Capable owners are very much the exception rather than the rule and you can look down the leagues and see all the clubs that were once in the top flight but have sunk into oblivion. I have often told my son-in-law, a Manchester United fan, that he should be very thankful they didn’t have Doug Ellis in charge for the first fourteen years of the Premier League. Some years ago, one of their directors described Fergie as a perfect brand manager, and whatever disagreements they may have had behind the scenes, the United board had the sense to back him. I doubt that Doug would have done.

That director didn’t describe Fergie as a perfect football manager, though, and that is surely because Premier League owners have a different outlook to the fans. A brand manager puts the club in the international spotlight so that it is easier to flog merchandise and grow the club’s turnover. Winning trophies is useful of course, but it is possibly as much a means to an end as an end in itself.

Our owners appear to be very good at wringing money out of people, as we are only too aware, and we are on course to break the £300 million turnover mark. Unai and the team are doing an excellent job of raising awareness of the Aston Villa name as well as winning a lot of matches. Manchester City and Liverpool will soon be closing in on £1 billion annual turnover, of course, to put things into perspective. Nevertheless, by the end of this season Villa looks set, as a business, to be close to three times the size that it was when we were promoted in 2019-20. Getting close to Manchester City and Liverpool will be extremely difficult, though, because of the PSR regulations, which appear to be designed to maintain the status quo.

How long will we be able to keep Unai for? He is now very hot property but he is with what is still an unfashionable club, so the owners will have to work hard to fend off attempts to prise him away. Once the media have managed to get ten Hag sacked, they will need to find somebody to replace him. But let’s not go there. Let’s just hope that we can hold on to Unai and also that Sawiris and Edens will resist the temptation to sell up and pocket what looks increasingly likely to be a very tidy profit on their investment. I am sure that’s the way they look at it, so we supporters really must seize the day and enjoy the good times while they last. They won’t last for ever.

A few weeks ago, I was watching the Manchester City v Arsenal match on TV with a friend who supports Arsenal. Just before half time, Arsenal took the lead, but soon after that Leandro Trossard was sent off for a second yellow card. That upset my friend considerably as well as entirely changing the balance of the match. We had been looking forward to a thrilling second half but of course, City, with the extra man, were able to lay siege to Arsenal’s goal. The match finished 2-2, thanks to Arsenal’s sterling defensive performance, but I felt that the referee had had a disproportionate effect on the outcome of the game.

Trossard was an idiot, of course, to risk a second yellow, especially for the relatively trivial offence of kicking the ball away. The referee would insist that he was only enforcing the rules and the football authorities seem to encourage card waving. Nobody seems to think of the fans, though, who may well have paid a lot of money for the pleasure of watching eleven versus eleven.

Referees Michael Oliver and Anthony Taylor were chosen to represent this country at Euro 2024 and Taylor made a name for himself in the Spain v Germany match, not only because he refused the host nation a late penalty, but also because he awarded fifteen yellow cards during the match. It seemed to me while I was watching almost as though Taylor brandished a card whenever a player fell over.

All this got me thinking that perhaps the rules should be slackened slightly so that it takes three yellow cards to equate to a red. Far be it from me to encourage the sort of violence that used to take place in my younger days though. You can get a flavour of that by googling ‘most brutal game in English football history’, which returns the 1970 FA Cup Final between Leeds and Chelsea. The referee, Mr. Jennings from Stourbridge, awarded just one yellow card, so you can tell how times have changed. He may have been particularly lenient, but yellow cards were originally intended to be used only for serious offences. Red cards were possibly reserved for murder!

The former emphasis on physicality in English football over tactical nous and skill has, in my opinion, tended to hold us back internationally. I suspect that it may have something to do with the fact that there are only six British managers in our own Premier League while seven hail from the Iberian Peninsula. Only one British manager is currently in the Premier League top twelve, while five of the bottom eight clubs have British bosses.

So I am definitely not in favour of a return to the bad old days and I agree with the referee giving a red card for deliberately preventing a goal scoring opportunity or for potentially maiming an opponent. I just wonder, for the sake of our expensive spectator sport, whether we should make it a bit more difficult for the referee to influence the outcome of the game by brandishing yellow cards for minor misdemeanours, such as timewasting. A player being sent off for two trivial offences is, to my mind, an affront to people who are already being hit hard in the wallet.

The rule for automatic suspension, whereby five yellow cards in less than half a season result in a one match ban and ten yellows before the 33rd match result in a further two match suspension, should deter any increase in foul play, but this regulation could if necessary be tightened to compensate for the relaxing of the in-match rule.

I don’t know about you, but I generally groan when a player is sent off, as it often changes the pattern of the game and is likely to result in three points for the eleven men. Even when the Villa benefit from the decision, I still tend to feel it an unsatisfactory way to decide a football match.

Newcastle were in the sort of position a year ago that we are in now. They finished fourth in the Premier League in 2022-23 and got into the Champions’ League. Last season they had an excellent result against PSG which took them to the top of their group, but in the end they failed to qualify for the knockout stages. After their exertions in Europe Newcastle suffered a major injury crisis, with the result that they failed to regain their top four spot, with Villa being a beneficiary.

Will we be able to maintain a lengthy Champions’ League campaign along with a sustained challenge for a top four place, do you think? The Champions’ League format has changed this season, but hopefully Villa can improve on Newcastle’s performance by making it through to the later stages. It is a long season, though, and we saw last season how Villa ran out of steam towards the end. Playing two big games a week for weeks on end is a big ask that is likely to result in fatigue along with a significant crop of injuries.

I don’t want this season to end up being a Champions’ League one-off, but it is going to be very difficult for us to have a memorable run in the competition while continuing to challenge for a top four place in the Premier League. My gut feeling is that we won’t be in next year’s Champions’ League, but if there is anyone who can prove me wrong, it’s Unai Emery.