Glory glory Aston Villa

By: Martini Extra Dry | September 16th, 2008

It’s fantastic to read on the web, in the media and the comments left on here about how much us Villans are enjoying the successful start to this season (don’t mention the Stoke game, I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it!). It’s fair to say that we are getting very carried away considering how early it is in the season, but a) we deserve to enjoy this after how hard the club has worked to get us into a position where fourth is acheivable (even if it’s only for a week or two) and b) it’s not just us, there’s plenty of non-Villans praising our success, realising they need to fear us and even wanting to sign our star players!

We face the Baggies on Sunday in a local derby that league positions tell us we should win easily, but football is a funny old game and never moreso than in local derbys. Last season Man City beat their local rivals both home and away despite finishing 9th while United topped the league and won the Champions League. Local derbys are often won by the underdogs, so Villa can’t be too cocky going into the game on Sunday.

But this won’t stop the Villa fans believing that we are going to trounce them, riding on the crest of a wave after holding Liverpool at the dreaded Anfield and then totally outclassing ’supposed’ top four candidates Spurs and ending up sitting proudly in fourth place. The Villa faithful will this week be placing more bets with co-workers than any other week of the season. Even myself, a lad at my work yesterday bet a fiver that the Baggies will beat us; easy money!

It’s not just the Villa fans that are getting carried away with our position though, some of football’s biggest names are allegedly joining in the frenzy. Apparently, Chelsea are now going to be the next to attempt to prise Gareth Barry away from the Villa and Mark Hughes’ suddenly loaded Manchester City are interetsed in parting with £15 million pounds worth of their pocket change for Ashley Young.

But even if it’s all made up by the media, it’s still good to see that Villa players are now deemed worthy of having stuff made up about them. We have now been accepted by the nation as what we have considered ourselves to be for over a year now; serious contenders to the Prermiership’s top four (or at least we’ll give them all a nasty shock by finishing close behind).

So Villa fans, go to the matches, wear your top, make (affordable) bets, be confident ahead of games and most of all; enjoy this time.