Chapter 16: Handsome Instability

"Another win... and Villa’s U21s just keep finding a way." Midlands local TV had swapped its coverage that afternoon, cutting away from the first team entirely to show Villa’s youth side taking on Birmingham City’s academy instead.

Some rivalries run deeper than league position. Birmingham and Villa had never much cared for each other, whatever division either club found themselves in, and this fixture carried real weight locally regardless of the age group involved.

"Three straight wins for Villa’s U21s since the winter break, and if you count that result before the break too, that’s four on the spin without a blemish," said the commentator, a long-serving local voice named Alan Curtis.

Curtis had originally been assigned to call Villa’s first-team fixture that day. Given how badly that side’s form had collapsed, the network had quietly reassigned him to the youth game instead.

Two losses and a draw, that was the first team’s return from the winter break, in full. Their first fixture back had been a rearranged match against Charlton Athletic, and it hadn’t been pretty. Ugly performance, uglier result.

Round eighteen brought Brighton to Villa Park. Villa led at half-time, only to concede twice and lose the lead entirely, eventually settling for a draw snatched right at the death.

Round nineteen, the final match of the first half of the season, followed almost the same script; Villa broke the deadlock, conceded twice in reply, and went down 2–1.

Villa reached the halfway point of the campaign on a defeat, and the number that actually worried supporters wasn’t the result itself, it was the league table. They were thirteenth, in the bottom half of the table. Nineteen games in, and Villa sat one place above the relegation zone.

That was the first time the word "relegation" started appearing in the local press in connection with Villa, and the first time it had properly registered with supporters just how precarious the season had become.

"Time is running out for Ventham," read the latest headline in the Villa Express.

Football has short memory and even shorter patience. When Ventham had Villa top of the table, he was the returning hero, the man who’d done it once and would surely do it again. Now, with the club drifting toward trouble, that same story had flipped entirely; pundits, press, and a growing number of fans turning on him in equal measure.

It wasn’t hard to imagine how heavy that pressure sat on him right now. Down in the U21s, Saint’s situation looked almost embarrassingly comfortable by comparison.

"THE THIRTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD RUNNING RINGS AROUND MEN TWICE HIS EXPERIENCE" — the Midlands Sports Gazette gave Saint a full page in its latest edition.

Most coaches his age were still working their way up through non-league football, if they’d made the jump from playing at all. Saint was running Villa’s U21s outright, and doing it well enough that the club’s flagship paper had decided his story was worth telling properly.

The piece covered his record with the U21s in detail, then went further; his path into coaching, the speed of his badges, the "youngest UEFA A Licence holder in the game’s history" line that had followed him since he was twenty.

Alongside Saint, the article gave real space to his players. Ashwell, still writing his column, called Rocher "the find of the season"; not conventionally elegant to watch, scar and all, but undeniably a joy to see with the ball at his feet. "Watching Antoine Rocher run at a defence," Ashwell wrote, "is close to the best free entertainment in English football right now."

Lavelle came in for real praise too; the side’s creative engine, second only to Rocher in end product, quietly dictating most of the U21s’ better attacking moves.

By the end of the piece, Ashwell had gone a step further, openly suggesting both deserved a real look from Ventham’s first team.

Whether Ventham ever read it, nobody could say for certain. If he had, it clearly hadn’t moved him. Stubborn was the word everyone kept reaching for, and it fit; there was no version of this manager who was going to credit two academy kids, signed by Saint of all people, with saving his job.

"What are you three doing here?" Rocher, Lavelle, and Rami sat in Saint’s living room, a rare sight these days, since none of them had needed the house since the club sorted their own digs.

"Boss... club’s offered us new deals. And a couple of agents have started sniffing around too." The three exchanged a glance, and Rocher, as usual, did the talking.

Hearing it put that way, Saint felt something close to real satisfaction. It wasn’t nothing, being the first person these three thought to bring it to. Six months of work, and it had clearly meant something.

"Money’s not an issue if you need it now... sign whenever suits you. But if you can wait until the end of the season, you’ll be negotiating from a stronger position." Their form wasn’t likely to dip; if anything, the leverage only improved from here.

"On the agent side, I wouldn’t rush into anything yet." To Saint’s mind, the contract itself was the easy part. Picking the wrong agent was the part that actually ruined careers; some skimmed more than they were worth, and the truly bad ones could steer a young player’s whole trajectory off course before he even noticed it happening.

"Keep training the way you have been, keep performing, and the offers will only get better. That part takes care of itself." There wasn’t much more to it than that, as far as Saint was concerned.

"Given how much noise is already out there, I’d take your time and actually vet whoever you’re considering properly." Saint had toyed, more than once, with the idea of setting up some kind of representation of his own; he had an obvious edge, after all, knowing exactly what these three would become.

The problem was practical rather than theoretical: he didn’t actually know any agents. Certainly none he’d trust with three careers he’d personally built from nothing.

He had university acquaintances, technically, but nothing close enough to matter here. The people Saint actually trusted these days were almost entirely Villa supporters he’d known long before any of this started; Danny, Marcus, Owen, the farming brothers. Useful company, but not exactly a network of football agents.

"Understood, boss." Rocher said it, and the other two nodded along.

In the end, Saint took it straight to the club; to Sallow, specifically. With Ventham’s results worsening by the week, Pedmore’s grip on the situation had loosened considerably, and Sallow’s old authority was steadily creeping back into the gaps left behind.

Pedmore had arrived fresh that summer with no real roots at the club. Sallow had been embedded at Villa for years, and even without lifting a finger to cultivate it deliberately, that kind of longevity still counted for something the moment things started to wobble.