Football Daily | Emery and a glorious love affair that could take Aston Villa to glory

4 hours ago 5

A VASE ALWAYS HALF FULL

Someone needed to save face, to halt the crisis (likely to be partially forgotten next week) engulfing Our League™. After six winless games for the English representatives in Bigger Cup, Thursday night did not bring a drastic improvement. Nottingham Forest fell to Midtjylland at home and Crystal Palace settled for a goalless draw against AEK Larnaca in Tin Pot. Step up, Unai Emery. His 100th victory in charge of Aston Villa – nabbing a 1-0 win at Lille – defied his side’s lean league form and continued the Spaniard’s glorious love affair with Bigger Vase.

There’s something about the European second tier that stirs Emery, turning an already excellent coach into an all-seeing, ethereal presence, near incapable of any misstep. No manager has lifted Bigger Vase on more occasions than Emery, who won it three years in a row at Sevilla before his Villarreal team triumphed in a 22-penalty shootout against Manchester United in 2021. Even in his short-lived stay at Arsenal, he couldn’t help himself, taking the boys to Baku for their first European final in 13 years. He’s reached the quarters seven times. When Villa took on PSG at home last year in Bigger Cup, there was much bemusement when it was Bigger Vase’s anthem that blared out of the speakers before kick-off. Emery, you’d like to imagine, had hijacked the sound system to play one of his desert island discs.

For Emery, winning this competition is something precious on its own; life does not revolve around all those extra riches. “Football is emotion,” he told Big Website a little more than a decade ago when trying to go back-to-back with Sevilla. “There’s an economic [imperative] but what fans really want is to enjoy their team. If you have money but don’t generate feeling, it’s worthless. You play [Bigger Cup] but get knocked out in the group, losing all your games, and [the fan says:] ‘Sure, you’ve made €20m, but that means nothing to me.’”

Manchester United are up next for Villa in the league, Michael Carrick’s men having closed the nine-point gap that existed between the two teams at the start of the year. United, with no other commitments, seem more inclined to finish third, the spot that Villa had got so used to. But a slight drop-off domestically surely doesn’t matter when there’s still a chance to generate feeling, for Villa to genuinely challenge for their first proper European trophy in 44 years (with all due respect to the Intertoto Cup). Unai has the aux and he’s ready to cook.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I usually try, especially when it’s an afternoon or evening game, to do something throughout the day so I’m not only thinking about the game and getting stuck in my head, so I’m trying to [go] grocery shopping or doing something that can distract my mind a little bit” – Manchester United’s Women’s Big Cup-winning winger, Fridolina Rolfö, tells Tom Garry about preparing for matches with a sneaky big shop and how her experience could help in Sunday’s Women’s League Cup final against Chelsea.

So Bodø/Glimt’s Kjetil Knutsen has been in charge of the club for as long as Spurs’ last eight managers (yesterday’s Football Daily)? Crikey, imagine how good they’ll be once he’s had time to properly settle in” – Phil Taverner.

With Bodø/Glimt operating at an almost Zen-like level of success, is it any wonder that while messaging, my predictive text honours them as ‘Buddha Glimpse’?” – Jeremy Foxon.

Surprisingly little attention seems to have been paid to USA USA USA’s decision to deny visas to 10 of the Jamaican Mount Pleasant squad prior to their Concacaf round of 16 match at LA Galaxy. A deafening silence from Fifa does not bode well for the upcoming Geopolitics World Cup” – Rob Taylor.

Re: yesterday’s Memory Lane (full email edition). I was there in 1977! As a Bristol City supporter, before the days of all-ticket matches, we paid our farthings and were crammed into the Coventry home end at Highfield Road, with a line of police officers between the opposing fans. It was almost certainly illegally over-filled. The mass of away supporters caused kick-off to be delayed, a crucial aspect to the story … The situation was, for the last match of the season, and a midweek evening kick-off, either team wins and they stay up. Losing team relegated. But Sunderland, promoted from Division Two the previous season along with Bristol City and West Brom, were playing at Everton, and if Sunderland lost, a draw at Highfield Road would see both Citys stay up and Sunderland go down. We went 2-0 behind. It looked all over for us. But somehow we got back to 2-2. Then Coventry decided to display the final score at Goodison Park – 1-0 to Everton. Why? Whatever their reasons it led to the situation you described. Both teams just knocked it about between themselves, no attempts to attack the opposition. Both sets of supporters (including me) and, presumably, players and staff went home happy” – Steve King.

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