Great Recovery
After a dismal loss of form in December, Villa went into 2018 with question marks on whether they’d even make the play-offs, but January’s 100% run soon got them back on track.
Kick-started by a 5-0 win over Bristol City on New Year’s Day, 2018 has been flawless so far in terms of league wins, extending into February with last weekend’s 3-2 win over Burton at Villa Park.
Fulham were the only other team in the Championship to register an 100% record in the January fixtures, topping the January form table on goal difference.
January Form
Overall 2018
Similarly, Fulham also pip Villa on goal difference on complete 2018 form, both are 100% with five wins.
Before the Burton game, the Birmingham Mail had wrongly reported that Villa were the top form team of the 2018 ,it’s still not true, but with Villa and Fulham scheduled to play each other on February 17th, that could soon change.
Villa do however boast the best league form in the Championship over the last six games (including their 1-0 win away at Middlesbrough at the end of 2017), with their six wins on the trot making it almost inevitable.
The most important thing about Villa’s recent form is the points that Villa have managed to claw back on the current principal automatic promotion candidates.
Over the past six games Villa have gained five points on Wolves (all in January’s games), six on Derby, despite the Rams being on an 11-match unbeaten run, then 11 points on Cardiff City.
Upcoming
The next four games will all present tough challenges, in terms of the context of the Championship, so it will be interesting to see how far Villa can keep their winning-run going.
The Blues recent resurrection puts them fourth in the current form table (last six games), while Fulham (A) and Preston (H) are 5th and 7th in the league table, respectively. The final game of February sees a trip to Sheffield Wednesday, a team that have beaten Villa twice in their three recent Championship clashes.
While it’s a tough call, if Villa win out this month, then they should have a play-off spot pretty much locked down and could have probably overtaken Derby for second.
Remember though, it’s never that easy with Villa…
UTV
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Automatic promotion, is worth pulling out all the stops for. Who knows what could happen in a play off situation. I hope SB secretly thinks in terms of overtaking Wolves, and winning the Championship. I agree, you don’t beat your chest over this kind of ambition, but after recent seasons, finishing top would give our team great confidence to battle on in the Prem.
When I played football yes a long time ago now but we never made a habit of winding up our oponents before the match, our plan was to go out knock 7 bells out of them and then wind them up afterwards, of course we didn’t always win but either way we kept our traps shut until after the game.
I dont see the logic of our board and supporters motivating our oponents it’s just putting unnecessary pressure on our team and could very well influence the result.