Olympiacos v Villa Pre-match Thread

[olaftab]

Here we go. Come on Villa boys don’t let this be the last trip to Athens this season.

[wince]

Not confident on this one at all. But even if we do go out it’s been a hell of a journey

[Demitri_C]

Going with low expectations so i wont be disappointed afterwards

Utv

[Nii Lamptey]

Robbie Keane masterminded a 4-1 win here for Maccabi Tel Aviv in the 2nd round and he's not exactly the brain of Tallaght (for Brits, pronounced "Ta-la").

Let's mash'em ! 

The Olympiacos manager had only been through the door less than a month when they met. Different prospect now - Has them organised and looking a proper unit. Still think Unai can do it mind.
Also, their coach masterminded Sevilla's Europa League win last season. No pressure boys!

[Olneythelonely]

Robbie Keane masterminded a 4-1 win here for Maccabi Tel Aviv in the 2nd round and he's not exactly the brain of Tallaght (for Brits, pronounced "Ta-la").

Let's mash'em ! 

The Olympiacos manager had only been through the door less than a month when they met. Different prospect now - Has them organised and looking a proper unit. Still think Unai can do it mind.
Also, their coach masterminded Sevilla's Europa League win last season. No pressure boys!

Unai has masterminded a fair few himself.

[jwarry]

Article by Gary Jacob in today’s Times

It was back in the autumn when Peter Withe visited Aston Villa’s training ground and spoke to Unai Emery and Ollie Watkins about the memorable times when the club were the best team in England and Europe. Withe was one of the heroes, scoring 20 league goals as Villa were crowned champions in 1981 and, on an unforgettable night a year later in Rotterdam, tapping home to defeat Bayern Munich 1-0 to deliver the European Cup.

After recovering from celebrations that involved the dynamic striker tipping 26 bottles of champagne into the trophy, Villa took part as holders the following season, reaching the quarter-finals, and they are on course to qualify for the rebranded Champions League for the first time since then — possibly confirming their place on Saturday.

To boot, Watkins needs one goal to become the first Villa player to score 20 top-flight goals in a season since Withe. But before all that there is the small matter of trying to reach the Europa Conference League final by overturning a 4-2 deficit against Olympiacos in Greece on Thursday.

Withe, who was born in Liverpool, scored 74 league goals in his five years at Villa, having signed from Newcastle United for a club-record £500,000 in 1980 as a league winner with Nottingham Forest in 1978. Now 72, he travelled from his temporary home in Perth, Australia, this season to watch Emery put his players through their paces, before being invited into the team’s dressing room before the 4-1 win over West Ham United in October.
He told Emery a tale about Villa needing to beat Middlesbrough as they chased the title in their penultimate match of the season in 1981.

“My team-mates were apprehensive and said, ‘Middlesbrough are our bogey team,’ ” Withe says. “I replied that it was ironic because I’ve never been on the losing side against Middlesbrough and always scored against them. When the game came, I scored, hit the post twice, and we beat them 3-0. It could have been ten. After the game the lads told me, ‘You kept your record going.’ I replied, ‘It was a little white lie, it was just to change your mental attitude.’ They were perplexed and I said, ‘You were so down in the dumps I used it to get you on a positive front.’  “Unai liked it and said maybe you should come into the dressing room and tell a few stories. He agreed with me that sometimes you have to change the way people think, that you’re not battling against relegation, you’re going for the top half of the table. I told Unai he was doing a tremendous job in changing the mental attitude of players. I thought they would achieve it by getting into the top ten but he’s taken it a stage further.”

During his visit Withe had photos taken with the players and staff and was shown a sign labelled “Withe Way 82” on a road at the club’s Bodymoor Heath training complex. He was presented with a shirt, inscribed on the back with his name and the No9. John McGinn, the captain, took him to see Watkins, the forward who wears No11 and is hoping to emulate Withe’s 20-goal haul from 1980-81.

“It was quite emotional shaking hands with the players,” Withe says. “Watkins was having a massage and I said, ‘I’m going to tell you something you probably don’t know about Aston Villa and this club is synonymous with a certain number. Do you know what the number is?’ He did not know. I said, ‘No9s, not No11s, going back to Tom “Pongo” Waring in the 1930s. If you want to be a centre forward at Aston Villa, No9 is the number you should wear as a goalscorer from next season.’ ”

Withe, then 29, formed a prolific partnership with Gary Shaw, the Holte End’s homegrown hero, and scored 20 times in 36 games to finish joint-top scorer in the league with Tottenham Hotspur’s Steve Archibald in 1981. Shaw got 18 and Tony Morley ten that season. “My record has gone too long and if you’re going to be successful, in the top-four places, you need someone to get you 20 goals,” he says. “The big difference is that before Watkins was getting into the positions and not scoring — and now he is finishing.”

Withe’s Villa side were a testament to the success of teamwork and built by Ron Saunders, who resigned on February 9, 1982 due to a disagreement over his contract when his team were mid-table and in the European Cup quarter-finals. Tony Barton, his assistant, took over.

Villa reached their first European Cup final after beating Anderlecht 1-0 at home and securing a goalless draw in the second leg. For the final Bayern were overwhelming favourites. They had a star-studded team boasting 13 West Germany internationals and household names including Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Paul Breitner and Klaus Augenthaler.

Villa’s main hero on the day was Nigel Spink, a largely unknown 23-year-old goalkeeper with only one previous appearance in the first team, who was called into action after nine minutes when Jimmy Rimmer was injured. But it was Withe who scored the winning goal, in the 67th minute. Villa were penned back and, on a rare counterattack, Morley turned Hans Weiner inside out and crossed for Withe to score after the ball bobbled on the surface. “My momentum took me into the goal and I ended up holding the net, looking at the supporters,” Withe says.

On the front of Villa Park’s North Stand is a banner recalling Brian Moore’s commentary of the build-up to the goal. Withe swapped shirts with Augenthaler and pocketed a £2,000 winning bonus from Villa, more than three times his wage. He and Augenthaler were among the players called for a urine test after the final.

“We said we would never fill a bottle as we’d been running around,” he says. “We saw someone walking with a crate of beer towards the Villa dressing room. We took it off him, opened the beers and offered them to Augenthaler and Wolfgang Dremmler. They said no. It did the job but by the time I got inside the dressing room, only the kit man was there. I sat in the bath with a bottle of champagne thinking, ‘We won the biggest trophy in Europe, and I am sitting on my own in a bath, sipping champagne.’ ”

On the coach journey back to the team’s base in Amsterdam, they thought they had lost the trophy but Withe had stashed it in the toilet for safekeeping. Once back at their hotel, Withe and his team-mates tipped 26 bottles of champagne into it — and still, Withe says, it was not full.

“I said to [Villa centre back] Ken [McNaught] we have to stop this as we need to pick up the trophy,” he says. “It weighed a ton. By the time we lifted it up and put our lips on the brim, the bubbly came flowing out and splashed over our faces. My wife, Kathy, who was sitting by the hotel window, wanted to have a sip. She nearly fell out of the window and into the canal below when I passed the trophy to her. I was hanging on to her and the European Cup by the ledge of a window.”

Withe briefly became a manager with Wimbledon in 1991, then returned to Villa as chief scout, before coaching Thailand to the semi-finals of the 1998 Asian Games. He resigned in 2003 and had spells in charge of Indonesia, non-League Stockport Sports, and Thai sides PTT Rayong and Nakhon Pathom United.

He travels between continents to visit his three sons, and while in Australia he usually watches Villa’s matches on repeat the following day. He has lost none of his dry humour. “It’s only taken 40 years to get back,” he says. “But Villa are going in the right direction without a doubt.”

[Monty]

Robbie Keane masterminded a 4-1 win here for Maccabi Tel Aviv in the 2nd round and he's not exactly the brain of Tallaght (for Brits, pronounced "Ta-la").

Let's mash'em ! 

The Olympiacos manager had only been through the door less than a month when they met. Different prospect now - Has them organised and looking a proper unit. Still think Unai can do it mind.
Also, their coach masterminded Sevilla's Europa League win last season. No pressure boys!

Yeah Mendilibar's a real coach. Never going to be Real Madrid or Barcelona manager, but still a proper one.

[cdward]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/aston-villa-olympiacos-match-fixing-32758695
This is interesting, between the dodgy owner and the dodgy ref, we are going to be up against it tonight.

[PeterWithe]

Might be good that there are all these stories about corruption knocking about, the ref might over compensate

[Clampy]

I think we can do this, we can most definatley do it because we're more than good enough. I can see them scoring though.

Time to believe.

[Dogtanian]

I think we can do this, we can most definatley do it because we're more than good enough. I can see them scoring though.

Time to believe.

Yep, I have a feeling in me water. The boys need to get out there and fight. They had their pants pulled down at home in front of the watching world, it's time to go and show what we're made of.

[Olneythelonely]

I also have a strange feeling of optimism.

I also have niggling doubts about how knackered we are and that we going to have to break them down, whilst they will presumably sit very deep.

Still, have a feeling something mad is going to happen.

[RamboandBruno]

Keep the faith. Thats it.

[LeeB]

They've got it all to lose and we've got nothing. If we can exploit that dynamic we can get through.

Two legged semis can be topsy turvey.

[Risso]

I also have a strange feeling of optimism.

I also have niggling doubts about how knackered we are and that we going to have to break them down, whilst they will presumably sit very deep.

Still, have a feeling something mad is going to happen.

We've definitely got the quality to do it, but the tiredness is obviously a huge problem, as is the inability to keep a clean sheet. If we score first, and hopefully early enough it's game on. If they score first it's pretty much game over.