Villa beat West Ham in the FA Cup as Dave Woodhall watches history.
One of the great early January traditions is to say with confidence that this is our year for the cup, snd when John McGinn enters immortality in May by lifting the trophy, we’ll have Chris Heck to thank.
No, I haven’t gone mad, or even soft on the man who personifies Villa’s transformation from football club to rapacious money-making exercise. It’s just that when the seaw was made you’d have struggled to imagine more than twenty thousand or so Villa supporters buying tickets, particularly on a night like this.
Then someone had the bright idea of making it an anniversary game and as a result we 
Unai certainly did his best to put the crwd into the right spirit with a team selection as strong as we could have hoped for. Emiliano Martinez was the notable omission, although the boss can be excused for giving his most valuable player the night off considering the conditions.
Naturally, the team were caught as cold as the night air and could have conceded before going a goal down with the defence left flat-footed by the newly-renamed GrahamPottersWest Ham.
You could skip over the next hour. Villa weren’t particularly impressive, labouring while parents who’d seen it all before, many times over, told the larger than usual number of kids present that such torment builds character and in any case, they’d better get used to it because third round defeat is ingrained and if we were celebrating history tonight then it had to be so.
Luckily, the kids were having none of it and youthful exhuberance triumphed over world-weary cynicism. With nineteen minutes remaining Villa were awarded a corner which was clearly a mistake, because West Ham are every bit as much darlings of the media as any other Six. Ian Maatsen’s resulting long-range shot was deflected enough to prevent the keeper from controlling the ball and substitute Amadou Onana was on hand to stab it over the line.
This woke Villa up and five minutes later Emiliano Buendia’s ball out to Ollie Watkins was centred in for Morgan Rogers to give them the lead. Jacob Ramsey could have made certain but his shot hit the post, although for once Villa managed to see the game out with little drama.
And so into the fourth round, for only the second time in almost a decade. Joking aside, that’s a shameful record so it was good to see that the team were capable of upping their game, helped in part by not having to play against a backdrop of empty seats. Who knows, maybe what really was a memorable occasion has taught Heck that you can get more money out of people by making them want to spend rather than forcing it out of them, and they’ll be a lot happier in the end.
And if we can get that miracle, perhaps it really is our year for the cup.