Funny Trivia Note About Yesterday's Europa League Final Result For Villa

Here's something I loved to realise about Aston Villa's Europa League win last night.

Villa manager - Unai Emery - has now won the league on five occasions. He has done it with three different teams.

His Sevilla teams won it in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16. That was followed by a win for Villareal at the conclusion of the 2020-21 season. 

Last night saw him lead Aston Villa to the trophy with a 3-0 victory over Freiburg.

Notice something?

All three of Emery's  Europa League winning clubs have 'Villa' somewhere in their names. 

A brill trivia note. 

This Weekend

It's going to be an interesting Premier League final day this weekend weekend because there's fight to stave off relegation between Tottenham and West Ham United.

The Hammers are currently in the basement of the league with thirty-six points. Spurs are just above them, in seventeenth position, with thirty-eight.

To escape the drop, West Ham must get a home win over Leeds United and then hope Spurs fails to get a result against Everton.

Should those occur, it'll be Spurs going down.

Manchester City's 1-1 draw against Bournemouth last night meant that Arsenal were crowned Premier League champs. It was the first time they had reached the pinnacle since Arsene Wenger's glory days.

It would make for quite a trivia question - years from now - if  'in which year did Arsenal win the Premier League and their local rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, get relegated?' is asked.

Roll on Sunday.

Birthday Spread - Archie Manning

I looked at today's page of my American football trivia calendar and noticed that today is Archie Manning's birthday.

Upon noticing that the patriarch of the Manning Family is celebrating today, I thought I'd do what used to be a thing on Hawksbee and Jacobs' radio show on TalkSport (they could still do it for all I know) in which the pair would run through names of celebrities with birthdays on that particular day. It was up to Paul Hawksbee to guess their age. They'd then work out how far - or close! - Paul's guesses were to the actual age.

I guessed Manning is seventy-six today. He's actually seventy-seven. So, I would have had one on the spread.

Not bad. 

Forgot About FA

There was a conspicuous absence on the blog over the weekend.

I didn't do the (what seems like) annual FA Cup Final post in which I point out which team I would like to win.

There's a simple reason why I didn't.

I forgot the FA Cup Final was over the weekend. For no clear reason whatsoever, I thought it was this weekend. My lapse wasn't realised until I came across a mention on TAFKA Twitter when an account I follow reposted a mocked up Ceefax results page from the game.

When my TV was immediately switched on, I saw the medals being distributed to the finalists. Damn. The first FA Cup I missed since my childhood.

You can see Ceefax 303's repost, of Telescore's image, below.

With all that aside, I would have backed the wrong horse.

Chelsea would have been the underdogs. I often go for the longshots whenever I've written those posts, so I am sure I would have picked the London club over the dominant Northern team.

The final score was 1-0 to City.

17 Seconds

I woke up early this morning. Well, not too early, but early enough to lay there and think about things before getting up to start my day.

One of the things I thought about was Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano.

'That fight was earlier today,' I acknowledged. 'Maybe I'll watch it once I'm up.'

I then concluded 'it won't be a long fight, I may as well watch it before I get out of bed.'

I fired up Netflix, forwarded to the start of the fight.

17 seconds.

That's all it took for Rousey to get Carano in an armbar and the quick submission.

Seen a portion of people calling the fight fixed across the day. Have they ever seen a Rousey fight before now?!

Neighbours 24/7 Again

In a short follow up to something I wrote about earlier this week, I still have the YouTube livestream of old Neighbours episodes running on my TV for most of the day. It's mainly used as background noise whilst doing other things, but I find myself pulled away to watch a fair amount of the programme.

The episodes are still in the 1991/92 range. There are so many storylines I forgot about but seeing them again has made me go 'oh yeah, I remember this!'

I switched it off for a bit early yesterday evening. I came back later in the night to realise I missed one of the biggest stories from that era - Harold Bishop getting lost at sea.

Harold would re-emerge a number of years later. I suppose I have to wait a few weeks to see those scenes unfold. 

If I make it that far.

Or if the stream does.

The Schedule Has Dropped (Time To Finish)

The 2026 NFL schedule was confirmed overnight.

I now have everything I need to get this year's edition of Taylor's Pro Football Gambling Annual completed.

I reckon it will take at least another month until everything is pieced together in a way I'll be happy with. Just like last year.

Will post another update with a publication date.

Until then, I have a book to finish...