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Someone needed to save face, to halt the crisis (likely to be partially forgotten next week) engulfing Our League™. After six winless games for the English representatives in Bigger Cup, Thursday night did not bring a drastic improvement. Nottingham Forest fell to Midtjylland at home and Crystal Palace settled for a goalless draw against AEK Larnaca in Tin Pot. Step up, Unai Emery. His 100th victory in charge of Aston Villa – nabbing a 1-0 win at Lille – defied his side’s lean league form and continued the Spaniard’s glorious love affair with Bigger Vase.
There’s something about the European second tier that stirs Emery, turning an already excellent coach into an all-seeing, ethereal presence, near incapable of any misstep. No manager has lifted Bigger Vase on more occasions than Emery, who won it three years in a row at Sevilla before his Villarreal team triumphed in a 22-penalty shootout against Manchester United in 2021. Even in his short-lived stay at Arsenal, he couldn’t help himself, taking the boys to Baku for their first European final in 13 years. He’s reached the quarters seven times. When Villa took on PSG at home last year in Bigger Cup, there was much bemusement when it was Bigger Vase’s anthem that blared out of the speakers before kick-off. Emery, you’d like to imagine, had hijacked the sound system to play one of his desert island discs.
