Young Boys are coming to Aston on Thursday.
There are at least a hundred jokes that can be made about the idea of playing Young Boys at 5.45 but we’re not making any of them. It’s for TV but I suppose it’s just about acceptable on nights like this, because that’s the price of being in Europe and Europe is where we want to be. Good luck to anyone trying to get home first.
Young Boys are from Switzerland and they won the league a few times then finished third last season. So far this season they’re third again and their manager got sacked last month. They play at the Wankdorf stadium and there’s as many jokes about that as there is about kicking off early.
They might not bring many supporters but they’re likely to be a lot richer than most of the riff-raff who usually inhabit our away seats although the German Market probably won’t see much of it. Who knows, they might make a bit of noise as well. The odds on them winning are even longer than Wolves on Sunday; you can get 90/1 on us losing both. Just saying.
They’ve got a young English right-back who came from Watford and a load of other anonymous never-wasses. Their manager speaks six languages. Apart from that there isn’t a lot more you can say about Young Boys. They’re 22nd in the Europa League, a place below Go Ahead bloody Eagles. We’re sixth and we should be top.
As ever, there’s a lot of speculation about what sort of team Unai will put out, and although we seem to have got this squad rotation sorted for league matches, in Europe we still have a few problems. The world’s number one seems to be as undroppable in these games as Harvey Elliott is unpickable all the time. Matty Cash could do with a rest but with Tyrone Mings injured it might not be worth risking Ezri Konsa at right-back.
In normal circumstances Ollie Watkins might have been rested as well, but that could be outweighed by the chance for him to get a few goals. Whatever other changes Unai might make, though, he should never, ever alter our midfield. The matches against Go Ahead and Maccabi showed that we can’t ever have play a match without Messrs Kamara, Tielemans and McGinn. Drop one and we should be okay, two at a push. None of them in the team and we’re in trouble whoever we’re playing.
The size of the crowd will be another interesting thing to see, although the number of cheap tickets that have suddenly and mysteriously started appearing on secondary sites might be a good indicator that this won’t be a particularly memorable glory night. I suppose that’s what you get for being used tom playing in Europe. Or maybe what you get for getting the prices spectacularly wrong in the first place.
But however many are inside Villa Park, however much they’ve paid and however long they got stuck in the traffic on the way there, one thing’s for certain. Another day, another win. And an early night.
