Champions League is back and the Vikings are coming

I know nothing about our opposition tomorrow other than they’re from Norway. I can tell you that Norway is very nice and the people are lovely and the pace of everything is very pleasing. Better in winter too!

I’m also going to guess that they play on a plastic pitch that they are very used to and it’s possibly the reason why they got a point against Bayern Munich recently.

The grass at Villa Park, as well as the atmosphere, is going to be an advantage for us. That and we know the manager is going to approach this match like he does all others.

And because of everything we know, we won’t be taking this match lightly and because of that, it should be a good match. And even though they’re not playing at home on their very advanced plastic pitch, they still got a point against Bayern Munich, so there is something about this team.

And things are coming together for us at the moment. There is an energy and belief in how we are approaching games. The Newcastle match at the weekend was a good demonstration of where we are heading. We were very professional, very organised and dare I say it, unlucky to only win one nil.

More of that and more of what we saw against Fenerbahçe last week and we will be happy at 90 minutes. But in football anything can happen, so it’s important not to get carried away.

And because none of us really know much about Viking, although we have had 15 real person visitors from Norway today, I’ll leave it here and hope that someone can share some insights on what we should expect.

Back tomorrow and yes, the leader image was generated with AI.