Chapter 76: Unpredictable

Fierce. Suspenseful. By any honest measure, this was shaping up to be the most dramatic Championship season anyone could remember.

Thirty-seven rounds down, and almost nothing had actually been settled; not the title, not the automatic promotion places, and not even the final relegation spot.

In the most recent round, league leaders Derby suffered a genuinely shocking home defeat to a mid-table side with nothing left to play for.

Elsewhere that same weekend, their nearest challenger produced a ruthless 4-0 win over a side already relegated in all but name. The gap at the top had shrunk to just two points.

Derby still held the advantage on paper, but that advantage came with its own kind of pressure, leading a title race and chasing one are two very different psychological experiences, and Derby’s recent form suggested the weight of the former had started to show.

Their last three results told the story plainly enough. Whatever had carried Derby to the top of the table earlier in the season, they’d stopped looking like champions-elect these past few weeks.

The title race was gripping enough on its own, but the two automatic promotion places sitting just below it were arguably even fiercer. Whichever of Derby or their nearest rival won the title, both were already, for all practical purposes, guaranteed to go up regardless of how the final round played out.

The real fight was for third and fourth, the second automatic spot, and the difference between a guaranteed return to the Premier League and a nerve-shredding play-off campaign instead.

One club had briefly looked like a genuine title contender itself two rounds earlier, sitting second with fifty-eight points. Two rounds on, that same club had been overtaken twice, first by Derby’s rival, and now by Villa as well.

Two rounds, one draw and one loss, had dropped that club from fifty-eight points to fifty-nine; barely moving at all while the teams around them surged. Villa, on the back of two straight wins, had climbed from fifty-eight to sixty points, rising from fourth to third in the process.

That relegated the previous third-place side down to fourth; and fourth, at this stage of the season, had become an agonisingly precarious place to sit. Because right behind them, on fifty-nine points after back-to-back wins of their own, sat Norwich.

And behind Norwich, on fifty-eight, three more clubs were still mathematically alive; Brighton, Wolves, and a fading Preston side, all separated by the thinnest of margins after this latest round.

Which meant the final round would decide the two remaining promotion places between four clubs: Villa, the fourth-place side just above them, Norwich, and whichever of Brighton or Wolves could still find a result.

Compared to the promotion race, the relegation fight had thinned out considerably, though it wasn’t fully settled either. Three of the four drop spots were already confirmed.

Blackpool went down first, officially relegated with thirty-seven rounds complete and just twenty-two points to their name. Two more clubs, both on thirty-six points, followed them down after the penultimate round.

That left the final relegation spot to be decided between two clubs on the final day; and, in a twist nobody could have scripted better, one of them happened to be Villa’s own final opponent, while Derby faced the other in a simultaneous relegation four-pointer of their own.

"Not even a screenwriter could have arranged this," ran one national headline.

Derby against a relegation-threatened Watford. Villa against Wigan, themselves fighting for survival. And Norwich against Brighton, with a genuine promotion spot on the line. Final round. Everything, everywhere, decided at once.

The Premier League season had already wrapped up by this point; and in a story that had dominated English football all year regardless of anything happening in the Championship, Leicester City had somehow gone and won the whole thing, a result nobody outside their own dressing room had seriously predicted back in August.

With the top flight’s own drama now settled, national attention swung squarely down onto the Championship’s final round instead. What started with one outlet’s breathless preview quickly became a full media pile-on, every paper running its own version of the same story by the end of the week.

"Bloody hell." After the Coventry match, Saint had checked the wider table for the first time in a while, and the picture staring back at him earned a genuine curse.

Talk about a twist nobody saw coming. The fixture Saint had privately expected to be Villa’s easiest remaining match had, through a genuinely unlikely chain of results elsewhere, turned into the single hardest test left on the calendar.

"What’s the plan for tomorrow?" Cadman asked, on the drive back from the Coventry match.

Cadman had formally taken over as Saint’s first-team assistant in recent weeks, Pratt had made good on his own decision from earlier in the season, stepping back from first-team duties to focus on the academy setup instead.

"Same as always... day off, then straight back into preparation for Wigan," Saint said.

Back at Bodymoor Heath, Saint said his goodbyes to the staff and drove himself home, the old Fiesta still exactly as unremarkable as ever.

He’d effectively been living at the training ground for the better part of a week preparing for Coventry, so walking back through his own front door felt genuinely unfamiliar for a moment. Home stayed home regardless, though, however long you’d been away from it.

The house was dark when he walked in, Jasper clearly wasn’t home, which tracked; this was exactly the hour his social calendar tended to pick up rather than wind down.

No noise, no interruptions, nothing but quiet. Physically Saint wasn’t especially worn down, but the mental toll of a week spent obsessing over one single match had genuinely worn on him more than he expected.

He woke before sunrise, same as always, years of the same routine had built the habit into him permanently, tired or not. The only variable most mornings was whether he actually got out of bed or stayed put a while longer.

This morning, with a genuine rest day ahead of him, Saint let himself linger. Two full hours he lay there, eyes open, phone untouched, doing absolutely nothing at all.

Completely empty-headed, in a way he rarely allowed himself to be, no thoughts worth tracking, no real sense of time passing. If nothing had interrupted him, he might well have stayed there considerably longer without noticing.

Something did interrupt him, though; and with Grace still away working, there was really only one person who’d barge into Saint’s house unannounced at this hour.

"Mate... brilliant news, I’ve signed two more clients!" Jasper came crashing into the bedroom without so much as a knock.

"Right." Saint gave him a flat, unimpressed look, Jasper’s total disregard for a closed bedroom door had never once improved with time.

By Jasper’s own account, he’d spent his whole life avoiding exactly this kind of intrusion into his own space, growing up under the endless scrutiny that came with his family’s name. Apparently the lesson hadn’t extended to how he treated other people’s doors.

"Went out to the Balkans, then over to France," Jasper announced, entirely self-satisfied, barrelling straight past any greeting.

"Wait... you’ve been out of the country all week?" That genuinely surprised Saint.

"Lee, do you honestly think I only ever think about football when I’m around you?" Jasper looked wounded.

Both of them knew each other well enough by now to skip past the theatrics and get to the actual point.

"Niko Vranković’s agreed terms with me. And there’s a young goalkeeper at Nice’s academy too... kid called Théo Lambert." Jasper wasn’t one to bury the lede for long.

"You’re serious?" That was genuinely good news.

Vranković... barely anyone in English football had heard the name yet, an eighteen-year-old still finding his feet in senior football. Saint, though, knew exactly what that name would eventually mean.

One of the finest midfielders the game would produce over the next decade, if the timeline held true to what Saint remembered.

As for Lambert, an academy goalkeeper at Nice, currently anonymous even within his own club’s youth setup, but destined, in another life, to become one of the finest shot-stoppers his generation would ever produce.