Matt Maher: Aston Villa and Walsall prepare for season-defining Bank Holiday

Name an emotion and you can be pretty sure Saddlers supporters have experienced it during a nine-month campaign which has almost defied logic.

For five of those months, their team was the best in League Two by a distance. For the next four, they were the worst.

And still, it is not finished. There remains at least 90 minutes to go. The final verdict on Walsall 2024-25 will come in sometime on Monday evening at Wembley. 

A decade on from the club’s first-ever trip to the national stadium, their second visit arrives with so much more on the line, a second shot at a promotion just moments away from being realised three Saturdays ago before Antoni Sarcevic’s shin snatched it away.

Monday is the chance few expected the Saddlers to have after that agonising, gut-wrenching day at Gresty Road which might have left them mentally broken.

Yet somehow, they have recovered, producing their two finest performances for months to see off Chesterfield in the play-off semi-final and set up a date under the arch with AFC Wimbledon.

It is significant because, regardless of what happens, at some point soon those in charge at Bescot will be tasked with sitting down and trying to make sense of everything which has taken place since August last year.

Much as Mat Sadler must take his share of the blame for the implosion in form which coincided with the loss of Nathan Lowe back to parent club Stoke, so the head coach deserves high praise for the way he has picked himself and his players off the floor these past few weeks.

Just how do you begin to make sense of it? 

Four months ago, Sadler could seemingly do no wrong. Walsall racked up more points from their first 26 matches than any club had in League Two for more than 20 years. Plaudits were coming from all directions, for Sadler and for owners Trivela, for whom a first promotion looked a certainty three years on from their takeover.

Yet before the season was out, Sadler was listening to supporters chant for his dismissal. Few swings in circumstance have ever been more violent. The January exit of Lowe would appear the obvious turning point but cannot fully explain the subsequent collapse, the scale of which has made the sudden renaissance in the play-offs even more impressive.

It is strange, really, how things work. Without the pain of Crewe, you would never have experienced the ecstasy of Chesterfield and one of the great Bescot nights. 

Now only the biggest match remains. After everything which has come before, all bets on what might happen are firmly off.

Walsall, of course, aren’t the only team from our patch preparing for a season-defining match this weekend.

For Villa supporters, it has been at least half a lifetime since they experienced a campaign quite like this.

So much of the mood, however, will be determined by what happens against Manchester United at Old Trafford on Sunday.

There might not be a promotion on the line, as there is at Wembley, yet in relative terms the comparison is easy. The difference between qualifying for the Champions League, Europa League or Conference League could be considerable when it comes to what happens this summer and beyond at Villa Park.

In many ways it feels ridiculous the question of whether this season has been a successful one for Villa could even be floated. Only twice before in their history have they won more matches than they have this. It has been another campaign packed with memories which will last for decades, from Bayern, to Celtic and that epic 180 minutes against Paris Saint-Germain.

Like it or not, however, the “financilisation” of the game, as it is now increasingly described in footballing circles, means so much more is now weighted toward the outcome rather than the journey. 

Villa supporters who watched their team toil at Barnsley, Burton and Wigan during the Championship years would never have snapped your hand off for three straight campaigns playing European football.

That much is already secured and should mean the pressure heading into the final day is off. It does not feel that way, however, far from it.

Granted, destiny is not in Villa’s hands. They need help from elsewhere, whatever they do at Old Trafford. But with a win, their 10th in 12 matches to finish the season, they would be incredibly unfortunate to miss out.

The significance of the venue is impossible to overlook. A stadium where Villa have won just twice in 42 years, where they have so often been made to toil and reminded of their place, can now be the scene for Emery’s finest hour to date.

Just as with Walsall at Wembley, this is a weekend when a fair few ghosts could be laid to rest.