Results elsewhere and in other competitions mean that fifth will be good enough to get into the Champions League. For thirty-odd years this would have been the cue for another rant about how the competition is being devalued by the day but times are different now and what a bit of good news this is.

Proper football returns and if you’re not in Aston there’s no better place to watch it than Bologna. The weather’s good, the food and architecture are even better and the Villa are there. They did their best to ruin the triumphant return early on as Bologna had a goal disallowed for offside then hit the post. Then we started playing, John McGinn just missed and on half-time their keeper and defence combined to avoid doing any defending a corner and we were a goal up going into half-time.

Then the second half started and it didn’t take long for Ollie Watkins to work his best magic in the box and the ball to end up in the back of the net. The match was starting to get a bit less interesting when Bologna got the ball and nobody, least of all the newly-arrived Leon Bailey, tried to stop them.

You might think that a 2-1 win away from home in Europe is a good result and make sure that’s how it ends. You might even get a corner in stoppage time and send less players up for it than you keep back. And when that happens, perhaps you don’t deserve the opposition to stand around as the ball comes over to your newly-returning star striker five yards out. Even an Italian air traffic controllers strike couldn’t stop the sheer enjoyment.

There are reports linking Unai to an approach from Spurs. You’ve got to hand it to them – God loves a trier. And they don’t come more trying than Spurs.

Proving that a Villa player doesn’t have to be playing for Villa to get injured, Evann Guessand’s out for four weeks. Meanwhile Donyell Malen, who’s still our player, gets a hat-trick for Roma. That’s ten goals in twelve matches.

Although when it comes to injuries we still do them better than anyone else. Emiliano Martinez managed to get one before kick-off again, which makes you wonder what they’re doing in the warm-up these days. It never used to happen; now it’s regular. At least we have Marco Bizot to step in at about three minutes notice. The first half started off well enough and we went a goal ahead when Morgan Rogers’ cross went in via a Forest defender. We had a couple more chances and they had one, but annoyingly theirs was the only one that went in.