After all the excitement of qualifying for the  Champions League on TWO fronts last May, the campaign finally begins! For our first assignment a trip to visit a team we are getting to know quite well.

We Meet Again!

In our first Champions League campaign under Unai, the first for 41 years, we played at Club Brugge after winning our first three matches. A slack performance and a bizarre penalty decision given against Tyrone Mings, and Brugge won the game 1-0. It wouldn’t take too long for our revenge.

After finishing in the top 8 in League stage, we met up again in the last 16 with the first leg back in Belgium. Leon Bailey’s early strike was a perfect start before Brugge equalised. Then the game turned for the better with an own goal and a Marcus Assensio penalty giving us a 3-1 lead. Two more goals from the Spaniard resulted in 3-0 win at Villa Park, to complete a 6-1 aggregate score.

Summer Of Change

After the Europa League success in Istanbul- 3-0 over Freiburg in case any Villans have forgotten – only 5 players that started that famous night are still at the club. Many new faces have come in, with many of those still to debut or trying to get up to match fitness.

Zion Suzuki has looked solid in goal and hopefully Nicholas Jackson will start scoring some goals.

In Unai We Trust

No goals this season apart from the one in the defeat in the European Super Cup to PSG (1-2) but there were no league goals after the first three games of last season and looked what happened at the end of it.

We scrapped for a win against Bologna (1-0) in the opening game of last season’s Europa League and we might have to do that tonight.

A morale boosting performance tonight will take us to the next two league games before the next international break- Nottingham Forest (Home) and Tottenham Hotspur (Away) with a trip to Coventry City in the League Cup in between.

Up The Villa!

We will be having a watch along at Cranfield United FC for the match- Kick-0ff at 5:45pm.