Just another quiet few days in the great Astonian metropolis.
International week begins, which usually means the national media are looking round for stories in one of the quietest times of the season. There’s still a fall-out from the Arsenal farce/debacle/fiasco, and still no public apology. Chris Heck is lying low while Lee Preece is doing an 18-hour day. Meanwhile Kosta Nedeljkovic is called up to the Serbian national squad while Ollie Watkins withdraws from sitting next to Ezri Konsa on the England bench.
One bright spot is that Emi Buendia starts the Whatever It’s Called Trophy match at Fleetwood and scores, as we go two up early on. Then we make a game of it by letting them equalise before we get a winner. Ross Barkley also played and a few of our hardier supporters got a new ground in. Not a bad night, all told.
The Athletic, which has lasted longer than anyone thought and comes up with the occasional decent story (The Mail/Birmingham Live has one of those things in common), has a piece in which Monchi and Damian Vidagany explain the reasons for our less-than-overwhelming summer transfer window. Basically, we were up against the PSR limit and if we hadn’t got rid of Douglas Luiz we’d have been looking at a points deduction. We could have sold other players but Luiz was the most dispensable. They didn’t say it’s a ludicrous concept but that’s what they meant.
Then comes something that does get called a ludicrous concept and a lot worse, namely the ticket prices for the Champions League games. You knew they were going to be high, but nothing like this. The condemnation is almost unanimous and from some unlikely sources. “Vulgar,” “out of touch” and “deplorable” are included, while our very own fans champion Stan Collymore chips in with a lengthy attack. At this point, almost un-noticed is the new that the disabled car park has doubled, to £380 a season. Twenty quid a match for the most captive audience of us all, just to park.
The publicity from the prices grows and grows. Henry Winter says it’s “iniquitous” in the Times as well as “sheer opportunistic greed”, which is a bit less Times-like. The Supporters Trust aren’t happy, there are resignations from the Fan Advisory Board and protests planned. If the Villa want to rauise a few extra quid thaey could get Lee Preece sponsored by Red Bull.
Amidst the media maelstrom Amadou Onana has been nominated for August’s Premier League Player of the Month, in which he’ll finish third to the Manchester City and Liverpool nominations.
The working week ends with the tickets allocation for Young Boys being announced. We’re not getting many and in a novel way of preventing the riff-raff from travelling it seems that the corporates get a fair chunk of those. At least the disabled car park has gone back to last season’s price, which is in no way an attempt to get some good publicity after all the abuse nor because it’s been claimed that potentially it’s illegal.
Kosta made his international debut and he, plus all the others who were away, have come back from international duty unscathed as far as we can tell, which is the best news of the week.
