Matt Maher: Revenge is a dish best served cold for Aston Villa

“I just came here to see if @rioferdy5 is okay,” he wrote, echoing Ferdinand’s own words after Luiz had shimmied in celebration when scoring against Manchester United in February, only for Villa to go and lose a match which, at the time, felt an important one in the race for Champions League football.

Petty? Perhaps, just a little. Yet you could hardly begrudge Luiz his dig, even if it gave Ferdinand rather more attention than he deserved.

Neither could you look too critically on the video released by Villa on their social media channels the following day, a clipped together catalogue of “experts” writing off their chances of a top-four finish.

For those on the outside, it was easy to do. Villa, with just one top-half finish in the previous decade, always looked the odd one out in a battle otherwise comprised of established Big Six clubs.

Yet over the final stretch, it was their rivals who gave way. Tottenham took just 10 points from 10 matches after winning 4-0 at Villa Park in March, while for all the positivity of their former players in the media, United’s challenge disappeared over a cliff. Never mind the Champions League, Erik Ten Hag’s team are now at risk of missing out on the Conference League.

In defence of the pundits, you could probably compile an even longer video of Villa supporters playing down their team’s chances at numerous points of the season.

When you are preconditioned to disappointment and always falling short, feelings of fatalism can be terribly hard to shake. The past months saw it at its most intense when two-goal leads were blown at home to Brentford and Chelsea. Even after the exhilarating late turnaround against Liverpool on Monday had you daring to dream, you still looked at Manchester City’s poor record at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and convinced yourself there must be another twist.

Except this time, things really were different.

Qualifying for the Champions League is a seismic achievement for Villa. It also feels a big one for the West Midlands, even if rival supporters are unlikely to be doing any celebrating.

Much has been written this season about Villa’s major trophy drought, which stretches back 28 years. Blues are the only club from these parts to have won one in the intervening period with the story almost always one of agonising failure and regret at what might have been?

Even 16 years on, there are is still a pang of regret among Albion supporters anytime anyone mentions that FA Cup semi-final against Portsmouth. For Wolves fans, 2019 remains raw.

Villa themselves have been to four major finals since 1996 and lost them all. The last time they got close to qualifying for the Champions League, in 2009, they blew a seven-point lead over the run-in.

These past few weeks have seen a catalogue of West Midlands near misses, to the extent a colleague in the national press confided he was starting to think he was cursed after watching Wolves lose to Coventry, then Coventry lose to Manchester United and then Solihull Moors contrive to lose twice on penalties at Wembley, the latter in the space of just six days.

When Villa went out of the Conference League in Greece last week and Unai Emery’s squad began to look increasingly jaded, you feared the Champions League race might also become a case of defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory.

For once, thankfully, the concern was misplaced. Attention now turns to Albion’s play-off semi-final at Southampton tonight. Optimism abounds again. We are just two Baggies wins from having three clubs in the Premier League next season.

Villa getting over the line should really have been no surprise. Unai Emery’s team had not been outside the top five since September. Their qualification for Champions League was possible for months and probable for weeks. And yet it still feels a little mad, now it has actually happened.

Dave Woodhall, former editor of the Heroes and Villains fanzine who has forgotten more things about Villa than most will ever know, compared Emery’s achievement to that of Ron Saunders’ winning the league title in 1981.

“I know it’s sacrilege to say it,” he explains. “But back then you were playing against 11 players and a manager.

“Now you are facing opponents backed by the wealth funds of oil states with five times your turnover. They increasingly want it as a closed shop so what the Villa have done is so impressive.”

With that it is hard to argue. You cannot, by any measure, describe Villa as a fairytale. Owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens have pumped in more than £500million since rescuing the club from the brink of administration in 2018. Villa are realistically one of the few clubs with the financial clout to challenge the elite.

This dream, fantastic though it may be, is beyond most. It has been achieved thanks to some very shrewd decisions but also because the club had the backing to overcome some rather expensive mistakes.

Yet consider the other side of it, in particular the spending restrictions which give those clubs with big revenues an advantage and mean Villa have been able to recruit far less than they wanted to in recent transfer windows.

Consider too how those clubs they are trying to catch have previously backed proposals, now thankfully rejected, which would have seen Champions League places awarded on historical performance.

They don’t want Villa, or Newcastle for that matter, coming to take any of the pie.

That is the reason, more than any other, to admire Emery and his team. Meanwhile, a club and region which has taken more than its share of blows can finally start to deliver a few of its own.