MOMS Survey
Before the start of the season MOMS did a comprehensive survey of a selection of 500 Aston Villa supporters to get their views regarding the state of the club on and off the field and also on various supporter issues.
One of the big questions was what were the expectations of Villa supporters for the 2016/17 season in the Championship with the take over, new management and squad revamp. Would the club bonus straight back into the Premier League? And if not, how long would it take?
Predictions
When it comes to planning at the club, no one is really looking beyond a two-year plan. It’s the period that Tony Xia had to show his plans and finances to the Premier League and Football League during the Fit and Proper test process.
Essentially Xia’s Plan A is to go up this season and if that fails, Plan B is to go up next season. There currently is no Plan C.
If it takes longer than two seasons, then Villa will start to become a legit Championship club and Doctor’s Tony interest may start to wane. The pressure is on. At the moment, we’re on holiday in the league and the Villa board don’t expect to over stay their time in it.
Supporter Expectation
Overall Villa supporters were pretty optimistic of a return to the Premier League within the two-season time span, with 88.1% of Villans thinking Villa would be promoted in that time period.
However there is a slight majority of supporters that are siding on caution, with 45.7% feeling it would take the two seasons, those expecting instant promotion were a shade less at 42.4%.
While 8% thought it would take three seasons to return to the English top tier, a pessimistic 3.9% of fans stated it would take longer than three seasons to get back to the Premier League. I suppose a pessimist is never disappointed.
In terms of where Aston Villa will actually finish this season, only around a third of Villa fans fancied the team to get automatic promotion, with 22.9% thinking Villa would finish second, while 13.2% proclaimed Di Matteo’s men as potential champions.
Most Popular Finish
Interestingly, the majority vote of 42.5% went to Villa getting into the play-offs – it would certainly be a case of opening the upper tier of the Trinity Road stand for play-off matches, if that was the case.
More supporters expected Villa to finish middle table (18.8%) in the Championship than actually be Champions at the end of the season (13.2%). Is that just being typical Villans?
2.2% of Villa fans predicted a lower half of the table finish. Well, they’re not currently wrong, based on the present league table.
0.2% predicted back-to-back relegations for the club. Doomsayers or Blues fans? You decide.
UTV
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8 games in and you’d get a completely different result to the same questions…
Be interesting to see what people think now.