Aston Villa won today for the second time in 4 days. I'm not ecstatic about it. I wasn't cheering out my car window when my friend, who understands the pain of supporting a team that has fallen on hard times, sent me a message that Villa were 2-0 after I'd been driving for a while and unaware of the score. No. I just wanted to get this pretty insignificant bit of information out of the way. Who wants to hear about a second tier English team getting a little bit closer to the mid-table safety? There is only one reason for being in the Championship : to get promoted to the Premier League. Mid-table is about as worthless as third place at the World Cup.
It’s about as meaningless as winning the fifth Test in a cricket match when you've already lost the first four. And where, you may wonder, did I get that comparison from? Many years ago when I paid more attention to the sports pages than the pages of my school books, cricket was added to my list of interests. And at that time England were always losing to Australia. Always. At least that's what it felt like. And whenever it came to the fifth test of the five match series and Australia had one the last four, the English newspapers would go on about how it still mattered. If England did win it somehow became important that England had lost 4-1 and not 5-0. It's still Australia, they would say. We still beat the best team in the world. And they were definitely still trying to win. Here's what I used to think. Yes, the Australians would have liked the 5-0 but they probably could barely give a toss. They were probably sitting on deckchairs, drinking beers, watching England practice the day before the start of the last Test. And if they could lose in a three days and be done with it, they would probably be happy. Do I have any research to substantiate this theory? Absolutely not. But that was my perception. And that's exactly what I think of Aston Villa right now. Eighth or eighteenth, who cares?
The players will have absolutely nothing to play for in a couple of weeks. Summer couldn't come soon enough. In August they will start all over again and hope they are closer to the only meaningful outcome next April.
And that was the most time and emotional energy I have dedicated to Aston Villa in a long time. It's a bit odd going through a big part of a football season without really following a team when you've been doing it for so many years. Although it is quite relaxing watching as a neutral, where you can enjoy the football and not worry about the result. Which reminds me, the Confederation Cup is coming up this summer.
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