It’s Brighton up next in our festive fiesta of fabulous footie.
I’m not one for paranoia, but we’ve got a diabolical record on Boxing Day although it’s a lot better on Christmas Saturday and New Year’s Day. This season we played on Boxing Day and the only other match during the festive season is Monday 30th December. It’s a conspiracy; there’s no other way to describe it.
Why the break with tradition? Are footballer so precious that their delicate bodies can’t cope with two matches in three days, or does everything have to be sacrificed for TV audiences? Don’t bother – we all know the answer. And so making the journey up whatever road it is they take ready to do battle beneath the Villa Park floodlights are Brighton & Hove Albion, everyone’s idea of a well-run, forward-thinking club doing far better than they deserve. Well done, plucky little Brighton. Three cheers for you.
They’ve got some analytics genius buying players for pennies and selling them for the sort of profits that would have Doug spinning in his grave and in the summer they appointed the youngest manager in the Premier League ever, a fourteen year-old German who doesn’t look old enough to even walk down Broad Street on his own never mind get in anywhere. Balancing that out they’re getting another season out of James Milner and talking of fourteen years that’s how long it is since he left us. We’ve had ten managers and three owners since then.
We’ve got a more or less full squad to choose from, although Jhon Duran will be missing because he couldn’t turn a triple reverse somersault in mid-air and miss the player he was being propelled into. There’s futility and there’s Villa appealing a red card – no, it’s not paranoia, it’s a conspiracy. Still, never mind. We battered these last season and we’ll batter them again. Some traditions live on.
