Cast your mind back to the start of the season and as every week passed, Aston Villa’s start to the season got worse and worse in terms of the club’s history. At one point, Paul Lambert had achieved the worst start in 54-years.
January looked to be the month to make or break Villa. It couldn’t have gone much worse. Out both cups and suffering home league losses to relegation rivals. But if you take Villa’s 12 games from February onwards, the turnaround this past few months has been astounding and looks to have saved the club from the unthinkable.
In those games, Villa have won 6, drawn 2, and lost 4. The four losses coming to Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool, which are all excusable for any Villa team to lose. It’s roughly a third of the season, so if you times the points-haul by three, Villa would currently be on 60 points after 36 games, which would see the team sitting in a top 6 position (before the Liverpool vs Everton game).
Of course, Villa wouldn’t play the Manchester clubs three times each, so the points total could be even more.
While Villa’s finish isn’t quite up there with the nine wins in the last 11 games of the season that John Gregory achieved, when he took over in 1998, an unlikely brace of wins in the last two games ala two years ago (when Villa beat both Liverpool and Arsenal) could see the team finish in the top half.
The fact that for the first time in three seasons, the club will actually keep their manager for the new campaign in 2013/14, should see the club finally stay in the top half of the league in the season to come. UTV
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