Brighton – Villa; Is today the day we qualify?

I’m sure you already know, but I’ll say it anyway. It’s nothing like a prediction from me, but the simple facts are that if we beat Brighton and Liverpool beat Spurs, we will qualify for the champion’s league and finally hit the big time that we’ve longed for, for so many years.

Assuming Salah’s petulant discussion with Klopp was a one off and not a demonstrator of a manager that’s lost his dressing room, you would think the Reds would want to give a good showing as a send off for an excellent manager of the club. Whatever, I expect that particular game to be a really good one and fortunately it’s after our match meaning we can watch it with even more interest than usual.

First things first then and the squad news is that whereas I thought Martinez, Tielemens and Moreno would all be fine for this game, they were being assessed just before travelling. Mings, Buendia, Kamara and Ramsey remain out.

As for Brighton, they’re in pretty rough nick too, with Adam Lallana, James Milner, Jan Paul van Hecke, Tariq Lamptey, Pervis Estupinan, Jack Hinshelwood, Kaoru Mitoma, Solly March and Evan Ferguson all out.
The usual “who cares about them?” applies, but we do like to put it up there just for clarity.

There are some very interesting facts about the two teams and while I don’t normally go a bundle on past events, I want to mention them;

We have only lost one of our last seven Prem away games.
Albion’s most recent top-flight home victory against Villa was 1-0 in December 1980.
The Seagulls are winless in their last six matches in the Premier League and have won one of their previous nine, which was against Forest in March.
So things seem to bode well then.

Except there’s one big fly in the ointment.
Got a terrible record of late and need something to help get over it?
Easy. Play Aston Villa and they’ll soon sort that out for you.
Or at least that’s how it’s been for a very long time.
We’re a different and better team now, of course, but there’s always that nagging doubt that it will just go wrong, isn’t there?
Even though we’ve done superbly this season, it’s still not easy being a Villa fan. Well, for me, at least.

We could just be a few hours away from achieving what seemed to be totally unachievable when the scouse clown was in charge and how things have changed in such a short time.
To be honest, I’m not even sure if I’m ready to believe it if it does happen and I think I’ll need some time to fully get my head round it.

If I had to predict this game, I don’t think I could, because while I feel more confident than I did against Olympiacos, a win just feels like it would be too easy and straightforward and it never goes like that for us, does it? It was just typical that we lost to Arsenal on the day we won the league, for example. (Slight aside, but just think: we took 25,000 fans to that game. That’s nuts compared to today’s levels).

I’m extremely hopeful, let’s put it that way.

UTV!