Big news from the EFL Championship today. Aston Villa got fed up of chasing the record for most consecutive draws and since it was too much effort to go for a win they allowed Preston to stroll to a 2-0 win.
The Villa fans are also pretty fed up and it's becoming a very common theme. After demanding the owners got rid of the last manager, who replaced the manager before him because the fans insisted he was sacked, who in turn was brought in because the one before was, yes, hounded out by the fans (and there might have been one more) the fans have now had enough of Roberto Di Matteo. A few years ago a manager's job with Chelsea fell into RDM's lap, together with a pretty decent team put together by the previous manager. That Chelsea team, maybe driven by anger at the club owner, Roman Abramovich, for giving them RDM went on to win the Champions League. RDM, thereafter, became known as a Champions League winning manager. And he proceeded to get sacked and has done nothing since. The Champions League winning manager cannot motivate a team he spent a lot of his boss's money on to win at Preston, or Barnsley, or home to Brentford, or Huddersfield.
The most unsurprising news of the break for World Cup qualifiers next week will be that RDM will be looking for something else to do with his life. And in the un-reasonable world of football the same football fans who agreed that Sam Allardyce had to be fired because of that thing he did with those blokes from the newspaper who pretended to be somebody else will now be happy to have the scheming, "how much money can I make on the side" Big Sam come in and lead Villa back to the big time.
Instead of figuring out how to outplay Malta at Wembley, Allardyce could be researching Burton Albion's strengths and weaknesses. Not much difference, you would probably say. And, unless, he does indeed get banned by the FA, it is not a far fetched idea. Ridiculed by almost the whole of England last week, adored in half of Birmingham next week, it's not that outrageous. It happens to English footballers after every World Cup.
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