Getting the last-minute shopping done as well.
‘Twas the week before Christmas, and for some reason the Guardian have done a list of the 100 best players in the world. Emiliano Martinez is straight in at number 23 while Ollie Watkins is at 54. Then more accolades come the way of the world’s finest keeper when he’s named in FIFA’s Team of the Year, proving that not everything they do is unfathomable.
Talking of unfathomable, Villa announce our 150th anniversary match, the highpoint of our season-long celebrations. And who will we be playing – Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Aston Brook St Mary’s? None of them; it’ll be the FA Cup tie against West Ham. Because nothing, absolutely nothing, fits commemorating the richest history of any football club in the world better than the second home match of their 151st year, on a Friday night in January, with ten thousand empty seats, the opposition making up nearly a quarter of the crowd, a load of reserves in the team and a near-inevitable defeat.
Still, it could be worse; they could be selling bits of a goal net for £60 a time. This WAS a wind-up, wasn’t it?
Conor Hourihane has announced his retirement, and good luck to him whatever he ends up doing, which for the moment is assistant manager at Barnsley, Anyone who can rip the net against our two nearest and dearest neighbours should always be welcomed in B6.
The latest developments for the world-famous Villa Park are a 3,500 capacity facility where Stumps is now (one for you older readers). You never know, it might be the mid-size music venue Birmingham has needed for decades, or it might not. It’s still not a new North Stand, though.
We’re bringing Louie Barry back from Stockport in January. For how long and where he’ll end up is another matter but there are a couple of places he’d better not be sent to.
That £50 million loan we took out the other week has been settled. Nobody knows who is was from, why we needed it and what we did with it, and very likely nobody ever will.
And so to what is now annoyingly called game day, and the arrival of those lovable rogues Manchester City, well and truly on the crest of a slump which we obligingly continued for them. We had two good chances in the first minute before Jhon Duran put us into the lead with one of the most straightforward goals he’ll ever score. He should have scored another, Morgan Rogers hit the post, we got even better after half-time and Rogers made up for his miss with what would have been a truly wonderful solo goal if he hadn’t passed to John McGinn to hit the return.
We felt sorry for them and gave them a goal at the end but that was the only blemish on what might have been our best league performance of the season. When they’re on form we haven’t half got a good team.
In the aftermath of the match Michael Owen says we were horrible for booing Jack Grealish, whose potty-mouthed dad’s off on one on the same subject. Somehow, I doubt he’ll be as welcome in the Aston Social as he used to be.
