We’re off to visit Manchester City. What a clash it will be.
You win one cup final, you barely have time to draw breath and you’re onto the next one. Here we have the good old Villa tradition of playing a team who were struggling, at least by their standards, but when we turn up they’re back in form. The difference now is that we’re in even better form than they are. The best form in Europe, by all accounts, except for FC Noah of Armenia, and we’re not at home to ‘jokes’ about them winning their games two by two.
Manchester City, at the Etihad. I get silent when I’m drugged up, they’re silent for ninety minutes then get very loud about how the world’s against them. Perhaps if they played by the rules and accepted that they’d have won almost as many trophies without breaking them, what with the money they’ve got, there might not be so much animosity. I don’t know what can be done about it, but I do know that if you play the game you get nothing out of it.
Their players are the usual collection of mercenaries whose agents will have been in contact with every club in Saudi in the time it takes to say “Guilty” 115 times. Not that that will ever happen, because when you’ve got as much money as they have, playing by the rules, like paying taxes, is optional. There really is no reason to play fair.
You might have a fair idea what our squad will look like but nobody except God and Unai Emery (and it’s getting harder to tell the difference) know what the starting lime-up will be, apart from Morgan Rogers and the best keeper in the world.
Last Saturday’s results was a massive one, getting anything here will be a bonus on top of it. Three points will prove that just sometimes, it isn’t a case that if you want to survive, you better learn how to lie. You don’t always have to cheat if you can’t win.
