Pau Torres gathers possession in front of the Holte End, where in 2016 a banner was unfurled reading: “No fight, no pride, no effort, no hope.” He threads the ball over the halfway line, where Tony Xia once stood as the new Aston Villa chairman and promised to build a theme park. In the dugout Unai Emery leans forward expectantly, just a few yards from where – six years ago to the day – a disgruntled fan threw a cabbage at Steve Bruce.
And so as Jhon Durán’s speculative shot brushes the back of the net and the hairs stand up on the back of the neck and the crowd surges and swells, was it all worth it in the end? Worth the indignities, worth the irrelevance, worth 11,000 against Middlesbrough in the League Cup, worth losing at home to Stevenage, worth Remi Garde and Roberto Di Matteo?
