Chapter 33: I Want to Apologise to You?

"Villa’s manager doesn’t seem particularly bothered whether his team wins or loses this afternoon."

Under Millwall’s relentless pressure, Villa looked like a side one bad bounce away from total collapse. And yet Saint hadn’t moved from his seat in the technical area once, his expression exactly the same as it had been at kickoff.

"Maybe he genuinely doesn’t know what to do in this situation," the commentator added, not bothering to disguise the dig.

The mockery had spread across nearly every broadcast covering the match. Even Villa’s own club channel wasn’t entirely immune; Curtis kept himself relatively restrained, given how warmly he’d covered the U21s’ run all season, but Casapa alongside him showed no such restraint at all.

Within ten minutes of kickoff, Casapa had fully committed to open ridicule.

"Honestly, at this point I’m half convinced this appointment was some kind of publicity stunt cooked up by the board, because nothing about this makes sense otherwise."

That framing landed easily with most of the Villa faithful listening in, because from where they sat, nothing about the appointment did make sense right now.

"Are we actually going down to League One?" someone shouted in a Villa Park pub, over the groans of everyone else watching.

"Someone needs to say something to the board. This can’t keep going; get this bloke out before it’s too late." What had started as frustrated grumbling was quickly hardening into something closer to a genuine campaign against Saint.

None of this reached him in real time, naturally. His attention, throughout, had stayed locked entirely on the pitch.

"Finally." The referee’s whistle for half-time drew a quiet, private breath of relief out of Saint.

1–0. Millwall’s pressure over the closing ten minutes of the half had been relentless, but; much like before the opening goal, they’d somehow forgotten how to convert any of it into another chance. A mercy, and Saint knew it.

The moment the whistle went, Saint finally rose from the bench, following his players down the tunnel and into the away dressing room, every camera in the stadium tracking him the entire way.

Up in the away end, a handful of fan representatives had made their way over to Danny before the players had even reached the tunnel.

"Straight up... if nothing changes in the second half, what are you actually planning to do about this?" Even Danny, who’d spent a week defending Saint to anyone who’d listen, couldn’t pretend that first half hadn’t rattled him too.

Danny carried significant weight among Villa’s supporters, but that weight didn’t extend to actually deciding who managed the club. For the first time since backing Saint publicly, Danny found himself genuinely questioning whether he’d made the right call.

Saint had no idea any of that was happening outside the ground. What he did know, with total clarity, was exactly how hostile the world had turned toward him over the last forty-five minutes; and that knowledge had already pushed him toward a decision.

’Knock, knock, knock.’ Pratt shut the dressing room door behind the last player, and Saint rapped his knuckles against the tactics board to bring the room to attention.

"Lads... I owe you an apology." Saint’s tone was gentle, almost warm.

"I told you last week you were all good players, that I just needed time to get to know you again. That wasn’t true." His voice reached every corner of the silent room.

"Here’s the actual truth." Still gentle and measured.

"You’re a waste of a Championship squad. I’ve had no interest in what you can do for weeks. Want to know why I didn’t touch a thing for a week? So this exact result would happen; so I’d have a clean, justified reason to send half of you down to the reserves."

The mockery in his expression by that point had curdled into something colder; contempt, plain and unmistakable, and by the final word, pure command.

Pratt stood frozen. The rest of the coaching staff looked just as stunned; none of them had imagined, even for a second, that a week of apparent inaction had actually been a deliberate setup.

The players’ shock lasted about as long as Pratt’s had. It burned off fast into anger; real anger, the sense of having been played from the very first day.

"Put the anger away... what exactly gives you the right to be angry? Because half of you have been going through the motions all season? Or because a couple of you are already fielding calls from other clubs and clearly checked out of this dressing room weeks ago?"

"Genuinely curious... if you don’t get minutes here for the next few months, do you actually think whoever’s been calling still wants you?"

A few sharp intakes of breath rippled through the room.

Was he actually serious? The certainty in Saint’s voice, the total absence of any doubt in his expression, made it obvious to everyone in that room that this wasn’t a bluff.

"Maybe some of you are betting I won’t last the season. Fine... go ahead and bet on that. But are you willing to bet your own career on it?" Nobody in the room could hold his eye contact.

"And here’s the part some of you seem to have forgotten... you’re under contract to this club. Whatever else happens, as long as I’m the one signing off on team selection, you’re not walking out that door just because you fancy a change of scenery."

"Whitfield. Two years left on your deal, unless I’ve got the paperwork wrong." Villa’s captain’s expression went visibly rigid.

"Delgado..."

"Peña..."

"Colston..."

Saint read off name after name, attaching each one to their actual remaining contract length; some with a year left, others with three.

The players whose names didn’t get called sat with a quiet, guilty relief on their faces. Every player who did get named looked considerably less comfortable by the end of it.

"Everyone I just named was heading for the reserves regardless of tonight’s result. So... funnily enough, you lot should be thanking whoever’s been ripping into me in the papers all week. Because their coverage changed my mind. I want this game won now. And that means you’ve all just been handed a second chance you didn’t earn. Forty-five minutes left. Use it to change my mind."

Not a subtle threat. None remotely.

"Simple choice, really. Win this game, perform well individually, and you’ve still got a first-team future here. Lose it, and everyone I just read out reports to the reserves tomorrow morning; which, let’s be honest, is the same as saying your time in this first team is finished."

Wherever Saint’s gaze landed as he said it, the named players couldn’t meet it.

"Right. Your fate’s entirely in your own hands now." Saint turned and opened the dressing room door.

"Oh... one more thing," he added, pausing in the doorway. "Anyone I sub off early... report to the reserves tomorrow too."