The Saint Maddox Odyssey

Saint had his first win. After the match the Midlands press covered it wildly, and Villa’s supporters were fired up for days.

That, however, was only local pride. Outside the Midlands, the media saw nothing in it. Two promoted sides had beaten each other up, and the winner of that fight was not national news.

Saint did not mind. If anything, he wished the press would pay him even less attention. Plenty of people would kill to be followed by cameras, but Saint preferred to stay mysterious.

What was the point of that, you might ask? Surely a manager wanted attention? Not this one. People who chase attention never quite get it, and people who dodge it can’t escape.

The same went for the gossip about Grace. A month had gone by with no word, and the press still had not let it go.

In truth, Saint himself did not know how to describe things between them. Were they a couple? Since their row the two had barely spoken, and there had not been a single phone call.

”Mate, you can’t go on like this,” Jasper said, unable to stop himself from stepping in.

Grace had changed Saint’s life more than he realised. Before her, his world had been football, football and more football. After her, there was more to him, and even the way he dressed had changed.

That was a good thing as far as Jasper was concerned, so he backed the relationship and hoped it would last.

During this stretch apart, though, Saint had slid straight back into his old life, football, football and football.

Jasper had even asked his own girlfriend to ring Grace on Saint’s behalf, but Grace was a stubborn, proud woman.

Why had she come across the world to Europe in the first place? To take her career to the top, to become a global name. And if you wanted to become a global name, you had to become one of those runway angels.

She had thought about giving it up once, because she enjoyed being with Saint, but the thought had lasted only a moment before she pushed it away.

”Look after yourself, then,” Jasper said at last. Jasper loved a good time, and as the son of old money he was already well known around London. Now that he had become a football agent, he was better known still. Lately a few photographers had caught him out with a woman in Chelsea, and it was obvious she was not his girlfriend, Imogen.

To get her own back, Imogen had been seen strolling through the West End with another man. This was not a rumour. It was a fact, and the man on her arm was Jamie Strickland, the Chelsea winger and the pride of London.

When the story broke, another soap opera erupted. Strickland already had a girlfriend, and the two had been living together for a year, with rumours that they were close to getting engaged.

That was not the only drama around. Just a season earlier, a veteran striker had split with his girlfriend, apparently after she posed for a glossy magazine. In the eyes of the public, though, there was a different story. Rumours said she had been photographed with another player’s husband, and that she and a rival midfielder had once been seen leaving a hotel together.

Nobody could say whether the striker had been able to resist taking a swing at his rival. Whatever the case, the two were done now, and the woman was said to be looking for her next target.

”Damn it, Saint, you’ve got to beat Chelsea. You have to beat those smug so-and-sos!” Jasper could not calm down.

”Mate, we’re a promoted side,” Saint said, with a helpless expression.

”Forget the promoted side!” Jasper’s relationship with Imogen had also dropped to freezing point.

The two of them really did deserve each other as friends, since their love lives had fallen apart at almost the same time.

”Fine, you can come and watch, and I’ll do my best to beat Chelsea,” Saint said. Looking at Jasper, he knew his friend would not accept a joke.

Before Chelsea, though, Villa had two more games, one in the league and one in the League Cup, and the cup opponents were too weak to take seriously.

Burnley had been one step from the drop last season, or rather one toe, because they had finished on thirty-eight points, level with a side that went down.

During the international break, Saint had already started studying Derby and Burnley. Compared with Derby, Burnley looked like the weakest team in the Premier League.

Under the eyes of Saint’s scouting system there was only one A in their entire squad, a young central defender called Jonah Mensah, and the rest of the squad sat somewhere between C and B.

Of course, ability on paper did not decide everything. If it did, the side that had gone down last season would not have gone down. A side still had to play its matches, and the team that went down had still beaten Burnley.

Scout’s Eye brought advantages and disadvantages. The advantage was that Saint could see a player’s ceiling and current level after one look. Even without an edge on the day, he could win the chance through information.

The disadvantage was that when you saw your opponent was too weak, you inevitably started to underestimate him, however many times you told yourself not to.

Saint could see his own line-up and he could see theirs, and when he compared them the gap was enormous.

What did Villa’s squad look like? You could almost call it an all-star team. Apart from Carver and Hartley, even the weakest man in the squad could have found a place in a strong side. Rocher, Tomlin and Salerno were top-class players.

Teale and Reyes belonged in that group too, though both were past their peak, otherwise they would never have been available to a newly promoted club.

To play in the Premier League you needed at least B-level ability, yet at Burnley only half of the starters even reached it.

So it was that Villa faced Burnley in the third week of September, in the third round of the Premier League.

It was Villa Park, and it was Villa’s second home game of the season, and compared with the star-studded opposition of the first, this one looked a little bleak.

Saint had seen the danger, though, and he refused to let it creep into the squad. Two days before the match he gathered the players in the video room and put Burnley’s line-up on the screen, every name with its grade beside it.

”Look at this carefully,” he said. ”You’ll want to tell yourselves this is easy. It isn’t. Last season’s table says they survived by a toe, and that means they know how to hang on.”

Teale nodded from the back row. Reyes folded his arms and said nothing, which, in Saint’s experience, meant he agreed.

”Derby were weaker than us on paper, and we beat them four nil. Do you know why? Because nobody walked out thinking it was over before it started.” Saint clicked the screen off. ”Keep it that way.”

It was a simple speech, but he repeated it to himself on the drive home. The hardest opponent for any strong side is the one it has already decided to beat.