Villa blog: Season of what ifs?

Friday 28th March 2008, 8:26AM GMT.

Aston Villa manager Martin O'NeillOk Villa fans, who fancies us to win at Old Trafford then? I’d say stranger things have happened, but I’d probably be lying, writes Villa blogger Gregg Williams.

Lets face it, even with a full team, on form, we usually struggle in this fixture, and with confidence low, our injury hit, paltry squad barely even able to fill the coach to Manchester, you’d have to bet against us this time around as well.

I have tried to stay positive but right now I’m hit hard by thoughts of what might have been.

What if Curtis Davies hadn’t gotten injured? What if we’d hung on to beat Arsenal? What if we’d signed Defoe instead of Portsmouth? What if we’d had a half decent proper right back available all season?

As has been the case so often before, our expectations were raised then dashed by bad luck and a failure to gamble in the transfer market. Who else remembers the Juninho saga?

Or the £500,000 extra we could have paid to get Robbie Keane?

I feel sorry for the players we have because they have had to bear the full weight of our expectations.

The pressure on Agbonlahor, Young, Barry and the rest of the lads to keep performing week in week out seems to have caught up with them.

It can’t be easy for Gabby to feel that he has to score every other game to keep us going, but he knows that we don’t have someone capable of covering for him even for a few games if he is injured or lacking a little confidence.

On the plus side, we have nothing to lose on Saturday.

The lads can go out free of the pressure that came with them being expected to beat Sunderland, and with any luck can express themselves as we know they can.

No-one expects them to win, the pressure will be on Man Utd to get another vital three points for their title campaign.

I’ll be watching and hoping for a miracle, maybe the lads can do us proud again as they have so often for us this season.

Villa fans have your say below


  1. 1
    garry

    once again the problems have been caused by villa being totally caught out by the january transfer window. it seems as if the f.a. didnt let anyone know around the aston area of the midlands that we could buy some players to help with our push for europe. the last 2 home performances against boro and sunderland (supposedly poorer opposition) were not good enough in so many areas. i hope villa finally learn that the days of using 14 or 15 players in a season have long gone.

    Report abuse

  2. 2
    Jon

    Our season died with Curtis Davies’s heel…

    We won’t get anywhere with Zat Knight’s concentration span.

    Report abuse



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