Off to Liverpool and wherever else the mood takes.
And before you know it we’re headed off to the last away game of the season. The last away used to be a time for looting and pillaging the nearest seaside resort, even if you’d played at Coventry. Then it became, shamefully, a fancy dress occasion. Now it’s a chance to spend a lot of money watching the Villa, just the same as every other away game.
The luck of the draw takes us to the joys of Liverpool and Anfield, scene of so many Magical European Nights. They must have happened, you read about them often enough. There’s not much magic there now, with the lovable Scousers arguing the toss over whether they should stay true to their principles and reject an oil state buyout, or grab the money. Supporters in more traditional Liverpool heartlands such as Devon, Oslo and Kuala Lumpur have fewer moral dilemmas.
They’ve got a manager who should be pulled aside and told that a baseball cap and trackie bottoms at his age is not a good look. He’s getting a bit grumpy in his old age and probably still hasn’t got over us twatting his kids, then his grown-ups and finally being made to look daft for an hour by our youth reserves. Talking of old age, James Milner’s still there. Him and Ashley Young should have a right good time together. They also have a more embarrassing roll-call of supporters, celebrity or otherwise, than any other club on earth, including Arsenal.
We’ve got most of our casualties back, although Philippe Coutinho is out for the rest of the season (ie a week). You never saw that coming, did you?
They’ve got an outside chance of getting into the Champions League and we can still finish sixth. Amazingly we’ve got a decent record at Anfield and if Alex McLeish can do it, Unal Emery certainly can. Just please, none of that sign on/victims shite. We’re better than that. And try not to devastate Blackpool after.
