An Away Day Trip Home To Villa Park

Well here we go again, another wallet draining 320 odd mile round trip to the centre of my world, my church, the majestic Villa Park, my religion the mighty Aston Villa, of late it has been a wondrous journey in, full of talk of score lines and scorers, who is going to play and where, how well we are doing at the moment, how magnificent the ability and aerial prowess of he who is now spoken about in the same tone as our lord McGrath, high praise indeed, but he is earning it. Our talk skirts over the little inconsistencies of the right back we hunted for, for so long, suddenly playing at left back (miss you Bouma, get well soon) and we focus on the positives (I do that occasionally, you may have noticed) the emergence of Petrov into the player the majority of us knew he was, the promise of Sidwell and Milner, the brilliance of Barry, and last but not least the dynamic duo, sm Ash and Gab, the world class, genius of the wing (I'm certainly not arguing with that martin) and our mercurial striker, similar conversations no doubt going on in many cars and trains heading to our hallowed ground.

The journey home over the last few weeks has been somewhat subdued due to what can only be described as a run of poor form at home, games we should have won and mistakes we shouldn't have made, in all fairness Man U were lucky to leave with a point, but I really did expect us to beat Zilina, Fulham and Middlesvilla, our away form apart from the unexpected losses to Stoke and Newcastle has been excellent, the Everton match a complete roller coaster of emotion which set off earthquake sensors across the country with 12 seconds left on the clock, but we are due a good home result aren't we?

Bolton are a good, hard working, physical side, with a good away record, and within 18 minutes of the kick off they proved their credentials, I turned to my lad, smiled and said, why do we always seem to go a goal down before we get our arses into gear? On 25 mins a lovely long ball from God MkII finds Gabby who heads it to himself on the run and finishes with a volley, a sublime piece of skill, with arses firmly now in gear the mighty Villa start to take control, after a couple of chances to us and a gilt edged chance for them Barry puts in a sublime cross that finds God MkII in the box, Davies seeing the danger arrive sticks his head in at the same time and it’s deemed a own goal, I saw Laursens hair move after the contact of Davies, so I'm giving it to him, what followed was madness, Ash chopped down on his way into the box, no doubt, no iffy decision, in fact no decision at all, play on!!!!! Shocking! Followed by one of the most blatant hand balls I have ever seen, people working on the International space station saw it, the passengers of flight 69 from Birmingham International saw it, every person in Villa park saw it, even the linesman who raised his flag and then for whatever reason lowered it again, saw it, the only person who didn't, apparently, was the ref, who rightly received dogs abuse for his troubles, the saddest part for me though, was to see a player who was so loved by the Villa faithful for his wonder strike against the scum, go down holding his head and feigning injury, sad.

The second half saw a dominant Villa miss a fair few chances, then comes a lovely floated cross into the box from our World class winger onto the head of our mercurial striker, the fans go wild, this is what we want, gabby looks at the North stand massive and points over to Ash, and there was much rejoicing, just 12 mins later the winged one shoots down the left, holds the ball, looks up (YAY!) and lays a sweet pass into the line of a speeding Genius winger, favour returned, and there was much hugging and much rejoicing, shortly after, our dynamic duo left the field under no illusion as to our feelings for them, the Hare made a rare appearance and didn't he give Jussi a scare, good effort, the only downside was giving another late goal away, wish we would bloody stop doing that.

What followed was a lovely drive home, listening to the whinging fans of Man U saying how crap Berbatov is, whinge, whinge, bitch, bitch, and the other fans of various clubs having a moan, then up popped our Colin (the youtube sensation, currently in America) having a pop at the host over his comments on our chances of a top four spot, I smile to myself and thank McGrath that I'm a Villa fan.

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