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A VASE ALWAYS HALF FULL

Someone needed to save face, to halt the crisis (likely to be partially forgotten next week) engulfing Our League™. After six winless games for the English representatives in Bigger Cup, Thursday night did not bring a drastic improvement. Nottingham Forest fell to Midtjylland at home and Crystal Palace settled for a goalless draw against AEK Larnaca in Tin Pot. Step up, Unai Emery. His 100th victory in charge of Aston Villa – nabbing a 1-0 win at Lille – defied his side’s lean league form and continued the Spaniard’s glorious love affair with Bigger Vase.

There’s something about the European second tier that stirs Emery, turning an already excellent coach into an all-seeing, ethereal presence, near incapable of any misstep. No manager has lifted Bigger Vase on more occasions than Emery, who won it three years in a row at Sevilla before his Villarreal team triumphed in a 22-penalty shootout against Manchester United in 2021. Even in his short-lived stay at Arsenal, he couldn’t help himself, taking the boys to Baku for their first European final in 13 years. He’s reached the quarters seven times. When Villa took on PSG at home last year in Bigger Cup, there was much bemusement when it was Bigger Vase’s anthem that blared out of the speakers before kick-off. Emery, you’d like to imagine, had hijacked the sound system to play one of his desert island discs.

For Emery, winning this competition is something precious on its own; life does not revolve around all those extra riches. “Football is emotion,” he told Big Website a little more than a decade ago when trying to go back-to-back with Sevilla. “There’s an economic [imperative] but what fans really want is to enjoy their team. If you have money but don’t generate feeling, it’s worthless. You play [Bigger Cup] but get knocked out in the group, losing all your games, and [the fan says:] ‘Sure, you’ve made €20m, but that means nothing to me.’”

Manchester United are up next for Villa in the league, Michael Carrick’s men having closed the nine-point gap that existed between the two teams at the start of the year. United, with no other commitments, seem more inclined to finish third, the spot that Villa had got so used to. But a slight drop-off domestically surely doesn’t matter when there’s still a chance to generate feeling, for Villa to genuinely challenge for their first proper European trophy in 44 years (with all due respect to the Intertoto Cup). Unai has the aux and he’s ready to cook.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I usually try, especially when it’s an afternoon or evening game, to do something throughout the day so I’m not only thinking about the game and getting stuck in my head, so I’m trying to [go] grocery shopping or doing something that can distract my mind a little bit” – Manchester United’s Women’s Big Cup-winning winger, Fridolina Rolfö, tells Tom Garry about preparing for matches with a sneaky big shop and how her experience could help in Sunday’s Women’s League Cup final against Chelsea.

FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS

So Bodø/Glimt’s Kjetil Knutsen has been in charge of the club for as long as Spurs’ last eight managers (yesterday’s Football Daily)? Crikey, imagine how good they’ll be once he’s had time to properly settle in” – Phil Taverner.

With Bodø/Glimt operating at an almost Zen-like level of success, is it any wonder that while messaging, my predictive text honours them as ‘Buddha Glimpse’?” – Jeremy Foxon.

Surprisingly little attention seems to have been paid to USA USA USA’s decision to deny visas to 10 of the Jamaican Mount Pleasant squad prior to their Concacaf round of 16 match at LA Galaxy. A deafening silence from Fifa does not bode well for the upcoming Geopolitics World Cup” – Rob Taylor.

Re: yesterday’s Memory Lane (full email edition). I was there in 1977! As a Bristol City supporter, before the days of all-ticket matches, we paid our farthings and were crammed into the Coventry home end at Highfield Road, with a line of police officers between the opposing fans. It was almost certainly illegally over-filled. The mass of away supporters caused kick-off to be delayed, a crucial aspect to the story … The situation was, for the last match of the season, and a midweek evening kick-off, either team wins and they stay up. Losing team relegated. But Sunderland, promoted from Division Two the previous season along with Bristol City and West Brom, were playing at Everton, and if Sunderland lost, a draw at Highfield Road would see both Citys stay up and Sunderland go down. We went 2-0 behind. It looked all over for us. But somehow we got back to 2-2. Then Coventry decided to display the final score at Goodison Park – 1-0 to Everton. Why? Whatever their reasons it led to the situation you described. Both teams just knocked it about between themselves, no attempts to attack the opposition. Both sets of supporters (including me) and, presumably, players and staff went home happy” – Steve King.

If you have any, please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day is … Phil Taverner. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here.

THE ‘BEAUTIFUL’ GAME

When it comes to style, what the Premier League has had to offer this season would probably not get heads turning on the catwalk … unless your name is David Moyes, baby! The Everton manager – who you could never accuse of being chic – leapt to the defence of Arsenal’s reliance on set-pieces and WWE-style grappling, claiming the game would be dull if every team played, erm, fast-paced thrilling football? “What’s up with [it] … you are making it sound as if that’s a problem because they are good at set-pieces and they are a strong, physical side,” roared Moyes. “If there’s this thing out there where everybody has to play the beautiful game and everything has to be perfect, well if we all do that then it would be boring. Football would be boring. Part of the reason you people are talking about it is because it might be slightly different from what we have seen for a few years. I would hate to be going to football matches all the time and seeing football only played the one way. I want teams to play different styles and in different ways.”

NEWS, BITS AND BOBS

Embattled Igor Tudor isn’t exactly showing his cuddly side before troubled Tottenham’s game at Liverpool, telling his battered and bruised players not be “victims” and to ignore the “bullsh!t”. “You can stay and cry or you can fight,” he roared. “You know that can be the problem more than all these things about Tottenham and … you know, like magic on the club, like bad black magic and these other bullsh!ts, you know. So this is about what I want to send a message.”

Meanwhile, Arne Slot reckons it will be “special” if Liverpool pick up their 1,500th league win when Spurs shamble up to Anfield on Sunday. “If we reach that mark I don’t feel completely responsible for that because I wasn’t there for all [the] games,” he deadpanned. “This is another example of how successful this club has been, will be and still is.”

Reece James has inked his name all over a new deal at Chelsea until 2032.

Robbie Keane is the frontrunner to succeed Martin O’Neill at Celtic, the team he did actually support as a boy.

The FA Cup quarter-final schedule has been announced folks, with Manchester City v Liverpool at 12.45pm on Saturday 5 April, followed by Chelsea v Port Vale (5.15pm) and Southampton v Arsenal (8pm). West Ham v Leeds United is the 4.30pm game on Sunday.

Sam Kerr scored the decisive goal in a nervy 2-1 win over North Korea as Australia booked their place in the flamin’ Women’s Asian Cup semis.

PSV can win the Eredivisie title in record time if they beat NEC Nijmegen on Saturday and Feyenoord lose on Sunday. “We are just busy with the match we have to play,” riddled manager Peter Bosz.

And Manchester City’s Antoine Semenyo was named Premier League player of the month for February, with Pep Guardiola scooping his first manager of the month gong since 2021. Yep, good stat.

STILL WANT MORE?

Ten things to look out for in the Premier League this weekend. Get stuck in!

Was the Atlético match Spurs’ nadir? Probably not, sighs Max Rushden.

Barney Ronay on whether it actually matters that English clubs had a bad week in Europe when the Premier League is built on bought-in products anyway.

Will Iran participate at the GWC? Matt Hughes explains the state of play.

And call it the Rodman Rule or HIP – the NWSL’s new initiative is already impacting rosters, writes Jeff Rueter.

MEMORY LANE

April 1927: Let’s wind the clock back 99 years to a time when Arsenal used a shed to improve the touch of their players. Here’s captain Charles Buchan watching goalkeeper Dai Lewis kick the ball during training in preparation for the FA Cup final. As Simon Burnton explains in this piece: “The secret device was a largely wooden structure with one open end, a sloped floor, and internal surfaces with a variety of curves and angles. A football kicked into it would be returned in an unpredictable direction, forcing the player doing the kicking to improvise a way of controlling it.” It was later adopted by other clubs. It didn’t help the Gunners to win the Cup final, mind. They lost 1-0 to Cardiff.

A TITLE-DECIDER ON THE MARSHES AWAITS