In the cash-rich world of modern football, there is plenty of room for ridicule; Sport360 has it for you in abundance every Monday. This week we take a sideways glance at the English FA Cup action.
– #360fans: Manchester United vs Arsenal FA Cup preview
– GALLERY: From Zidane to Cantona – football’s ugliest incidents
– FA Cup: Blackburn hold Liverpool to draw in quarter-final
– FOLLOW: Football action live with Sport360’s new LIVE SCORES
Despite the Aston Villa-West Brom FA Cup quarter-final tie playing out as a thrilling contest, events off the pitch – well, on and off the pitch, and then back on again – left the game more overshadowed than Shaun Wright-Phillips standing sheepishly under Peter Crouch.
The first wave of the ‘pitch invasion’ – a term so military-minded you would expect fighter jets to be circling over Villa Park – came with Villa 2-0 up with two minutes still on the clock. And then the trespassing Villa fans had become that drunken fool at a New Year’s Eve party, embarrassing one and all by screaming out the 10-second countdown at 11.58pm. If you are going to invade a pitch, invade it at full time. That’s page one stuff.
As it turned out, that false start was just a taster of the main event when thousands of Villa fans spilt on to the pitch as the definitive ‘peep, peep, peep’ sounded. Many have been quick to pour unbridled scorn on this act — branding it as ‘disgraceful’ and ‘like the 1980s all over again’. Off The Bar definitely agrees with the latter if they were referring to the questionable haircuts and tracksuits on display.
Before we all judge away it’s well worth noting the significance of the result for the Aston Villa faithful. The club had claimed back-to-back home wins — the record books show the last time that happened Julius Caesar was top dog of the Roman Empire. Furthermore, the club have now racked up a stunning five goals in their last three games – they have successfully ended a drought so dry it made the Kalahari Desert look like a great big bubble bath. Add in a dollop of derby day rivalry and it’s soon no wonder a section of the fans were sent into sheer over-excited delirium. In retrospect, it’s surprising that the bottle has remained corked for this long. In the last days of Paul Lambert’s sorry reign, Villa fans would have been well within their rights to ecstatically storm the field and hold aloft Gabby Agbonlahor every time an attacking throw-in was won.
Villa captain and goalscorer on the night Fabian Delph revealed after the match that during the pitch invasion a fan had bitten him. Given the mood of rabid joy that evening he was perhaps a lucky boy not to be eaten alive. (While Off The Bar won’t condemn this pitch invasion, it would probably have to take a harder line on fully blown cannibalism). An even more intriguing aspect of Delph’s post-match revelations was the news that a fan had removed and stolen one of his shoes. You can of course look at the mysterious shoe incident two ways – a grim exposé of a football fan putting financial gain ahead of respect for a player…or a heart-warming modern day twist on the Cinderella fairytale. That story has got Disney sequel smash hit written all over it.
Found The #AstonVilla Fan……Who Bit Fabian Delph 
#VILLAvWBA pic.twitter.com/exsJAAyZds
— stokietony (@stokietony) March 8, 2015
How does the club stop this happening again you may ask? Fines aside, we suggest that the next time the Villa crowd are in full voice, and a mere line away from delivering a beautifully projected chant, the entire squad and backroom staff should interrupt the choral finale by dodging stewards, clumsily clambering over the advertising hoardings and forcefully smothering the most vocal singers with suffocating adulation. A taste of their own medicine.
As for the opposition on the day – while the cameras were following Villa fans showing more agility and purpose on the Villa Park turf than Christian Benteke has achieved all season, a group of West Brom fans were reportedly seen ripping up stadium seats. Surely there must be repercussions for these Baggies supporters, unless of course Villa had chosen this exact period of time and location to employ a particularly clumsy furniture removal company – a decision not entirely beyond Villa’s shambolic ownership.
Contrary to nearly all the available evidence at the final whistle, Aston Villa have not won the FA Cup. But can they go all the way – can they produce a more dramatic turnaround than a cat-stroking Bond villain on a swivel chair overcoming his ultra-smooth nemesis? Right now anything seems possible under ‘Timpact’ Sherwood who has metaphorically dragged a sinking Aston Villa out of the relegation tide and resuscitated the former European Cup champions back to life — all done to the theme of Baywatch (something tells us – no everything tells us – that Sherwood sees himself as the David Hasselhoff of English football).
Tim Sherwood leaving the Stadium #astonvilla #timsherwood (Vine by @Mo_Khal1fa) https://t.co/DrgueK4Z01
— Joel (@JoelNewbold) March 7, 2015
To be fair, Sherwood must have delivered an inspiring team talk at half time if the second half display was anything to go on. You can’t deny the man has a remarkable way with words. In an interview last week he stated: “You have to have b******s to play for Aston Villa,” which was a fascinating insight into the sophisticated criteria with which Sherwood selects his team. He also has a remarkable way with his limbs. It’s a near certainty that if canned the movement that goes into his goal celebrations, you could garner enough energy to light up Manhattan for several months. Above all, Sherwood has a remarkable approach to tactics. Given his somewhat questionable formation acrobatics in the past, I was tempted to put the first pitch invasion entirely down to Tim Sherwood’s playbook – a slight rejig of the formation from 4-4-2 to a 40-1450-30, an eccentric bid to fill out the centre of the park to help see the game through.
Sherwood said he ‘understood’ why the offending Aston Villa fans behaved as they did. That sense of affiliation should come as no surprise really. Indeed, it seems perfectly apt that such a high profile pitch invasion happened at Villa Park when it did, for Tim Sherwood’s managerial mind is a constant pitch invasion. A flood of unguarded emotions and ill-conceived but well-meaning intentions that will lead to decisions that will always split opinion. The FA and Aston Villa can feasibly quadruple the number of stewards at Villa Park to make future pitch invasions a near impossibility. Terrifyingly, the same cannot be done for the beautiful madness of Sherwood’s managerial mind.
