Chapter 55: Rami

"Conlan! Second long-range strike of the match, and this time luck sides with him, no woodwork to save Reading!"

"2–0! Barely four minutes into this game, and Villa have already put together a scoreline that feels genuinely absurd." Up in the away end, Villa’s travelling support erupted like something volcanic.

If anything, this outdid even the Wednesday demolition weeks earlier. Two goals from three separate attacking waves, all inside three minutes and forty-five seconds. Genuinely relentless.

Cameras cut straight back to Saint on the touchline, and this time the reaction disappointed everyone hoping for a repeat of the earlier chaos; no sprint down the line, no pile-on. Just a composed fist pump.

"Reckon Saint’s had quite enough of getting mobbed for one afternoon," Curtis said, laughing.

Alongside the disappointment, there was real, growing admiration in the crowd; because whatever anyone thought of Saint personally, the football Villa were playing right now bore almost no resemblance to anything else in this division, or arguably the entire Championship as a whole.

None of that mattered much beyond the aesthetics, though. Results were what actually kept fans onside, and right now results were exactly what Villa were delivering.

Not everyone in the ground shared the enthusiasm, obviously. Along the press row, the assembled reporters were already bracing for what came next, another Villa win meant another week of being publicly proven wrong, and precisely zero appetite for admitting it gracefully.

"Bloody useless, the lot of them," one reporter muttered, redirecting his frustration squarely onto Reading rather than examine his own predictions.

Ross, watching from the touchline, had already started shouting instructions before the second goal had even settled; and slowly, under his direction, Reading’s players began pulling themselves back into some kind of shape.

Two goals down inside twenty-four minutes wasn’t a scenario Reading’s squad had faced all season, a genuinely alien situation for a side that had spent most of the campaign comfortably in the promotion mix.

Counter or collapse... those were the only two options left. If Reading didn’t want the gap widening further, or their own promotion rivals overtaking them in the meantime, something had to change immediately.

Villa’s table position had already been quietly noticed by plenty of sharper observers around the division, even if nobody had said it out loud yet. Nobody had seriously believed Villa could sustain this pace for long.

But watching this performance, more than a few neutrals were beginning to wonder whether, if this form actually held, Villa might genuinely surprise everyone by season’s end.

Nobody inside Villa’s own dressing room was thinking that far ahead, though. Right now, only one thing mattered: finishing this match properly.

Play resumed, and Reading, desperate to claw back some of the deficit — threw themselves forward with real intensity. Their midfield, on its day, would have held its own comfortably even a division higher.

"Chevington... shot! Reading’s striker collects the pass and fires from the edge of the box; Pentland reacts fast, gets across, and holds it!"

"Vukic... brilliant individual play, beats Loach cleanly, some payback there after his earlier frustration."

"Shot... blocked! Rami with the block, full stretch!" Vukic’s effort was smothered again, this time the loose ball still dangerous, still live in the box.

Reading’s midfielder collected it and struck from range immediately, and this time Pentland genuinely had no chance to react.

"Rami! Rami’s there again... Saint’s young centre-back has bailed Villa out twice in this game already."

Watching Rocher start regularly, and Lavelle steadily earning his own place, it would have been dishonest to say Rami felt nothing about it. Age gap or not, ambition doesn’t wait politely.

Rami understood he was the youngest of the three, but age had never actually stopped a talented enough player from forcing his way into a first team.

So he’d trained relentlessly through these past weeks, and the improvement showed... visibly, to anyone watching closely, and with total clarity to Saint, who had Scout’s Eye confirming exactly what his eyes were already telling him.

C-plus. In a remarkably short window, Rami had climbed from C-minus to C-plus. That kind of jump doesn’t happen by accident, and Saint hadn’t missed it for a second. Honestly, by current ability alone, Rami already stood comfortably alongside every other defender in this squad bar Loach himself.

"Rami again... there’s that name once more." A Reading corner came in, and Rami rose highest in the box, muscling Reading’s centre-back off the ball entirely to head clear.

Loyalty runs both ways in football, and Saint’s trust in Rami; starting him in a fixture this significant, was exactly the kind of faith a young player remembers. Rami was doing everything he could to repay it in real time.

"Rami... or is it Rami, or Reece, half the crowd’s still working out the pronunciation... either way, brilliant reading of the danger there." In Villa’s own box, Rami timed a perfect sliding tackle to strip the ball clean off Chevington’s foot.

"Genuinely remarkable composure for someone this age," Curtis said, visibly impressed. Rami wouldn’t turn eighteen for another six months; a teenager, holding together a Championship back line under sustained pressure with the calm of a ten-year veteran.

Eighteenth minute, and Rami produced another perfect defensive read... Tonet whipped in a cross near the byline, and Rami rose above Vukic to head it away cleanly, clearing the danger for a second time inside minutes.

On the touchline, Ross’s expression had settled into something close to disbelief. For nearly twenty minutes since that second goal, Reading had thrown everything forward, only to be repeatedly denied by a teenager who hadn’t even made a senior start until this season.

"W-what tha... this isn’t normal. Saint isn’t just a good coach, he’s got real vision for finding these players. Rocher, Lavelle, and now this kid Rami... every one of them good enough to start for a Championship club, and every one of them found by the same man." Curtis, unashamedly, was fully bought in by this point.

He wasn’t wrong to be, either, the results kept backing him up. Rocher had the opener. Lavelle had a hand in the buildup for the second. And Rami, right now, stood as the single biggest obstacle between Reading and any way back into this match.

After that initial burst of frustration faded, and after nearly twenty minutes of relentless pressing had drained the legs out of Reading’s attacking players, the shape of the match started shifting again.

"Reading’s momentum has clearly stalled. You can see the frustration setting in, and physically they’re starting to look spent after that push. Time for Ross to regroup and stabilise," Villa’s own broadcast noted, reading the tactical picture accurately.

As a manager, Ross understood the moment better than any pundit calling it from the box, even if emotion sometimes clouded his read of a match. Right now, though, he was composed enough to see it clearly: pushing further wasn’t working. Time to pull the shape in, sit deeper, and look to hit Villa on the counter instead.