Another relentlessly grim Aston Villa season might be about to get even worse. We fear for Aston Villa, we really do.
It did look like they might have sorted themselves out after that catastrophic start in which they not only lost all the games but did it by conceding all of the goals as well. Now it’s all turned a bit grim again, hasn’t it?
Sure, they’ve stopped conceding all of the goals, but this has come at a high price; they’ve stopped scoring any of the goals. They’ve drawn three and lost once in a four-game run since the win at Ipswich that really, really, really needed to deliver more.
Just on a basic level, you don’t really want to go around taking three points from four games against Fulham, Southampton, West Ham, and Brentford. It’s not really good enough at any time. But for Aston Villa that profligacy could look far more damning by the time the Christmas decorations come down. The Villans have had, on paper – and we reckon on grass too – the easiest start of anyone in the Premier League.
They started – disastrously – against Brighton and Tottenham but since then have faced only Everton and Newcastle among what might be considered the Barclays’ bigger beasts. They really, desperately needed more than 11 points to show for these 12 games if they wanted to avoid another season of arse-nipping relegation-baiting unpleasantness.
Because having failed to make hay in the sunshine, they now face a deeply traumatic winter. We’re honestly not sure we’ve ever seen a worse month of league fixtures than Aston Villa’s December. Strap in. It starts on December 1 with a trip to Manchester United. This is one of the easier tasks the month has in store, because at least they’re catching them while players and the manager are still very much in the early stages of working each other out. Then comes a six-pointer against resurgent Wolves, who have taken eight points from their last four.
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