And so the fun begins…

By: Martini Extra Dry | October 23rd, 2008

It’s been a decade since Villa Park has hosted a significant Euorpean evening, so for Villa fans tonight can’t come too soon. The UEFA Cup’s group stage kicks off this evening, seeing Ajax of Amsterdam travel to Villa for the opening game of our campaign, a tough tie that we are relishing the prospect of.

Villa have got here the long way via the Intertoto Cup and, after so much hard work, a big performance is demanded from the manager and fans alike. The game will be a bit of a culture shock to Villa, who so far have faced much smaller opponents, as Marco Van Basten’s side possess very similar levels of talent and fight as ourselves.

Home advantage is a welcome perk, as is their inconsistent start to their league campaign. In the Eredivisie (Holland’s top flight) this season, Ajax have so far recorded three wins from six which includes an impressive win on Saturday to knock Groningen off the top spot. Other than that though, Marco Van Basten’s men’s other two wins have come against teams in the bottom three and they have lost to Willem II and Heerenveen (a 5-2 thumping), who are both of mid-table quality. This inconsistency will need to be exploited, as will their defensive frailties. Their back line are the biggest inconsistency of the team, having kept three clean sheets in six leagues games but having conceded an average of three goals per game in the other three games.

Villa go into the match keen to make amends for the average performance against Portsmouth on Saturday, but also buoyed by the clean sheet kept. The hope is to emulate the successful UEFA Cup run of a decade ago which included victories against Steau Bucharest, Bordeaux and Atletico Bilbao.

Keep your eyes peeled on here for a (sort of) liveblog. I would do a full-on liveblog but my 3 month old baby hasn’t stopped screaming for a week and it makes it very difficult to blog well. Feel sorry for meeeee!