Aston Villa finally ended their long wait for major silverware by winning the Europa League, but Dan Bardell explains why memories of Wembley in 1994 and 1996 mean the Carabao Cup still matters and why success in Istanbul has only increased his desire to see Villa lifting trophies again.
Winning the Europa League changed something for Aston Villa supporters because after all the near misses, all the conversations about 1982 and all those years wondering when we would finally see the club lift another major trophy, we got our moment in Istanbul. What it did not do, at least for me, was diminish the desire to see Villa win another one, and that is why I will never be able to completely dismiss the League Cup regardless of where it sits in Unai Emery's list of priorities.
I understand modern football well enough to know why the competition has become more complicated for clubs operating at Villa's level. The fixture calendar is relentless, Champions League football takes an enormous amount out of the players and qualification for Europe again next season matters hugely from both a sporting and financial perspective. Emery has to manage all of that and his previous team selections in this competition suggest he is perfectly prepared to sacrifice some strength in the Carabao Cup if he believes it benefits Villa elsewhere.
None of that means I don't want to win it.
Perhaps there is an element of age involved because some of my earliest memories of supporting Aston Villa are intertwined with this competition. I was eight when Villa won the League Cup in 1994 and ten when we did it again in 1996, and for supporters of my generation those Wembley occasions were a fundamental part of falling in love with the football club. Villa had a special relationship with this trophy and for a long period were either its most successful club or right alongside Liverpool at the top of that particular list.
I remember Villa at Wembley in 1994 and looking back now at footage which almost seems to belong to another era.
Football looked different, Wembley looked different and the entire sport existed in a different world to the one Villa operate in now, but the feeling attached to winning something is timeless. We were fortunate enough to rediscover that in Istanbul last season and I don't see why experiencing it should make us any less hungry to do it again.
If anything, it should be the opposite. Success breeds success.
There had been a tendency before the Europa League triumph to talk about Villa's trophy drought almost as though winning anything would lift some enormous psychological weight from the club, and perhaps it did, but trophies should never become something you tick off before moving onto more supposedly important objectives. The point of building an Aston Villa side capable of competing towards the top of English football is surely that occasions like Wembley finals become more common rather than less important.
The difficulty is that supporters and managers do not have to view competitions through exactly the same lens. I can sit there thinking about 1994, 1996 and how much I would love another day at Wembley, whereas Emery has to think about recovery times, injuries, Champions League fixtures and what playing another two-legged semi-final in January might mean for a squad already being pushed extremely hard.
His record gives us a reasonable indication of the calculation he makes. Villa have fielded weakened sides in this competition before and, when the club were last balancing Champions League football with domestic commitments, the League Cup clearly did not receive the same attention as other competitions. At the same time, Villa went deep into the FA Cup that season, which suggests this is not simply an Emery doesn't care about domestic cups issue. There are different circumstances around each competition and each stage of the season.
That is why Coventry is an interesting starting point. Villa should be able to make considerable changes while still fielding a team packed with talent, and players such as Alejandro Garnacho, Johan Manzambi, Taylor Harwood-Bellis, João Gomes and Alisson potentially needing football means rotation does not have to equal surrendering the tie. If Villa can progress while resting several of the players who have carried the heaviest workload, there is no downside whatsoever.
Perhaps the conversation changes if Villa reach the quarter-finals and Wembley suddenly appears on the horizon. Perhaps Emery still looks at the fixture list and decides the Champions League and Premier League have to take precedence. That is the reality of where Villa are now and, ultimately, having a manager trying to balance several competitions is a considerably better problem than most of the ones we have experienced over the past 30 years.
But supporters are allowed to be greedy about trophies. Istanbul was one of the greatest experiences many of us have ever had following Aston Villa and it satisfied a craving which had lasted three decades, but it didn't leave me thinking I never needed to see Villa lift another cup.
It left me wanting the next one.
