Chapter 70: First Defeat

"They’ve lost... Villa have actually lost. After a run of genuinely improbable results, Villa’s unbeaten streak finally comes to an end after more than two months."

Round thirty-three had seen Villa scrape past Blackpool and leapfrog Rotherham in the table, climbing to second, their highest position all season.

Round thirty-four brought a direct clash with the club now occupying first place, and the referee’s final whistle had just confirmed the result.

0-2. A clean scoreline, and Villa’s approach from the very first minute told the whole story; loose, disjointed, nothing resembling the cohesion that had carried this run for two months.

"This isn’t the Villa we’ve come to know these past few months. This isn’t the side that’s been putting together one remarkable result after another. If I hadn’t watched it myself, I’d genuinely wonder whether these were the same players," Curtis said, making no effort to hide his disappointment during the broadcast.

"The winning run went to this young man’s head, and it’s clearly filtered down to how his players approach the game now. Time for the bill to come due," Casapa said, seizing the opening immediately.

"No... this isn’t on Saint. This is on the press. Weeks of relentless flattery aimed at these young players, and it’s warped how they see themselves. That’s exactly what we’re watching unravel," Curtis shot back in Saint’s defence.

"Even if the press share some blame, it’s still the manager’s job to manage that pressure properly. And clearly, this manager couldn’t," Casapa said.

"For a genuine title push, this club needs an experienced hand in charge, not a novelty appointment," Casapa added, delivering the line he’d clearly been saving for exactly this moment.

What Casapa hadn’t anticipated was the backlash that followed. Within hours, Villa’s supporters had flooded every platform he was on, and by that evening his own home had been targeted; a broken window overnight, and a week of harassment that eventually forced him and his family into a hotel.

Fans run on emotion, and it’s not hard to see why this particular line crossed something. Everyone remembered exactly where Villa had been when Saint took over, and exactly what he’d built since.

Early in the season, Casapa’s skepticism had been broadly understandable, most of the fanbase shared it, at least at first. But as results kept mounting, Villa’s supporters had come around entirely, embracing Saint fully as one of their own.

Casapa alone hadn’t moved with them. If anything, his position had hardened the more Saint succeeded, tipping from genuine scepticism into something closer to open hostility.

Saint himself never gave Casapa much thought, and the fanbase had mostly let his commentary slide out of old affection for the broadcast itself. This time, though, something in that line had genuinely crossed a boundary.

Because openly calling for Villa’s board to sack Saint, whatever the club’s own management actually thought of the suggestion, was more than the supporters were willing to tolerate.

From the fans’ perspective, Saint hadn’t just saved this club from relegation. He’d dragged them from the bottom half all the way into a genuine title race, further and faster than anyone had thought remotely possible in August.

Watching that transformation up close, plenty of supporters had already started dreaming bigger; not just survival, not just promotion, but Saint building something lasting here, a genuine return to the club’s old European glory.

Saint had no real awareness of exactly how deep that sentiment ran among the fanbase. If he had known, he’d probably have laughed it off regardless; his ambitions had never stopped at one sentimental club’s history, however much affection he’d genuinely built for this place along the way.

Cadman filled him in on the Casapa situation afterward, and while Saint didn’t comment publicly, he privately approved of how the fanbase had responded.

Whatever the fans could do to Casapa personally, they couldn’t stop the wider press pile-on the next morning. If anything, this defeat had handed the national media its best material against Saint in weeks.

The coverage was relentlessly one-sided. Every outlet found some way to pin the loss squarely on Saint himself.

Poor preparation. Tactically outclassed. Couldn’t read the game, couldn’t adjust when Villa fell behind, every possible angle of criticism got its own headline somewhere.

The unspoken implication ran through nearly all of it: Villa’s entire defeat, in full, belonged to Saint alone.

Was that actually fair? Saint knew it wasn’t. So did every player in that dressing room. Not one of them said so publicly, though.

The day after the defeat, Saint showed no sign of being affected by any of it; he walked back into Bodymoor Heath with an easy smile, as relaxed as ever.

On the training pitch, that same relaxed energy carried through the whole session; Saint joined in on possession drills with the squad like nothing had happened the day before, entirely unbothered by the criticism piling up in every paper.

Watching him take the loss in stride like that did more for the squad’s mood than any team talk could have. The tension that had built up around the whole club eased almost immediately.

Three months into the job, and Saint hadn’t just won over the fans and the boardroom. He’d built genuine command of that dressing room too; complete authority, the kind that doesn’t waver over one bad result.

"Love... give me a minute, dinner’s nearly ready." Saint’s good mood, if truth be told, had a fairly specific origin the night before, entirely unrelated to football.

Grace was back. Work finally wrapped, she’d flown straight home to Birmingham; and, wanting to surprise him properly, had told Saint she wasn’t due back until the following day.

None of which meant Saint had actually stopped thinking about the defeat. It was the first genuine loss of his managerial career, and it had cost Villa their brief spell in second place, dropping them to fourth.

After losing to Ipswich; well, to the club now sitting top, Villa held steady on fifty-four points. That leader had climbed to fifty-five. Above them both sat a resurgent side on fifty-six after back-to-back wins, with Derby still comfortably clear at the very top.

Under normal circumstances, this round should have been a genuine opportunity for Villa to close the gap on Derby, since Derby themselves had failed to win their own fixture.

Fortunately, Saint had never treated the title itself as the actual target. His goal from the start had been promotion; reaching the Premier League properly, so missing this particular window to close on Derby didn’t trouble him much.

There was still a path back into that conversation regardless. Villa’s very next fixture, as it happened, was against Derby themselves.