right note.

Scunthorpe never had an answer. Final whistle, and the scoreline read 6–1.

A genuinely satisfying win to close the half-season on. Rocher and Lavelle both scored twice, and further goals came from midfielder William Lawson and striker Simone Carla, one each.