We’re off to Olympiacos. The weather should be nice.
Here we go into another one of our continental adventures. We’re not going to Athens because as everyone knows by now, Olympiacos play in Piraeus, fifteen miles away. It’s like the difference between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, except you can’t get scratchings in Piraeus, and Olympiacos don’t tell you that they invented European football.
Piraeus is the biggest port in Greece and the fifth-biggest in Europe. There’s a lot of old Greek tourist stuff there, not that you’ll see much of it because our supporters will be in Athens whether they like it or not. The second leg should have been a fact-finding mission for the final but the team managed to cock up at home in a way that brought back great Villa semi-final calamities of years past.
they’ll probably have the same team who won at Villa Park we’ll have anothrr injury or two, and if we’re really lucky we might have a player back, preferably a goalkeeper. There will be a lot of smoke, flames, noise, all that ultra nonsense and even more noise before the match. There’ll probably be a fair bit during it as well. This is their Big One, the night when they vanquish the giants of the Premier League. They did well at Villa Park, fair does to them, but we surely can’t play as badly again.
We shouldn’t really have much chance of getting through.The team are knackered, a lot of them are injured and out of form. We’re limping to the end of the season and it shows. Throw in a referee who’s been suspended for bribery and the odds start to mount up. And yet, you never know. Stranger things have happened than us getting an early goal and the home team starting to worry. If we do manage to get through, this will be one of the great Villa cup performances. Go out there and do it.
