| We all love an excuse – so much so that some have become popular idioms, meaning something beyond the literal. Consider, for example, “The dog ate my homework”, which now describes any exculpatory tall story; “the wrong type of snow”, used to reference official failings which extend far beyond non-running trains; or “I’m left-handed and flat-footed”, shorthand for all kinds of indolent incompetence, not just DIY avoidance. OK, that one’s particular to the Daily, but you get our drift. And nowhere are excuses more frequently deployed – and with less guile – than in football. The football machine, though, is extremely receptive to them because it keeps the debate defecating which keeps the tills ringing, which allows players and managers unwilling to take responsibility for their own ineptitude to blame officials instead. Happily, we’ve resolved all this with VAR, the loss of the total and unrivalled ecstasy we feel when our team scores a small price to pay for the certainty we now enjoy. Which is not to say the game is stagnating. A relatively new excuse and, indeed, a relatively new cliché, is that a particular shirt is “heavy”, the weight of expectation too much for some players – Manchester United’s No 7 shirt, say, worn with such distinction by Michael Owen, Antonio Valencia and Alexis Sánchez, or Newcastle’s No 9, made legendary by Imre Varadi, George Reilly and Ian Baird. No one, though, could have predicted that in these days of breathables and base layers, this line would graduate from metaphorical to actual. Yet today we learnt of Aston Villa’s complaint that their kits are too heavy, weighing them down and affecting performance. The offending garments are made by Castore, which is also responsible for kitting out Andy Murray in some of the saddest garments ever seen – though, in their defence, Ben Stokes looks sound in a bucket hat. “Demand better – premium performance” orders the company’s tagline which, though it takes a liberal approach to sense-making, is what the Villa players have done. The current shirts, it says, cling to them like a second skin when they get hot and sweaty, creating a wet look which isn’t great for elite sport. Concerns have also been raised by Villa’s women’s team, who are due to wear the shirts for their televised opening WSL game at home to Manchester United on Sunday. According to Brentford, who found a similar issue with their Umbro-made tops, this means players might carry as much as 500g extra during matches – a whopping 0.64766839% of their total bodyweight. Which, of course, explains why Villa found themselves a disorganised rabble when they visited Warsaw, and their squad will, presumably, commit to jewellery removal, full-body waxes and pre-match nose-picks, to ensure accurate passing, reliable finishing and disciplined defending. Though it is unclear, at the time of writing, how the team will dress for tonight’s Fizzy Cup encounter, one thing seems certain: even if they turn up in chainmail, clodhoppers and iron maidens, Everton will still find a way of losing to them. | 