An enormous shock comes as Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes has a red card overturned and is eligible to play against… well, you don’t have to ask the answer to that one.

We’ve been waiting for Wednesday night since 1983. Decades of false dawns, broken promises, dashed hopes and thinking there couldn’t possibly be a worse team than Billy McNeill’s hapless cases then being proved wrong. All those bad times were repaid and forgotten in one glorious evening. I’ll go to my grave swearing that on certain occasions there’s nowhere like Villa Park and this was one of them. The club put on a spectacle that kept away from cringe and left enough up to the crowd for it to seem totally natural. The players were a bit short of their best but what they lacked in individual brilliance they made up for in teamwork and sheer effort.

Jaden Philogene had a dream start, Diego Carlos had his best game in a long while, Emiliano Martinez showed yet again that there isn’t a better keeper in the world and above all Jhon Duran was Jhon Duran. It was absolutely, truly magical and the scenes at the end showed how much it meant to players, supporters and heirs to the throne alike. Not only was it one of the great European nights, it might just have been the greatest.

And the day after that the national media seemed to have enjoyed it as well. They didn’t tell us anything we haven’t known for two years but it waa good of them, regardless.

Pau Torres is in the Spanish squad, Morgan Rogers isn’t in the English one, as if anyone thought he would be. Fortunately Ezri Konsa and Ollie Watkins both are. Torres then becomes this season’s choice of the player geting linked with a move to our next opponents a couple of days before we play them. Which is of course just a coincidence, same as it is every year.

Bologna tickets go on sale and almost sell out almost immediately, which is a bit of a mixed blessing because God knows what encouragement this will give Chris Heck. We always used to be groundbreakers; now we might become the first club to offer loans to buy match tickets.

Which is of course something Sunday afternoon’s ‘guests’ would love to have thought up. We hate playing them and would probably have settled for a draw from the off. Their manager is a match away from getting his contract paid up. A goalless draw was therefore probably the most obvious result, and so it proved. They had a couple of chances well saved by the world’s number one while our best opportunity was deflected away fom danger. Matty Cash is back from injury, so in the manner of John Bright Street circa 1985 it had to be one in, out out. Amadou Onana was the man not wearing a tie, and Ezri Konsa joined him early in the first half.