Welcome back to the Astonian treadmill.
The pre-season friendlies have ended and it’s back to Bodymoor with a more or less full-strength squad; even Morgan Rogers’ injury doesn’t seem too serious. It won’t last. Meanwhile we’ve made at least one more signing; Guinness are our new beer partners. That’s the Guinness which famously takes forever to be poured. Nothing can go wrong there, oh no. Joe Gauci’s going to Port Vale for a season.
To no-one’s surprise Crystal Palace have been demoted to the Conference League, which means our match against them will be on Sunday at 7pm. You’d feel sorry for them and their supporters if they weren’t Crystal Palace.
Jacob Ramsey is about to sign for Newcastle, for £40 million or something like that. Leon Bailey’s on his way to Roma by the sound of it as well while Marco Asensio might be coming back.
It gets better. We’re fined £125,000 by the Premier League for not playing Multiball properly last season. We’re also banned from doing it for three games this season, at the end of which we’ll probably be fined again. Meanwhile Unai says in his pre-match press conference that he wants to get back into the Champions League but we’re not top seven at the moment. Mind games, it’s the only explanation.
It’s the day before the first home match of the season and the Villa Park ticket office breaks its silence. Get there early, or else, is the message of welcome.
And so we do, and there’s not that many problems getting into most of the ground. Well, it was better than last season, and the season before. Perhaps they’re finally learning, although maybe not if the queues to get served at half-time are anything to go by.
By that time nobody was drinking to forget, because there’d been nothing to remember in the first half. We’d barely had an attack and definitely not a shot either on target or off, which was the first time it had happened in the Premier League for more than a year according to someone who probably wears an anorak and has no friends. At the other end Marco Bizot had shown that he’s an upgrade on Robin Olsen, which as a low bar is about as hard as Villa being more ready for the start of the season than last year.
The second half began a bit better and we had a couple of chances but then Ezri Konsa was sent off and we settled for a point after that. Newcastle didn’t have a lot of attacking ability, we had even less. Both clubs need to spend, neither are allowed to. Both sets of supporters made their opinions known about whose fault that is. And at least we didn’t lose.
Ramsey’s off for forty million undisclosed pounds. Tyrone Mings says something enigmatic on whatever young people call Twitter these days. As does someone else. “Every words comes stronger: we keep fighting this situation. As difficult it is, we won’t give up.” Fighting words from Damian Vidagany. Then Leandro Dendoncker is lined up to join Real Ovideo, which is a bit more help to get someone else in.
