Aston Villa v Arsenal FC
Hello!
I hope you’re doing well and that you’ve had a good week?
The opening day of our ninety-ninth consecutive top-flight campaign seemed decent enough, but you can imagine that both the Arsenal and Wolves when they meet again later in the season will be much tighter, sharper and less wasteful than last Saturday. But even so it was pretty enjoyable to watch the fun in the sun and I’m sure we all felt both victorious and harmonious all week in reflection?
Saturday August 24th (17.30pm western European time) sees the mighty Cannon take part in the second of our two bouts against west midland Mannschaften. So its on the train and over the southern borders with cheques and postal orders up to Birmingham New Street and onto Villa Park to take on the much resurrected Aston Villa.
The long beards amongst us will remember the days of glory in the 1980’s (and later) when Villa were a menace in European Cup competitions and in our own domestic league and cup matches. Over the years they won seven league titles, seven FA Cups, seven brides for seven brothers, five league cups and one Charity shield, one European Cup, a European Super cup and an Intertoto cup.
Villa had some misfortune in recent years echoing what has often happened in their long history and were relegated into the Championship for a few seasons but came back up for some fizzy Premier League air in the 2019/20 season. And immediately fought their way to meet The Oil City in the League Cup final, and skidded in the oozy slickness of City’s rich game and got beaten.
And who of course can forget the 2015 Cup final, well obviously Villa fans, but for us that followeth the Gun, Alexis’ magical power-super hoof goal was a spectacular moment, and it was that juncture that I knew we had won that final. Not one Arsenal player from that game is with us now, and how swiftly things change…
“oi! stop getting sentimental, its a sign of weakness, all life is in flux you fool!”
“hey cod-piece face! are you sure your name isn’t scrap-heap services? Are you something from a Sleaford Mods lyric?”
Their manager Mr Unai Emery needs no introduction to us, so I won’t give him one. But he’s mastered wonders at Villa since joining as manager, taking them from a team sniffing the toxic, anxious odours of relegation into a challenging side (finishing fourth last season) although Unai’s win rate is around the 53% mark. Regardless, we irritatingly lost last December to them and hit that negative spell as we were blinded by the festive lights and too many light ales from the night before.
Unai seems a proud man and will be hoping for another avenging win against us, and having beaten the Irons 2-1 at the London Stadium, and also having the hint of home advantage may well feel confident. But we shall see…The Arsenal artillery might have something to play about that, perhaps with another brillant, cheeky goal from Martinelli..?
Well that’s it, lots of bits and pieces of snore that you already knew. Even so, here’s to a great game for us and lucky horses!
COYG and keep on keepin’ on!
Mills
Positively Arsenal 
well what a great seet up to what looks like really good game. I think this one will be close but if we can come away with a 1-0 win then we carry on the start of season and make up three points on last. This is especially important as city have already gained two extra points on last season at Chelsea.
There could be a possible Timber start and maybe a debut for our new defender if we had to close out the game in the second half. The Merino deal maybe over the line by then as well.
Whether it’s Martinelli, Saka or Kai chaos Havertz it really doesn’t matter as long as we come back with three points COYG.
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Thank you Millsy – erudite and chock full of tasty musical allusions. Lovely stuff. Anyone surprised by how well Villa did last season will presumably have learnt their lesson and be suitably chastened. This is a proper match up tomorrow – any of the three possible outcomes seem entirely conceivable to me.
Hopefully Rice will have had the diving boots removed or the lead pumped from his legs. If not I’d like to see Sambi start. Oh wait. I mean Granit. Dammit! Smith Rowe then. No? Is that Portuguese kid injured? Who do we actually have in midfield these days?
Well, whoever starts we can assume the players know what they need to do. I am gigging in the afternoon at a West Country cider festival so it will be Likely Lads for me until the wee small hours when Full Match Replay dot com comes into its own.
By the way, has anyone tried using the official site to catch a missed game? Last time I looked it was physically impossible to find the replay without having been told the score eight times, the goal scorers six times, and what the manager thought of it at least twice. It’s as if they want us to use to pirate sites or just don’t understand football at all.
Have a great weekend folks and thanks for keeping the flame alive.
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ah steww that portuguese kid is on his way back to portugal on loan, another flop signing
this day week the transfer window shuts and along with Vieira arsenal are said to want to get Ramsdale, Nelson, Nketiah, Kiwior and maybe even Partey out, with Merino all set to sign, and Garcia and Bentley possible goalkeeper signings, it would look like we’d need to bring in some attacking players and maybe even another midfielder if all those players leave
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Decent start
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Get in there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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number two!!!!!!
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At one point it didn’t look like we would win it, but that will do nicely!
COYG!
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That was a very important win, not the greatest performance but it was all about the three points
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New post it up
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