Chapter 17: Ambitions for the First Team

"Don’t look at me like that." Saint said it flatly, sitting across from Sallow’s desk.

"Saint, you’re a genius. An actual genius." Sallow didn’t have a better word for it.

Villa’s season had unfolded exactly as Saint predicted, months earlier. Ventham’s early form had been a mirage; a squad that looked expensively assembled on paper, but whose individual signings hadn’t come close to justifying their price tags.

Whitfield alone had cost Villa upward of four million pounds that summer, the single biggest outlay the club had made in years.

For context, City had paid barely more than that to take him off Villa’s books originally, several seasons back.

It had been Villa’s heaviest transfer window in recent memory, and it had come with Whitlock’s full backing, a genuine show of faith in Pedmore’s judgment.

Given where the team now sat in the table, that faith looked increasingly difficult to justify. If results kept trending the way they had, Villa were staring down a genuine relegation fight, not just a disappointing mid-table finish.

Sallow’s own standing at the club had been quietly recovering as Ventham’s results worsened, enough that he now had a real voice in conversations he’d been shut out of only months earlier. He also knew, with total confidence, exactly how thin Whitlock’s patience had worn.

Villa’s cup form hadn’t offered any escape either. They were out of the FA Cup in the third round, at a point in the season when nobody had cared much, because league form back then had still looked healthy enough not to worry about anything else.

"Derek... realistically, how many games has Ventham got left?" Saint already knew the answer wouldn’t be generous.

"Three, if results stay bad. Five, if he manages one decent result to buy himself breathing room." Sallow’s read wasn’t a guess; years of watching Whitlock operate had taught him exactly how the man’s patience actually worked.

Whitlock was a businessman first and always. But he was also, notably, not an impulsive one.

"You’re already looking at replacements?" Saint held Sallow’s eye as he said it.

"Yes." No point pretending otherwise with Saint. This was, after all, the opening Sallow had been quietly angling for since the summer.

"Derek... you haven’t forgotten what you told me, have you?" There was a real edge in Saint’s voice now.

"Er..." The room went very quiet for a moment.

They’d discussed this before, technically. But Sallow had always treated it as something closer to a joke between them; Saint was still too young and inexperienced, barely into his thirties in a profession where that still counted as green. Someday, maybe... but not now.

"Saint... are you serious." Sallow finally broke the silence.

"Completely serious. I’ve been waiting for this exact moment since the day I walked into the first team." Saint’s tone left no room to read it as a bit.

"Are you telling me you knew Ventham would fail from the start?" Sallow found himself running back through every conversation they’d had since the summer.

"No... not from the start. Once I actually saw his tactics and his squad up close, that’s when I knew." Saint shook his head.

"But I came into that first-team job already planning for this. From day one." He said it without hesitation.

"I’d put money on knowing this squad better than Ventham does at this point, because for months, that’s been my one project. Studying every player’s habits, their technical quirks, building tactics specifically around what they actually do well." Saint set the notebook down on Sallow’s desk as he said it.

Opportunity favours the prepared, and Saint had come into this meeting more prepared than almost anything else he’d done in this life. He knew the odds weren’t in his favour. He’d come anyway.

His age had always been the real obstacle to a job like this, not talent, not results, just the simple fact that English football didn’t hand managerial jobs to men his age with no playing career or past coaching experience behind them.

Even knowing that, he wasn’t willing to let it go; not anymore, not after tasting what it felt like to actually run a side.

He liked the winning feel. He liked the way players had started to look at him with respect, not tolerance. He liked seeing his name in the paper attached to something other than "youngest ever" as a novelty headline.

There’d been a version of himself, once, willing to wait years for this. That version didn’t exist anymore. Running the U21s had changed something in him permanently.

He wanted to leave an actual mark on this sport. He wanted to go toe-to-toe with the names people already treated as untouchable; Ferguson’s legacy, Wenger’s philosophy, Mourinho’s swagger, and eventually beat them at their own game.

As Ventham’s results kept sliding, Saint had started dreaming about it properly, most nights. Managing Villa. Being spoken of the way people spoke about the greats. Standing across the touchline from Wenger himself, and winning.

The notebook Sallow was holding wasn’t a casual scribble; page after page, going back months, laid out the unmistakable shape of a man who’d been quietly preparing to take over this club for a long time.

"I’d wager even Arrigo Sacchi, walking in cold, wouldn’t understand this squad better than what’s written in there." Sacchi; a man who’d never played the game professionally at any serious level, and still became one of the most influential coaches in football history. Saint knew exactly why that name was worth invoking in this conversation.

"And Derek... you know exactly what my U21 results look like." There was a clear gap between running an academy side and running a first team, but Saint’s numbers this season had already outstripped his predecessor’s by a mile, and there was something else, unspoken, that Sallow could work out for himself without needing it said aloud.

Rocher and Lavelle weren’t just good academy prospects anymore. They were being talked about as genuine first-team quality, and both had arrived at Villa without costing the club a single transfer fee.

Why had the club been so slow to tie either of them down on new contracts? Not because they weren’t good enough, it was quite the opposite. Their form had started attracting real interest from elsewhere.

"And there’s one more thing worth remembering. I’m the one who brought you both of them." That fact alone carried significant weight inside the club. Everyone knew exactly who’d found Rocher and Lavelle, and exactly who’d vouched for the coach who’d found them.

It wasn’t hard to imagine the shape of it, if Saint actually got the job and made it work: Sallow, fully vindicated, and Pedmore’s position looking considerably shakier than it did right now.

That thought held real appeal for Sallow, enough that, for a moment, he genuinely entertained it. He didn’t, if he was honest with himself, have anyone else lined up he actually believed in as Ventham’s replacement.

But the thought didn’t survive long. Saint’s age, his complete lack of a playing career, the fact that he wasn’t even into his late thirties yet; none of it made for an easy sell to a chairman like Whitlock, whatever the numbers said.

Persuading Whitlock alone would be hard enough. Sallow suspected that even raising Saint’s name seriously in that room would get him looked at like he’d lost his mind.

"I know exactly what you’re worried about." Saint understood perfectly well that convincing Whitlock, with Sallow’s backing, was the only realistic path to the job actually happening.

"And even once Ventham does go, it won’t happen overnight. There’s time to build the case properly before Whitlock needs to hear my name." Whether or not Ventham’s exit was truly inevitable, Saint had already worked out exactly how he intended to spend whatever time remained.