Chapter 149: Strong Teams Focus on the Wing

"Shot! Just a fraction too high!" In stoppage time at the end of the first half, Villa very nearly went ahead.

It had come from another counter-attack. Norwich had followed Fenner’s orders to the letter for most of the half, sitting deep and waiting, but Jurek’s equaliser had stirred their restless hearts again, and they had pushed up too far, too soon.

In the contest between the two managers, the winner was Saint, because Saint had read exactly how badly Norwich wanted a victory.

Villa wanted three points as well, but their situation was far better. The club had only just come back up and nobody had expected miracles, and with Saint back on the touchline the damage from four straight defeats was shrinking by the day. The players had their backbone back.

Norwich were different. Fenner’s start to the season had never convinced his players, and one win from nine rounds had only made them more anxious.

"Tomlin! If the big man had stayed a little calmer, it might already be 2-1!" Pemberton said as the last chance of the half slid past the post. Andy Pargeter looked at his watch and blew, and the first half was over.

"In the second half, we change." That was the first sentence Saint said after following the players into the dressing room.

Saint cared about defence, and he was never careless about it. But he preferred attack, and he liked to break an opponent with his own football. If he had to defend, he would defend, but when it came to a choice between losing beautifully and winning ugly, he would always choose to win.

This game did not call for it, though. Norwich were not a strong side. Perhaps they had been once, but this season they were clearly not what they had been.

"We attack," Saint said. He had held his players back for so long in the first half that it was time to let them off the lead.

"Yes!" The players lit up at once.

Cadman leaned in and lowered his voice. "You’re sure? We’ve sat on this for forty-five minutes. If they hit us on a break, the whole ground will turn on us."

"They won’t," Saint said. "Fenner thinks we’ll be patient again. He watched us wait for half an hour and he’s made up his mind about us."

Cadman looked at the team sheet for a long moment, then nodded. "All right. Wings, then."

"Wings," Saint agreed.

The shape on the whiteboard looked more like an attacking side’s than a defending one. Apart from Barzley and Teale there was hardly a defender left in it. Colley and Faraday were told to push on like wingers, and even Vacek was told that his first pass should always look for the flanks.

There was another reason for it. The first half had put a picture in Fenner’s head, and a manager who is expecting something has stopped looking. Saint was only thirty-one, and Fenner had been in the game for decades, yet in the first round between the two benches the younger man had won cleanly.

"Villa are on the attack! What a storm!" Pemberton said as the second half began. Norwich’s players, who had expected another dull forty-five minutes, were caught half asleep.

If Villa’s two strikers had not wasted their chances, the score would no longer have been 1-1. As it was, Villa rewrote it anyway, and Pryce, the old veteran, did not lose his chain at the crucial moment.

In the sixth minute of the second half, Villa came again, this time down the right. Faraday and Jurek worked it together, the Czech winger dragging two Norwich defenders with him before laying the ball back for the overlapping full-back, and the cross that arrived was a good one.

What Pryce had to do next was much simpler. When the ball reached him he took it on his chest, let it drop, and with the calm of a man who had done it a thousand times, placed it past Brandwood.

"Goal! Two-one! Pryce! Thirty-seven years old, and he has put Villa in front!"

"There’s no fight in them," Granger said. "Faced with the change after the break, Norwich’s response was far too slow."

The director cut back and forth between Pryce and Alder, hoping for a story. Unfortunately for him, both men were very good at managing their faces, and nothing came of it.

And no moment like this was complete without the winning manager. Saint walked to the edge of the technical area and stood with his arms folded, like a man who had never doubted it.

"Cheeky so-and-so," Fenner muttered on the other side, loudly enough that the fourth official turned his head.

But even as he cursed, Fenner was thinking about what to do next, and there was nothing to think about. After Pryce’s goal, Norwich had no way back. "Go at them," he told Alder. "Everything we have."

Norwich, with nothing left to lose, were ready to let go. After the restart they surged into Villa’s half, and the ball soon found Alder again.

Reyes stood in front of him.

This was Saint’s arrangement for the second half. Reyes was not as quick as Conlan, but he had what Conlan did not, which was experience, and familiarity. He had worn Norwich’s shirt himself and he knew how they worked. He also had a reason of his own, in the memory of how Norwich’s doctors had written him off.

His way of defending suited Alder perfectly. Reyes did not dive into tackles; he read the game and took the ball by anticipation, and with years of experience added to that he was harder to play through than ever. He was not a strong man, but then neither was Alder any more, and the old prince’s legs were not what they had been. Under Saint’s instructions Reyes had not only a plan but a licence.

Alder tried to turn, found Reyes waiting, and could only pass the ball sideways to Gary Tolliver, the man whose role in the Norwich side was second only to his own.

Since Reyes had come to meet Alder, Conlan had gone to meet Tolliver, and he had the better of that one. Conlan was younger and quicker, and he went through Tolliver with a calm, clean tackle that drew a long cheer from the Holte End.

On the touchline Fenner took his hands out of his pockets, looked at them as though they belonged to someone else, and put them back in again.

With Villa’s two midfielders locking down the middle, Norwich’s attack was half abandoned. It was hardly a surprise. They were a typical side of their kind, built through the centre and around one old man, and their wing play was weak.

Most teams outside the very top paid little attention to the flanks, or relied on a long ball from the back and hoped. Only the powerful clubs, the ones at the top of the tower, almost always had a very good wing game. Their strength came down the sides.

"Norwich have lost the middle," Judd said, "and they’ve got nothing out wide to fall back on."

"That’s what you get when you build a team around one man," Granger said, with a pleasure he did not really try to hide.

Saint, watching from the touchline, thought much the same thing, only in a different tone. Villa’s wings were the weapon he had been building since the day he arrived, and tonight, at last, they were being allowed to show what they could do.