Chapter 18: Whitlock’s Attention

"You wanted to see me, boss." Sallow stepped into the chairman’s office.

Whitlock wasn’t the sort of owner who lived at the club day to day; he had other businesses, other interests, which in practice meant Villa’s director of football carried real weight in the club’s actual running.

"I hear the academy’s turned out a few decent players lately." Owners like Whitlock had become a familiar type across English football by this point; self-made money finding its way into clubs, sometimes wisely, sometimes not.

Not every takeover in the Championship or Premier League had aged well. Plenty of clubs had been left exposed by owners who overextended, or worse, treated the whole enterprise as a vanity project rather than a business.

Whitlock, whatever else people said about him, had never been that type. He ran Villa the way he ran everything else; carefully, and with an eye firmly on the numbers.

Sallow’s expression shifted slightly at the question, because he’d actually come here today to talk about exactly that. He had a small stack of clippings under his arm, all of it local coverage praising Saint and the U21 group.

The press had good reason to keep writing about it. Villa’s first team had just turned in one of its worst performances of the season; round twenty, and it hadn’t gone well at all.

Blackburn Rovers, at home to a Villa side that had nothing to offer. 3–0, and it wasn’t as close as the scoreline made it sound. Villa were down 2–0 by half-time, and Loach’s mistake early in the second half made it three before the game had any chance of turning.

Before Sallow arrived, Whitlock had already had Pedmore and Ventham in this same office. Ventham had walked out with an ultimatum hanging over him.

Pedmore knew exactly how badly he’d let Whitlock down. If it had been otherwise, Whitlock would already have instructed him to start lining up a replacement. He hadn’t said that yet. Which meant, in Pedmore’s read of things, there was still time... but not much of it.

The first team was a mess. The academy, by total contrast, was thriving; and the academy had always sat under Sallow’s remit. Bringing Saint in as U21 head coach in the first place had been almost entirely Sallow’s call.

"Take a look at these, boss." Sallow set the clippings down in front of Whitlock.

The photo on top showed a young man barely out of his twenties, dressed in full training kit, clearly mid-instruction on a touchline. Nothing about the picture screamed "head coach" at first glance, but the caption made it unmistakable.

"This is the one you brought in?" Whitlock hadn’t met Saint personally, though he’d heard the name mentioned more than once; usually with a raised eyebrow attached, given how young he still was for the role.

"Yes, boss. Lee’s running the U21s now." Sallow nodded.

"Lee... as in Bruce Lee?" It was the kind of name that made most people smile before they’d even met the man attached to it.

"His dad was a big fan, apparently. Bit of a coincidence, given the surname," Sallow said, thinking of Saint’s father without quite meaning to.

The photo had actually been taken pitchside after a win; the piece itself was a proper feature, not just a caption.

"Right... and this is his winger. What’s his name, Lavelle?" Whitlock had moved on to the next clipping, a stat sheet on Lavelle attached to the article.

"That’s one of Lee’s own signings. Brought him over from France himself," Sallow added.

"What did we pay for him?" Lavelle’s numbers were genuinely impressive; nearly an assist a game across the season, four goals of his own on top.

"Nothing. Free transfer." The reason Whitlock was even asking about the youth setup traced back to a dinner a few nights earlier; another chairman, at the same table, had asked him directly about one of Villa’s academy players. Lavelle’s name had come up specifically.

"Christ, look at the state of this one’s face," Whitlock said next, flipping to a photo with Rocher’s scar plainly visible.

"That’s our best player in the group, actually; and probably the best player in the whole academy setup. The fans have started calling him the find of the season. There’s been talk of a couple of Premier League clubs sniffing around already." Sallow wasn’t exaggerating, the interest was intense.

"Also one of Lee’s finds?" Something in Whitlock’s expression softened slightly as he read further into the numbers attached to the name.

"All three of them, actually. Lee brought in three lads from France last summer, all free transfers, and all three have turned out better than anyone had a right to expect." The word "astonishing" wasn’t too strong for it, though the three players weren’t identical in what they offered.

Rocher and Lavelle were both attacking players, front and center in every write-up. Rami was different; a defender, and defenders rarely got the same attention regardless of how well they played.

English football, like most of Europe, still tended to lavish attention on goals and assists over clean defending. But Rami had genuinely impressed the coaching staff with how far he’d come; seventeen years old, plenty of rough edges early on, and steadily turning into the most reliable member of the back line under Saint’s guidance.

Villa’s U21s had now won six straight, capped by an easy 3–0 win over Blackburn’s own academy side; a direct mirror, in miniature, of the first team’s humiliation days earlier.

Across Saint’s full time in charge, the U21s had played eleven matches: nine wins, two losses. A genuinely strong return, and one that had already produced two players; Rocher and Lavelle, being talked about as legitimate first-team prospects.

It wasn’t only those two, either. The whole group had improved noticeably since Saint took over, and there was little mystery about where the credit belonged.

Saint himself, though, wasn’t satisfied. Scout’s Eye told him exactly how far some of these players still had to go, and measured against that ceiling, the progress so far was modest at best.

Several players in that group graded out at A-level potential. That meant, in theory, players good enough to eventually play for genuine super-clubs.

Under the current trajectory, though, most of them were tracking toward a solid Championship career at best; and, left entirely to their old path without Saint’s intervention, a couple might not have made it even that far.