Les Bleus, Fenerbahçe tonight and BBC match facts

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could win every game without knowing the lows, or the highs for that matter. I mean, it’s a simple game and we’ve spent quite a bit of money, we should beat Everton. Losing to Everton was a low blow and I enjoyed it.

I didn’t lose against Everton, I wanted to win. But this feeling made it seem real. It started to put things into perspective. Football is not supposed to be easy. It’s not just about the money spent. It’s a 38-game season and we don’t know, but we want to. Football is about desire, passion and above all not knowing what will happen.

And it’s the little things that count. Sometimes the big things, but mostly the little things. But when you put all these little things together, they become big. McGinn leaving and not having Kamara or Onana, that’s the reason we lost to Everton. Some might even say that not having Malen had a role to play.

But that’s what happens in football. And we’re still seven points ahead of the team behind us and that’s a great place to be. But some might also say we have 16 games left and a lot can happen in that time. And they wouldn’t be wrong and with the loss of Kamara for the season, an indefinite amount of time without McGinn and no replacement for Ollie now, it feels a bit like we’re not on solid footing.

And this land is not controlled by anyone at the Club. These are the rules put in place to support the biggest clubs. Having said that, rules are meant to be broken, or at the very least pushed to the absolute limit. How about we break 115 at once and see what happens?

On this point I want to write it down for a moment so I can reference it, Manchester City are not breaking the rules at the moment because they now have the revenue and the success. But if they didn’t break the rules in the first place, they wouldn’t have what they have today. I’m sure that’s why the decision to relegate them to League Two is taking so long, but it has to be taken into account.

But that’s enough. We have to move on and tonight it’s Fenerbahçe and it’s not really tonight, later this afternoon because kick-off is still early. But it’s an important game, as they all are now, but it’s important because Fenerbahçe are within touching distance of the top eight. If they win tonight, there’s a good chance they’ll be there and you want to finish in the top eight if you can.

That’s why it’s a great match. And I hope the manager will do what he has to and I believe the players will give everything. They know better than us what tonight means and for some it could be a way to stake a claim for a spot or make it harder for the manager to let them down when the players return or perhaps if we see a new player or two arrive.

A win tonight and we’ll all feel a little better after Everton this weekend. But then we have to prepare for Newcastle on Sunday and I have a feeling it will be a difficult game. But we have to get back on the horse and we have to show that last weekend was just a crazy phenomenon. Or there will be writing that we look tired and our team is too thin. And writing like that tends to spread and make people believe it.

That’s right, I’ll come back later. Someone mentioned work.

Match the BBC Facts

• Fenerbahçe lost their two previous major European fixtures against Aston Villa, losing 4-0 in the first leg and 2-0 in the second leg of the 1977-78 UEFA Cup first round.

• Aston Villa’s last European match against a team from Turkey saw them beat Trabzonspor 2-1 in the UEFA Cup in November 1994, although they were eliminated on away goals in that encounter after drawing 2-2 on aggregate.

• Across the UEFA Europa League MD5 and MD6 this season, no player has scored more goals than Fenerbahçe’s Talisca (4). Before that, he had scored just two goals in 13 Europa League matches.

• This will be Aston Villa manager Unai Emery’s 100th UEFA Europa League match (since 2009-10), becoming the first manager to reach this milestone. Indeed, the closest manager to Emery in terms of matches in the competition is Jorge Jesus with 68.

• Among players who have played more than 20 matches in the UEFA Europa League (since 2009-10), Victor Lindelöf has the best passing accuracy (93.1%); the Swede has misplaced just 13 passes out of 271 in this season’s competition for Aston Villa (95.3% accuracy).