If last week I said I wasn’t concerned about the game, the same didn’t hold true while watching the match. The club have only won six games all season, and five of them were of the nerve-racking variety. When the final whistle blew, the feeling was more relief than joy. The way this season has gone, I’ll take two more rides on the roller coaster.
Villa’s move up the table also drags other clubs to the periphery of the relegation fight. Fulham, Stoke, West Ham, and Norwich are all on 33 points. They should be safe, but a run-in like Small Heath had two years ago would doom any of them. Newcastle has had a similar season as Villa, in that it has been disappointing – and they have started to play better of late. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them finish ahead of most – if not all – the clubs clustered ahead of them.
The one club ahead of Villa who are in the most trouble is the one managed by our old friend Martin O’Neil. One of the six matches the Villa has won this season was at The Stadium of Light. Sunderland was one of the worst looking teams Villa has played against this season. It’s a toss-up between them, West Ham a few weeks ago, and when Stoke visited Villa Park.
That O’Neil’s career has flat-lined in such a way gives us Villa fans some consolation, even with all the difficulties the club has endured. That he hasn’t been a raging success, save for the period immediately after his appointment, is not surprising to those of us who know him the best. He took over a club that had recently lost two prolific strikers: Darren Bent and Asamoah Gyan. Needless to say, he has failed to replace them, or field a team that is threatening in any way, as it has faded to irrelevance.
That the Black Cats blew an early lead and lost 3-1 to Villa’s next opponents, Queens Park Rangers, says as much – if not more – to me about Sunderland as it does QPR. A great escape isn’t as impossible as it looked only a few weeks ago, but this is still a match at home that Villa should win. A win puts Villa on 30 points with eight games to play. From there, if Villa can average a point a game, everything should be fine. My feelings about the team haven’t changed since last week, but I might pass on breakfast before the 11 AM kickoff in my part of the world. The game itself will probably be the only turmoil my stomach can handle.
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