Following the astonishing 5-5 spectacle at Villa Park midweek, it’s off to the Riverside to take on third-place Middlesbrough. Boro are unbeaten in their last five, and have only lost twice all year, and the obvious statistic of interest is 22 goals scored versus 10 conceded. Villa have netted 36 times, by comparison, and conceded 30.
There are a lot of layers here, so let’s start by saying I’m not looking to go overboard. It’s easy to do, especially at such a critical juncture for the club. So let’s just say I’m happy Jack Grealish is staying. The kid is Villa enough to stick with the side when it might go against his best interests, and how many times have we seen that over the last decade?
Up til now, it’s all been fun and games, always another day, another possibility. After the final, well, season two in the promotion stakes will be final, for good or bad. I really just want to wake up and see that we’ve won. But before it comes to that, I have to say it’s been a good ride.
Not a good day at Carrow Road—Villa had a chance to take advantage of Cardiff’s loss to Wolves and make a run at an automatic promotion spot Saturday. Instead, we fell to the Canaries 1-3, and sit seven points off second with five games to go. On this run of form and with our run-in, just staying in the playoff spots is going to take some work.
It’s Tuesday already, and one hopes we’ve dusted ourselves off and are ready to go again tonight following Saturday’s loss to Fulham. Preston North End come in off a draw with Wolves, are unbeaten in five, will be nipping at our heels just a bit if they win and draw within six, and likely will face the similarly diminished Villa squad that took the field against the Cottagers.
