A night for 'glory' not 'cash'
[Getty Images] The best thing about doing the business last Friday is that this week does not have to be about business at all. Perhaps, even if often in the background, football has always been about business, the field inevitably tilted a little towards the biggest and the richest. Now, though, every fan knows the price of every game, not just the emotional value.
The Championship play-off final - won by Villa seven years ago - is the "richest game in football", every Premier League position is worth more prize money, Champions League qualification the ultimate jackpot. There has been no escaping that the first order of business for Villa this season has been to secure a return to the Champions League, and the merit of being in the Europa League this season was to give them two realistic chances of hitting that target. Arguably, Europe was the easier route.
As a now-regular top-six contender in the Premier League, clearly the best-resourced domestic competition, it was right to have high expectations. Villa were universally billed as pre-season favourites for the tournament for sound reasons. All the same, to reach this stage in such impressive style is a notable achievement and a measure of progress from two years ago, when Villa ran out of fuel in the closing laps of a brilliant season and broke down against Olympiacos.
Managing the demands of the Europa League alongside a domestic programme that wears down even the strongest squads requires skill and careful judgement. Beating Liverpool eased the tension that had built in the second half of the season as Villa's form rose and fell. With the overarching requirement now met, the final can now be enjoyed solely for the emotional value of occasion itself, not the cash value.
So it should be. For most fans, that would have happened anyway. While all understand and share the Champions League ambition, what they crave most now is the glory, the thrilling memory that only the moment your team lifts a major trophy can give.