The Sky Sports cameras on celebrity watch as Aston Villa homed in on booking their Champions League place with the 3-3 draw against Liverpool on Monday eventually looked beyond Hollywood and royalty. “It’s only taken them 30 years to recognise me,” says Gary Shaw, a 1982 European Cup winner and Villa Park press-box regular, with a chuckle. “They’ll be panning up saying: ‘There’s Tom Hanks’ or ‘There’s Prince William.’ Finally, they noticed I’m there.”
So are Villa. Back among the continent’s elite for the first time since Tony Barton’s European champions subsequently reached the quarter-finals, bowing out to Juventus in March 1983. “I’m a Villa supporter since I was a kid and to have won the biggest club trophy you can as a player was incredible,” Shaw says. “Now, to qualify for the competition – you wouldn’t have dreamed it at the start of this season. Unai Emery should be manager of the year, no question.”
