Everton Football Club versus Aston Villa Football Club. The fixture played more often than any other game in top flight English football.

I love Everton away. Proper ground. With poor people who live around it as it should be. I mean who really wants bypasses and Toys-R-Us as neighbouring landmarks.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve been to Goodison, I’ve seen us win, lose and draw.

And I think they are a similar club as us, proud history but left behind in rubbish modern football that is ruled by far-east shirt sales and billionaire owners.

I wish I was going on Saturday but I’m best man at a wedding, a Blues fan’s wedding to boot.

Ashley Young and Stuart Downing looked great on Tuesday night so hopefully they can actually do the business for the club that pays their wages this weekend.

Hopefully the break will have done the manager and the club good because we had to stop the rot from the disastrous Man City debacle where after probably the worst team selection in living memory we lost three on the trot and lost all the momentum we’d built up after New Year.

We need a result against the Toffeemen but if we lose a loseable game I do hope everyone doesn’t lose their mind again like after the Wolves game.

Thank God we had a few weeks off because it felt like the whole club and fans were convulsing with relegation panic and rage.

There was talk of protests at the next game, and let us get this straight, would have been a total embarrassment.

More than one bloke would have worked out how to write big letters on a bedspread and then hang it over the stand.

And the protest would have involved several badly dressed fans chanting ‘Houllier Out’ outside the Trinity.

And that would have been it. Cameras would have filmed it and they would have been representative of all of us.

The rest of us, who after watching our team lose just want to find somewhere that serves a pint as quickly as humanly possible so we can drown our sorrows.

I am always wary of any campaign that claims to speak ‘for Villa fans’ because I can’t go a day without taking issue with some Villa fans views on all and sundry. The best bit about supporting a football club is all the arguing about team selections, players and the degree of hatred every Villa fan should have for John Gregory.

But we are in a relegation battle.

And Randy is not going to sack Houllier before the end of the season.

So what is the point of protesting at a must win game?

The players, our poor multi-millionaire players, need to feel loved and supported.

Fine if we get relegated then cover them with metaphorical phlegm.

But we have to support the team now.

The club have embraced the 12th man campaign which is all about getting the fans behind the team at home matches, if they can overturn generations of moaning about the team then power to their elbow.

But the fact remains if our players go four nil down within the first half an hour then this 12th man will be in the pub by half time. We are in the hands of the players, and I think it is about time they do their job properly.

Various fans and personalities are recording a version of the old The Bells Are Ringing For Claret and Blue song at the Holte Pub on Monday. I am still firmly in the ‘head in the sand we will not get relegated’ camp but if the Villa lose the next game I think we might we all might be singing ‘My Balls are Cringing for Claret and Blue!’ Because then, we will be in deep trouble.

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