Chapter 105: The New Captain

"What happened? Did someone throw punches out there?" Saint asked, catching his assistant jogging over across the Bodymoor Heath training pitch.

"Mate? Why do you sound almost disappointed there wasn’t one?" Cadman had taken over from Pratt as Villa’s assistant coach for the new season.

Young. Villa weren’t just fielding a young squad this year, the whole coaching staff skewed young too. Saint himself was barely into his thirties, and Cadman wasn’t even forty yet.

The only two genuine veterans on the staff, Mannering and the goalkeeping coach, weren’t even fifty. Every other new addition to the backroom team was closer in age to those two than to anyone older.

This summer hadn’t just reshaped the playing squad, the coaching setup had been overhauled just as dramatically. Between Saint’s own staff and the first team, that alone accounted for ten new faces, and that was before factoring in how thin things still were in places.

"How exactly would that even happen? I’m the head coach, you think I’m out there throwing punches at my own players?" Saint said, denying it flatly.

Cadman, who knew Saint better than most on the staff, clearly wasn’t buying that denial for a second. The rest of the coaching staff, though, took Saint entirely at his word.

Today marked the squad’s official return for pre season, and the first proper meeting between two players who’d spent years as bitter career rivals, now both wearing the same shirt. Club football worked differently from international football, so by the time the two men reached the dressing room, not just the players but the entire coaching staff around Saint were watching closely, more than a little curious how this would go.

"Didn’t see this coming, did we," Teale said in the dressing room, looking across at Reyes.

"No, genuinely didn’t. Can’t say I pictured the great Chelsea captain ending up somewhere like this either," Reyes said, the comment carrying a slight edge to it.

There was mockery in there, sure, but something closer to shared understanding too. Reyes’s own exit from his boyhood club hadn’t played out the same way as Teale’s had, but Reyes understood the shape of it well enough; stay too long past your welcome, and you risked ending up treated exactly the way Teale had been.

"You never actually left, though." Teale said it lightly, no real bite behind it, more empathy than resentment, maybe even a quiet respect for the choice Reyes had made.

"Teammates now, regardless," Teale said, offering his hand.

"Teammates. Yeah," Reyes said simply, no pretence to it at all.

A handshake that would have been front page news anywhere else, and yet nobody outside that Villa dressing room would ever actually see it happen.

Back home, the moment news broke of both transfers, Chelsea and Barcelona fans and media alike had nearly combusted over it. Lifelong rivals like that, sharing a pitch outside of an England call-up, let alone as actual teammates, was almost unthinkable to picture.

"Alright, Danny Pryce." Once the handshake broke, another veteran new signing stepped forward.

"Marek Jurek," came next, right behind him.

With those two veterans setting the tone, the rest of the squad began introducing themselves in turn, though compared to the calm of the senior pros, the younger lads couldn’t quite hide how starstruck they were.

Hardly surprising. These four names carried serious weight across English and European football, genuine legends in their own right, Teale and Reyes especially.

Teale’s time as Chelsea captain and Reyes’s trophy cabinet from Barcelona alone put them on a level most of these young players could barely process meeting in person. And Pryce wasn’t far behind either, a player genuinely adored by this part of the Midlands, one of English football’s true greats in his own right.

Once introductions wrapped, the players filed off to change into training kit, while Saint and his staff waited outside for them to reappear.

One, two, three, Saint stood on the pitch, running his eyes over each player as they emerged, and for a moment something close to pride and genuine excitement flickered across his face.

Pride, because this squad was genuinely his, built entirely by his own hand, every single signing.

Excitement, because Saint could already picture leading this group through the Premier League, taking down one side after another, turning heads across the entire division and beyond.

"Right, name’s Saint Maddox. From today, you lot play for me, you can call me gaffer, or boss," Saint said once the full squad had assembled in front of him.

"Yes, gaffer? Boss?" came back a scattered, uncertain response.

"Alright, forget it, just go with boss from here on, sounds better anyway," Saint said, giving up on offering a real choice.

"Yes, boss," came back properly this time, in unison.

"Good," Saint said, nodding.

His coaching staff stepped forward one by one after that, each introducing themselves to the group.

Youth clearly didn’t faze this squad anymore; after everything Saint himself had already proven, a young backroom staff barely registered as unusual to any of them.

"Right, your turn, Ben. As captain of this club, you set the tone from here," Saint said, and the entire training ground went still, including Conlan himself, visibly caught off guard by the announcement.

Saint had never once mentioned the armband to Conlan beforehand, and more than that, three senior pros were standing right there as he said it, Pryce, a genuine Villa legend in his own right, Teale, a former Chelsea captain, and Reyes, a decorated Barcelona captain in his own career.

It wasn’t just Conlan either, the rest of the squad looked equally stunned. By any reasonable expectation, the armband should have gone to one of those three.

The three veterans themselves, though, worked it out almost immediately.

All three of them were genuinely captain material. That was exactly the problem; with three equally valid candidates, picking any one of them risked the other two feeling overlooked.

Rather than risk that imbalance, Saint had sidestepped the question entirely, and once those three were out of contention, there was really only one other candidate left in the squad with a genuine case for the armband.

Counting this season, Conlan had been at the club for five years running, longer than anyone else currently on the books, making him the senior-most player by tenure by some distance.

"Ben Conlan. Villa captain, central midfield." Conlan’s response came a beat slower than the veterans’, but he caught up fast enough to what Saint was actually doing by handing it to him.

Conlan had always been decisive by nature. It was exactly that instinct that had pulled him away from his boyhood club and out to Villa in the first place, and five years on, he’d never once looked back.

Last season, Saint had strongly considered handing Conlan the armband outright, only for Whitfield to earn it instead after his own breakout form, and Saint hadn’t had the heart to take it off him after that. Not that it mattered much now, Whitfield had moved on in the summer regardless.

The deciding factor, more than anything, was that Conlan’s own ability simply held up. He was walking straight into a starting role again this season, and wherever there was room to improve further, Saint fully intended to keep pushing him there personally.

With the captaincy settled, Saint turned to naming his vice captains, landing on Pryce, Teale, and Reyes.