Alan Hansen was made to look foolish by Aston Villa after their 3-1 victory over Alex Ferguson's Manchester United in 1995 caused the Scot to proclaim that "you'll win nothing with kids". It subsequently transpired that Villa were just rather good, and United went on to win quite a lot with their kids.
Were Hansen to say the same today, he would once again be proven wrong by Villa, but that says more about Villa's first team.
In the latest display of Aston Villa's nothingness, their senior squad contrived to lose 3-0 to the club's under 21s.
Among the defeated side were Carles Gil, Ashley Westwood, Brad Guzan, Kieran Richardson, Scott Sinclair and most worryingly from an Irish point of view, Ciaran Clark.
Jack Grealish didn't play, if you care.
Whereas your Becketts, your Joyces and your Eliots are feted for their portrayal of the utter futility of human life, Aston Villa continue to toil in obscurity, despite their precise reduction of the beautiful game to a yawning, soporific and stultifying arena of nothingness.
Watching Villa lose 6-0 to Liverpool last week was a little voyeuristic, it was like intruding on a scene of public mourning on a mass scale. So bad were Villa, we felt a little dirty having watched it. We flirted with the idea of going with Joleon Lescott who refused to breathe a word about the loss by tweeting a picture of an expensive car following the embarrassment again
It is perversely impressive that Villa have managed to field eleven players so abhorrently unsuited for top-level football: a scouting team capable of managing to find eleven duds shows a consistency of both vision and execution that will surely be rewarded with a higher profile job in the future.
Poor Villa. This team would get relegated from the Championship.
