Walking in a Witton wonderland.
What is it about everything connected with the Villa? Last Friday Adidas had an offer on the kits; three days later they said they didn’t mean it and cancelled all the orders. Then we got drawn at home in the FA Cup third round. It’s West Ham, which means the Ghost of Bert Millichip probably got mixed up about having claret and blue in an away dressing room.
Emi Martinez has broken a finger, which means he’ll have Christmas off, and probably Easter. And he’ll defy medical science when it spreads to his entire arm. Jacob Ramsey is out for two or three weeks. He might as well book a world cruise as well.
A finale to the saddest story of this or any other year – an inquest heard that Gary Shaw fell and hit his head after a night out. Coincidentally, his medal collection went at the same time for £39,500.
On the morning that Brentford are due to be our ritual sacrifice comes proof that there are still some scribes with a sense of humour, as Emi is said in one story to be playing tonight, ho ho, h…. Well, well, well. Just for once a Villa injury wasn’t as bad as first thought and there he is in goal. Not that he had much ton do for most of the match as Villa looked something like again. Three goals in thirteen first-half minutes courtesy of Morgan Rogers, Ollie Watkins and Matty Cash won the match and the only annoyance was that we should have improved the goal difference in the second half instead of letting one in.
This was always reckoned to be the match when we saw what the waiting list was really like and also the effect of the prices being charged. There were certainly plenty of empty seats although it’s difficult to know how many were bought in advance and not used, or even what the crowd was, because such information is harder to obtain than Stalin-era Kremlin secrets.
To nobody’s great surprise, and with even less sense, the cup match has been shifted to Friday night, for the watching masses.
And the week ended with Storm Daragh (and the Irish Met Office really missed a trick by not insisting it was named Deacy) causing havoc and Villa doing likewise to the Southampton defence. Well, not really because we only scored once but that was enough to beat the worst team seen at Villa Park since us in 2016. The team was changed round a bit and the boss seemed to have got the rotation right. Jhon Duran started and scored midway through the first half. He missed a couple more and he wasn’t the only one; we really should have got four or five. Still, it’s anther three points and it set us up nicely for the week ahead.
For the second match in a row there were a good few seats unoccupied and again a lot of them would have been sat on if the weather had been better. The wind chill was something like minus seven and hardened supporters of a certain age were heard reminiscing fondly about the balmy tropics of the Oldham away end.
