Villa at home to Southampton. Only travel if your journey is necessary.
After a weird 8.15 kick-off last Wednesday it’s back to Saturday 3 pm for the visit of yet more hapless victims. That is, if they can get here in the middle of what’s bound to be called the worst storms of the century.
Southampton, that’s who we’re playing. You could easily forget them; they’re not particularly memorable. They are, though, the sort of club who never seem to belong in the Premier League even though they’ve only been out of the top division a couple of times since it was spawned. You could almost say they’ve done well but that would mean being sporting to the opposition and that would never do.
Kevin Keegan used to play for them, as did Alan Shearer. Matt Le Tissier was there as well; he always used to score against us and we were occasionally in for him but it’s probably for the best that he never played for us because then we’d have to defend him and that’s not the act of anyone sane. Now they’ve got Cameron Archer unless we’ve bought him again in the past couple of days, and a manager who sounds like an American chat show host. They’ve also got James Bree, and if his name sounds familiar he used to play for us a long, long time ago. This is usually the place where we pour scorn and derision on the other team’s supporters but has anyone ever met a Southampton supporter?
Instead let’s move onto our injuries and the prospect of further freak casualties. Normally we don’t get any more but in this wind anything might happen. Anything, that is, except the sort of win that makes the opposition think things can’t get any worse. That’s not ‘might’ it’s a definite. We’re moving back up the table – not even a hurricane could slow us down.
