Chalkboard for Villa
Well, all that goodwill towards the national team didn’t last long, did it? Widely lauded for squirming out of his tactical straight-jacket and giving youth, exuberance and Andros Townsend a chance against Montenegro and Poland, things were all of a sudden coming up Hodgson and coming up England. World Cup qualification in the bag, the chop-wobbling foghorn Redknapp put in his place and Uncle Roy is suddenly Lord of the Football. We’re going to BROOZIL, the tabloids declared, triumphantly. Huzzah!
And then the racisms happened.
Falling just short of apportioning blame for allowing Townsend to face the bit iffy sounding Montenegro last Friday, or for having the gall to once manage a club with word ‘black’ in their name, the redtops have courageously found evidence to suggest that Roy Hodgson is in fact one massive, walking hate-crime. Don’t be fooled by the urbane, continental demeanour, ladies and gentlemen, this man- this man– is worse than Killroy.
Meanwhile back at the ranch. Premier League kickball is happening later today; Aston Villa the hosts for our resplendent heroes in lilywhite. I’m told that everything should go like clockwork providing we don’t suffer any flashbacks from the last encounter with a claret and blue brigade, which, you might remember, didn’t go quite so well. No need to go into the specifics of the afternoon other than to mention that the machine which provided me the stream for the match exited my living room window like the last helicopter from Saigon.
We’ve already rumbled with Villa this season, of course, in the League Cup third round last month- a game remembered warmly for the cosmic performances of Lewis Holtby and Jermain Defoe and that surprising instance in which Jan Vertonghen revealed the undercrackers of Nicklas Helenius in a daring- and let’s face it, cheaty– last-minute foil. One imagines that if Vertonghen attempts any short-removal shenanigans on his compatriot Christian Benteke today- who’s back from his hip-twang- he’d likely pull his arms off.
TO THE CHALKBOARD!
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