Chapter 54: A Frenzied Start

Along the press line, the numbers had swelled to nearly match Saint’s very first game in charge, but this time, the mood couldn’t have been more different. A hundred-odd reporters, and every one of them dead silent.

They’d come expecting to watch Villa finally stumble against a genuine promotion contender. Instead, Villa had broken the deadlock inside two minutes.

The scene felt uncomfortably familiar to more than a few of them, the exact same shape as Saint’s second game in charge, another fixture against a promotion-chasing side that had ended in a rout.

"No... surely not. Reading aren’t going to fold the way Wednesday did." One reporter said it mostly to reassure himself.

Along the same press line, the small cluster of regional and sympathetic reporters had grown noticeably since those early weeks, Reid among them, no longer remotely bothered by the scowls coming from the national press pack around him.

Whatever effect Saint’s presence had on that press box, he genuinely wasn’t paying it much mind; if anything, the national reporters occupied more of his attention than his own supporters did.

Case in point: mid-celebration after that opening goal, Saint had glanced deliberately toward the media table, catching the sourest expressions among them. The distance was considerable, but he knew exactly which cameras would catch it regardless.

By the time he settled back into his technical area, the playfulness had already drained out of his expression. One goal meant nothing yet, and he knew it better than anyone watching.

He also knew Reading wouldn’t simply accept this scoreline. Unlike Villa, whose season had been about escaping trouble, Reading sat within five points of the automatic promotion places; genuine contenders, with every reason to fight back hard.

Play resumed, and Reading, stung by the early goal, launched an immediate response. Ledbury drove forward with the ball, drawing Conlan’s attention with a straight pass before releasing it wide.

Vukic collected it, Reading’s forward carried more craft in his feet than his height might suggest, technically excellent enough that comparisons to the great South American number tens weren’t entirely absurd.

Playing that kind of free, roaming role rather than a conventional target man’s game, Vukic represented exactly the profile Saint had flagged before kickoff; more dangerous, in Saint’s own assessment, than Reading’s nominal first-choice striker.

Reading had no genuine deep-lying playmaker orchestrating their attack; Ledbury did a bit of everything, Donnelly leaned defensive, which meant their threat came disproportionately through individual technical quality closer to goal.

Loach closed Vukic down decisively. Physically imposing, genuinely quick across the ground, Loach remained the single most important piece of Villa’s back line regardless of who else came and went around him.

Even under Ventham, Loach’s tendency to push forward had never been enough to keep him out of the side, his quality at the back always outweighed the risk. Under Saint, that balance had only sharpened further.

Saint’s demands in training had trimmed some of the recklessness out of Loach’s game without stripping the instinct entirely, and whenever Loach did surge forward now, Conlan or the nearest full-back knew to cover the space behind him automatically.

"Beautiful... an absolutely gorgeous piece of defending from Loach there." This time, though, the highlight wasn’t a spectacular overhead kick but a simple clean, decisive tackle to strip Vukic in a genuine one-on-one.

"Wonderful individual defending... Vukic tried every trick in the book with that feint, and Loach simply wasn’t buying any of it. There’s something about this Villa side under Saint Maddox that consistently gets the very best out of every player wearing the shirt," Curtis said, fully in his supporter’s voice by this point in the season.

Casapa, predictably, wasn’t having it. "Loach’s always had that in his locker. Nothing to do with the manager."

"He was nowhere near this consistent under Ventham," Curtis shot back.

"He had good games under Ventham too," Casapa insisted.

Neither argument meant much to the players actually on the pitch, whatever entertainment value it held for viewers at home.

Villa broke immediately off the turnover. Loach’s tackle found its way to Conlan, dropping deep to collect it, who spun and played a sharp diagonal pass forward.

Whitfield’s run had already begun the moment Conlan won the ball, after these past weeks of form, Conlan’s first instinct with possession was almost always to find him.

Reading, having been burned once already, weren’t caught out this time. The moment Whitfield received it, Donnelly closed him down immediately, and the rest of Reading’s back line dropped to compress the space behind.

Whitfield read the situation instantly, no obvious way through centrally, so he shifted the play wide instead.

A small figure out on the right, Lavelle, the smallest player on the pitch by some distance, and likely the smallest in the entire division. Being undersized had never once slowed him down; if anything, it made him harder to pin down in tight spaces, exactly the kind of moment unfolding now.

Lavelle took the ball and went straight at Tonet; a genuinely versatile defender, comfortable at full-back or wing-back, considerably better defensively than most of Reading’s other midfield options.

Even so, Tonet couldn’t contain him. Lavelle dropped his shoulder, sold the fake, and the ball was past him on the outside before he’d fully committed.

"Lovely... Lavelle’s played straight through him!" Tonet recovered well, credit due, spinning immediately to chase the ball down rather than sulk over being beaten.

Tonet wasn’t slow either, and Lavelle, for all his quickness, still had Reading’s structure to beat; Boyd stood waiting in front of him, and the rest of the back line hadn’t fully broken.

Okoro and Delgado were both already in position inside the box; deadly aerial threats in their own right, and Reading’s centre-back pairing, Boyd included, weren’t the tallest unit in this division.

Reading cleared it in the end. Their other centre-back, a towering figure named Ellery Stone, rose to head the danger away... timing his jump well, connecting cleanly.

The header carried a long, looping arc out toward the edge of the box. For a moment it looked routine; until, within seconds, every face on that pitch, in the stands, and on both benches shifted into something closer to alarm.

"Conlan! The ball’s dropped straight to him... and he’s got space, genuinely nobody near him!"

"Long shot..."

"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL! Villa’s second! 2–0, barely four minutes into this match!"