The final whistle blows at Anfield and Aston Villa celebrate confirming their best league start EVER since the Premier League was formed, as another perfect away performance on Merseyside sealed another win and 10 points from the opening 4 games. Top 4 form, that. Title challenging form, that. Why not? The team that Villa have just beaten showed last year that anything could be possible. Take a leaf out of their book, do the impossible. Why not? The fun in football is all about the possibility of someone doing the unexpected, upsetting the odds. It almost definitely won’t happen. Almost definitely. The remote, borderline insane possibility and hope isn’t gone yet.
Fast-forward to January 2015, and the hope is most emphatically gone, one again replaced by fear. The fear of relegation is almost overshadowed by the fear that even if relegation is avoided, the same is done next year. This isn’t going to be an article analysing Paul Lambert and his impact, or non-impact, on the squad, or even looking at the future and what is possible with or without the Scot. I’ll leave that to people who are far more informed on the subject and club, and instead can take a relatively impartial look at the season so far. Highs, lows, more lows, it’s been one to forget; or maybe one to remember, and learn from?
The aforementioned early start, now that was good. 10 points from a possible 12 and everything was looking rosy. Shortly afterwards, the bad run began. As inevitable as it was, it’s hard to shake off the pre-season optimism when your team starts the season well. Back-to-back 3-0 defeats to Chelsea and Arsenal swiftly followed by a 2-0 defeat to Man City were almost excusable, given the opposition, but the 5 goals shipped without reply to Everton and QPR were serious disappointments. The immediate trend that fans noted was the inability to score, and 0 goals in 5 games is some going in the Premier League, especially with the general standard of defending seeming so poor this year.
The goal drought was brought to end in the 2-1 heart-breaking home defeat to Tottenham, with both Spurs’ goals coming in the final 6 minutes of the game. Things actually picked up after that game, and the highlight of a 5 game unbeaten run spanning the majority of November and into the festive month was a hard-earned 1-0 victory away at Crystal Palace. Even when West Brom broke the unbeaten run at The Hawthorns, the season didn’t seem to be going that badly. The customary performance at home to Manchester United gave 10-man Villa a point, and from a neutral perspective I felt they deserved more. However, Christian Benteke’s 18th minute opener in that game was the last time Aston Villa scored a goal in a Premier League game, with the solitary competitive goal coming in a 1-0 home win over Championship strugglers Blackpool. Even more of a worry is that there isn’t a clear source of potential chances to turn into goals, and the team has never looked more toothless.
At the time of writing, Aston Villa have just been beaten 2-0 at home by Liverpool and sit precariously in 14th place in the table. Any outside chance of silverware or glory is gone, and unless form picks up soon there is a very real chance that this season will be Villa’s last in the Premier League for at least 1 season, which would carry serious on and off the pitch repercussions. For now though, they remain 3 points above safety and have a mixed bag of fixtures upcoming. All isn’t quite lost, not yet.
