SkyDaz Banter: Pre Leicester

Vertigo: a sensation of whirling and loss of balance, associated particularly with looking down from a great height.

Smug: having or showing an excessive pride in one’s achievements.

Rollercoaster: an attraction that goes through wild and unpredictable changes.

Europe: continent of the Northern Hemisphere.

Sorry about the last one. You know how it is when someone mentions something to you that you never noticed before and then all of a sudden it’s everywhere you look. I keep hearing the word ‘Europe’.

From the Villa great escape to the depths of the FA Cup to the thoroughly deserved home wins against Boro and Bolton. It was a rollercoaster ride that ended with us all suffering from vertigo, an element of smugness and dreams of pastures new.

My pa (not the Finnish football team!) said to me as we walked home from the Bolton game, “enjoy the moment, this is the highest we have ever been in my lifetime”. He’s 129, bless him!

I was in a heavy debate with some Villa fans not so long ago. There was the usual banter of how rubbish we are and how brilliant the Villa are (were?) – the standard history lesson. Being the boring anorak that I am, I pointed out that whilst they were above us in the league we had a reasonable run of home games that we should win.

These included Boro, Bolton, Leicester and Leeds. They all took a deep breath and shook their heads dolefully. Apparently I was grossly mistaken. According to the Villa fans, these were the worst teams we could be playing at the moment, as they would be scrapping for points.

In my most sarcastic tone I conceded the point and agreed that it would be far better if we were playing Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United! Weird logic! Just how stupid is that for an argument!

The teams that are down the bottom are clearly there for a reason, they are rubbish!

This was followed up with the other old boring classic that we played Boro and Bolton at a good time as they had just competed in the Carling Cup Final. Are they suggesting we should ask the Premiership to postpone the matches until our opponents are ready to play us?

So my fellow Blues fans, you have just got to accept that no matter what we achieve we are never going to get any credit from our neighbours. They are still living in the pages of the Rothman’s Year Book listing all their triumphs when there were only 12 teams in the league! Fans of other clubs are mightily impressed with the achievements of Steve Bruce and his blue and white army. We have developed our own style of gaining points through dogged textbook defending that is not for the purists but I have to tell you, it’s entertaining the hell out of me!

I like the style of the stadium announcer against Boro who found a new way of keeping Forssell’s price and publicity down. The scorer of the first goal was changed at half time to Taylor. Genius, give all the flying Finn’s goals to someone else! Surely we can get the Dubious Goals Committee to investigate all his strikes and start removing goals that got deflected.

Finally, does anyone know how long these dizzy spells last?

Darren will be back behind the microphone for Sky Sports’ interactive ‘Fanzone’ commentary of the Premiership game with Leeds United later this month.

Article reproduced with kind permission of the BCFC official matchday programme.