Villa blog: Sick of Man Utd

I don’t know about anyone else, but I really am sick of the sight of Man United, writes Villa blogger Gregg Williams.

Imagine my dismay when I started up my latest Football Manager game only to find that my next fixture, as manager of Villa of course, was the annual trip to Old Trafford.

I’m sure Martin O’Neill agonised over team selection and tactics all week, and in the same vein I spent much longer than usual trying to set my side up for a big performance.

The result? A 3-0 defeat. My lads were torn apart by Rooney and Ronaldo, as in real life, and that was despite the fact that I had signed a right back.

Humbled, I went on to the next day, which brought up the FA Cup 3rd round draw. Imagine my astonishment when Villa were drawn to play at home against, you guessed it, Manchester United. Who says football computer games aren’t realistic?

On the subject of real football, we were pretty much outclassed on Saturday, and it came as little of a surprise. We were never going to match them while we are so low on confidence, and with Reo-Coker at right back? It just beggars belief that we could find ourselves in such a position. Its got to the stage now where whoever we do end up signing to play right back will have a huge weight of expectation on his shoulders. Each week the number of players I think we need goes up, right now it stands at seven, can anyone see that many new faces arriving in the summer? I can’t say i’m confident.

I am still trying hard not to be too disappointed by how this season is turning out. Perhaps if our year as a whole had been more patchy then it wouldn’t have felt so hard to take, but two wins out of thirteen games has really seemed to drain much of the mid-season positivity out of us all. There is still plenty to play for, including a massive derby game, and hopefully Saturday will be the lowest we will feel as Villa fans for a long long time in the future.