Either I’ve been having a very bad dream for the last two weeks, or the harsh reality is that Villa have conspired to throw away our best chance of Europe in years in the space of three games, writes Villa blogger Gregg Williams.

Saturday’s performance against Sunderland was woeful and everyone involved, including Martin O’Neill, has to take a look at their role in the events of the last fortnight.

What Martin has achieved since he took over has been, as he would say, terrific.

Unfortunately I feel it’s in the transfer market where he has let himself down slightly.

For the money paid out for them, Reo-Coker and Petrov have not dramatically improved our midfield.

Someone told me the other day that we have the smallest first team squad in the football league, which if true is rather astonishing and begs the question how we can still be in such a position when we are pulling in 40,000 crowds every week and have our stature and resources.

It’s been made clear that our transfer activity is down to the decisions of O’Neill and therefore the buck has to stop with him.

On Saturday we could have done with a creative spark from the bench, and obviously a proper right back would have been nice.

I felt sorry for Craig Gardner, again, for having to try to fill the gap there, and i’m worried that we are destroying his confidence by playing him out of position.

The team lacked any spark and with the same players on the pitch week in week out its easy for the opposition to know what to expect and then to try to counter it.

Mark Ashley Young, defend set pieces, and most of our threat is gone. If you discount the Arsenal own goal, we haven’t scored from open play in four games, two of which were at home to teams in the bottom half of the table.

This is not good enough.

The fortunate thing for Martin O’Neill is that the answer appears to be a bolder approach in the transfer market, which you imagine he will be given the green light to do in the summer.

Our results so far this season have proved that we have the nucleus of a good squad but now we need options, and cover, to ensure we don’t get ‘found out’ again next year.

For now we’ll just have to hope the team can grind out a few more results between now and the end of the season, and maybe sneak the Intertoto place that seemed to be the bare minimum expected only a month ago.

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