Chapter 108: Still Too Young

Smooth Sailing. ’Midlands Sports Gazette’

Yesterday, Villa played the first friendly of the new campaign. The opponents were a lower-league side from the Midlands, and by the final whistle the scoreboard read 7-1. Villa announced their season in the loudest way possible.

The opposition were not strong, but a 7-1 win is still a statement. It was Villa’s first outing of the new season, and the result seemed to tell everyone that this team was worth looking forward to.

It is. A few years from now, supporters will look back and wonder how one squad managed to hold so many future stars.

The one man not smiling, though, was the head coach. Villa had won, and the new signings had played well, but Saint was uneasy.

In the fifth minute, Villa’s biggest summer signing, Jake Tomlin, opened the scoring. Five minutes later Danny Pryce added a second, then Jurek and Rocher scored, and Villa led 4-0 at the break.

After the interval Saint rotated heavily, taking off eleven men and sending on eleven. That cost them a goal in the 62nd minute, but the new eleven still scored three of their own.

That was the problem. Villa won because the opposition were too weak and Villa were too strong. Of the seven goals, only Tomlin’s first came from a teammate’s pass. The rest came from individual quality alone.

Saint understood what that meant.

There was plenty of time before the league opener, and Saint had never expected to chase results in the first few friendlies. Even so, when Villa’s second friendly arrived twenty-three days later, the opponents were again weak, and Villa again won on individual ability.

Saint realised he might have made a mistake by lining up so many soft opponents.

His idea had been to let the players build confidence and familiarity against weak sides. It had backfired. Because the opposition were so poor, his players simply solved every problem themselves instead of working together.

It was too late to change anything. The other friendlies had been fixed long ago, and nobody was going to rearrange their schedule for him.

So Villa won the third friendly as well, and by a wide margin. After three straight wins, the media and the fans had started to feel proud, and so had some of the players.

"Damn it," Saint muttered. In a situation like this, the only thing to do was call in a few veterans. Young players were easily swayed by outside noise, whereas the senior men were far more level-headed, having seen all of it before.

Saint was young, after all. His results were remarkable, but his experience was thin, and his own career as a professional player was shorter than that of any of the veterans in his squad.

There’s an old saying that wisdom turns up wherever you are willing to ask for it, and the conversation with Teale, Reyes and Pryce proved it. Saint learned a lot and was more open about the situation than he usually was.

To the veterans, the current state of affairs wasn’t bad at all. The players did lack cooperation, but a second goal was being met in the process, and that was the confidence of the young lads.

And while cooperation was lacking, the players had clearly improved over these matches, and their familiarity and understanding of each other was growing.

In total Saint had arranged five friendlies, every one of them against a local side from the Midlands, so the squad had no travelling to do after their break.

Before the fourth match, though, there was a goodbye to take care of. Saint had to see Chloe off at the airport.

Chloe had been in England for three weeks. Once the squad reassembled, Saint hadn’t had time to spend with her during the day, but he always made it home for dinner in the evening.

Sometimes the two of them cooked together. They were the children of a chef, after all, and some of Derek’s skills had rubbed off. On other nights they went out to try the local food, since Birmingham was a proper food city and she was not going to leave without trying all of it.

"Cousin, you have to look after yourself," Chloe said. She was a very well-behaved girl, and her mother had clearly done a good job.

"You too. When you’re back at school, make sure you know how to protect yourself, not just look after yourself. If anything happens, ring me any time." The two cousins had become so close by now that they were practically brother and sister.

"Hee hee, don’t worry. I learned loads of self-defence from Hannah these last few weeks." Hannah was the bodyguard Saint had arranged for Chloe. Alongside her there was a Mandarin-speaking international student from the University of Birmingham, who worked as Chloe’s translator.

With Saint buried in preparations, those two had been with Chloe most of every day, and over the weeks the three of them had become good friends.

Habits are strange things. It had only been three weeks, but when Saint walked back into his empty house, a small pang of loss caught him off guard.

Naturally, his strong adaptability took care of that quickly enough. Besides, the team needed more of his attention now.

Two days after Chloe’s flight, Villa played their fourth friendly. The opponents were Pryce’s old club, the non-league side where his career had started, Brierley Athletic.

It was another comfortable win. The fixture existed purely because of Pryce, since Brierley sat at the very bottom of the local pyramid.

Four wins in four. Four days later came the fifth and final opponent, and although it wasn’t another huge score this time, the opposition never looked like threatening Villa’s goal.

Between the sticks, Vacek was perfect across the five halves he played and kept every opponent out. Hartley, by contrast, conceded three goals across his five halves.

Those five friendlies were enough to show Hartley exactly how far he sat behind Vacek. Last season’s first-choice goalkeeper had quietly given up any idea of fighting for the number one shirt.