Earlier this week I enjoyed the article by Simon Ritter, entitled ‘I come to bury Aston Villa, not to praise them’.
After seeing the reaction by a few Aston Villa supporters to Simon’s excellent piece, I felt compelled to give my fellow Mag contributor some support.
Simon was actually being begrudgingly magnanimous and I completely agreed with his sentiments.
Unai Emery has a decent set of players and Villa’s good early season home form propelled them to a lofty position, which they have managed to maintain throughout the season.
They have done very well, but compared to some of the scintillating football Newcastle United played in achieving fourth position and a European Champions League place last year, Aston Villa have been nowhere near as exciting.
On Thursday night I watched Olympiakos beat Aston Villa, again, in the second leg of their Europa Conference League semi-final.
It finished 2-0 in Greece (6-2 on aggregate), with Villa humbled and put to the sword twice in a week.
It didn’t take a Herculean effort from the Greek outfit to overcome this Aston Villa side, who seem to believe most of the hype that’s been spouted about them in the media.
Olympiakos’ centre forward El Kaabi has enjoyed a goal feast against the Villans, scoring five times across the two ties.
I was one of the Newcastle supporters who thought throughout the 2022/23 season that Moussa Diaby would have been a good signing for Eddie Howe to make.
I was wrong and believe Diaby was overpriced at £52m when he joined Aston Villa from Bayer Leverkusen and has proved to be inconsistent.
Xabi Alonso and Leverkusen have hardly missed him either ,judging by the season they’ve just had. They won the Bundesliga at a canter and go on to face Atalanta in the Europa League final and indeed can do the treble, as they also face Kaiserslautern in the German domestic cup final.
Aston Villa will be playing Champions League football next season and it looks like Newcastle United will probably be in the Europa League or Conference.
After Newcastle easily beat Emery’s side twice this season, that isn’t such a bitter pill for me to swallow.
The Magpies will be soon be flying above Aston Villa once again, as both clubs continue in their personal pursuits to break up the cartel of the Septic Six.
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