Villa out of the UEFA Cup and I don’t care

By: Chris | February 27th, 2009

An Aston Villa reserve team, featuring Nathan Delfouneso, Marc Albrighton and Wee Barry Bannan flew to Russia four the second leg of our UEFA Cup Round of 32 tie against CSKA Moscow. They did us proud, by all accounts, and certainly didn’t get murdered. 2-0 was the final scoreline, with goals from Yuri Zhirkov on the hour and Vagner Love in stoppage time. Given the circumstances, that wasn’t too shabby.

So…the controversy.

I’m not going to sit on the fence here, and I’ll probably lose some readers – sod them. Martin O’Neill was right to leave Brad Friedel, Gareth Barry, Stiliyan Petrov, Ashley Young, James Milner, Gabriel Agbonlahor and Emile Heskey at home.

The question being asked by most of the moaning Villa fans today has been “why all the fuss last season if we didn’t want to win it?”. Hell, I’ve even read one twat asking what Freddie Bouma must think, having picked up his horrible injury in a game which helped Villa make the UEFA.

I hope to god that the more idiotic Villa fans don’t read this blog. If you do, you’d probably be better off phoning the local radio show with the other misfits. But take this piece of information with you: circumstances change.

We did want to win the UEFA Cup. But you know what? Nobody predicted Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool being so bad this season. Nobody predicted that this would be the year for someone to break the top four. And nobody predicted that it’d be Villa with the best chance of doing it.

We’re not really in a position to grab this very rare opportunity with both hands at the same time as fighting for two cups. We made some decisions before Everton and CSKA, and fell short in the games. C’est la vie.

If you think that either of those competitions is more important than Champions League qualification then you are, sadly, very wrong. The Champions League is a bad thing, but it’s a reality of modern football. To be successful, we need to be in it. And we’ll never get a chance like this again.

If you’ve used the word disgrace in the last 48 hours, you should hang your head in shame. If you’ve suggested that Martin O’Neill should be sacked, you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

I got a lot out of this year’s UEFA Cup. I saw Villa beat Ajax, and I had an amazing couple of days in Prague – including a win for the lads. I regret nothing. But right now, and just for this season, it’s rightfully been put on the backburner.

Disgrace? Look in the mirror.