The Saint Maddox Odyssey

”Lads, we can relax a bit today,” Rocher told his new teammates in the dressing room.

”Why’s that?” Crichton asked.

”Do any of you actually watch the news?” Rocher said, looking round at the blank faces.

”What news?” Crichton said, genuinely clueless.

”The boss’s girlfriend is back,” Lavelle said, and Rocher nearly choked, since that had been his punchline.

”I saw it, yeah. She’s stunning,” Crichton said, with a lot of envy in his voice.

It was understandable. Rocher was surrounded by young players, and young players tend to have more energy than most people, and more curiosity too.

”Course she is. She’d have to be, to deserve our boss,” another voice chipped in. At Saint’s request the whole squad now called him boss, though the veterans still said gaffer in private and in coaching meetings, and Rocher’s little group had been known to do the same behind closed doors.

”From experience, when the girlfriend’s around, the boss is in a brilliant mood,” Rocher said, with the knowing smile of a man who understood these things. The scar down his face did terrible things to that smile, though, and a stranger would have run for the door.

The dressing room cracked up laughing.

It didn’t last. Rocher was in trouble within minutes, because when Saint walked onto the training pitch he wasn’t smiling at all. His face was dark, and everything about him said do not come near me today.

That was enough to scare a group of young players, particularly ones Saint had personally brought to the club. Over the past few weeks Rocher, Lavelle and Rami had told the others plenty about how frightening the boss could be, and now they were getting a free demonstration.

Nobody had forgotten Kieran Fenwick, either. The forward was still stuck in the reserves. His old partner in disgrace had gone out on loan and fled the club the moment last season ended, but Fenwick’s contract still belonged to Villa, and he was still training with the kids.

His agent had never actually asked Villa to sell him, and there hadn’t been a single enquiry from another club. Fenwick remained in the reserves to this day.

That said plenty. It showed how much the club trusted Saint, how completely he controlled the dressing room, and that he had the power to decide whether a player’s career went on or stopped.

What the players didn’t know was that Saint was already prepared to let Fenwick go. Only days earlier, Fenwick and his agent had come in to admit their mistakes, and after months out in the cold the forward seemed like a changed man.

Seeing him like that, Saint decided he couldn’t keep him in the reserves any longer. Leaving him there would simply ruin him, and Saint wasn’t willing to destroy a career over a grudge.

As for Saint’s own mood, that was all down to Grace. Just last night the two of them had had a blazing row over the Victoria’s Secret show.

It came down to something old-fashioned buried deep in Saint’s character. He didn’t want Grace walking in that show, yet for any model it was the dream, the very top of the profession.

Grace was a woman with real ambition. She wasn’t going to give up her career for love. If she had been, she’d never have left home so young to build it, and the relationship itself was still new, with plenty left unsaid.

What did new mean? Uncertainty. Saint had told her he could look after her himself, but would she believe that? Would anyone? And nobody could say whether he’d meant it, or whether he’d just been grasping for something to talk her out of the show.

So the outcome was always going to be a row. If anything, it was remarkable they hadn’t ended things there and then.

Saint’s inexperience showed here, and not only on the football side. A seasoned manager wouldn’t let a personal argument leak into training. Saint realised it himself, and not long after the session began he went back to his office to get his head straight.

The league was about to start. He wasn’t expecting anything from the opening game, and in a way he hoped United would give his young side a proper wake-up call, but the preparation still had to be done.

A league season was a home and away affair. If the first match was a lost cause, there was always the return, even if that wouldn’t come until the new year.

And besides the league there would be the cups, where nothing was fixed and anything could happen.

So Saint began studying United. They were studying Villa too, though neither side had much reliable information on the other.

Villa’s squad had been torn up over the summer, with most of last season’s personnel replaced. That left Garrity with nothing but the friendlies to go on, and against such weak opposition there was almost nothing to learn. But a good manager is a good manager, and even so he picked out a few things.

The individual quality of the players, for one. After watching the five friendlies, Garrity was surprised by how good several of Villa’s youngsters were.

Veterans like Pryce, Jurek and Reyes needed no introduction. It was the kids who caught his eye.

The lad with the scar on his face, for instance. On technique alone, few players in the United squad could match him.

Then there was the forward line, Tomlin’s strength, Osei’s pace, and Salerno’s all-round ability to read and take a chance.

At the back, United had the strongest defence in the country, perhaps the best in Europe. But Villa’s wasn’t bad either. Alencar would one day be recognised as the best right-back in the world, though that was still some way off.

Lindley, too, was destined to become a pillar of the national side. And alongside Barzley, he would form a partnership that lasted for years, at club level and for country.

While Saint was buried in his opposition research, the house stood empty. Soon after he left for the training ground, Grace left Birmingham too.

In her view, perhaps it was better to part for a while and cool off on their own. And from the way Saint had reacted, she needed a little time to think about her own future as well.