Former Aston Villa manager Graham Taylor is backing his old club to beat the Baggies on Saturday. Martin Swain finds out why.

Twenty-one years after picking up the pieces of a broken club and putting it back together again, Graham Taylor believes Aston Villa are ready for the Champions League.

Well, nearly.

The man who rescued Villa from the bitterness and poison of its 1987 relegation thinks Martin O’Neill’s team has one more test to pass before it can be confident of bringing Champions League football to the region for the first time.

Taylor will be at Villa Park on Saturday in his customary role of radio pundit for the derby against Albion tipping his old club to make it five wins from their last six games.

But, he believes, they have to do even better than that if they are to hold off Arsene Wenger’s fifth-placed Arsenal, the elite power now deemed most vulnerable to Villa’s challenge to the Premier League “establishment.”

“If Arsenal put a run together which we know they are capable of, then it could be difficult for Villa to stay in that top four until the finish,” says Taylor.

“I don’t think that we have seen Villa yet show they can win, say, six games in a row but I think we all accept Arsenal could do that. Man United and Chelsea can and Liverpool couldn’t but now suggest they can too.

“But Villa haven’t shown us yet that they can win six games on the trot and they’ve got to be able to do that to stay in the top four. This is the next important step for the team.

“Martin’s a clever so-and-so. His teams always start well, finish well but take a little dip in the middle. I don’t know how he does that but he does.

“Now there are signs at the moment that they are handling the middle phase of this season well but they need that run I think.”

The fact that it has taken the best part of a generation for Villa to reach this position of maximum opportunity is a source of sadness for their old manager, who followed up a hugely important spell between 1987-90 with a less memorable return to office in 2002. He has no doubts as to why it took so long.

“I’m getting to an age now where I don’t have to be quite so careful about what I say,” he chuckles. “And I think it’s obvious that one of the best things to happen to Villa was Doug Ellis giving way to Randy Lerner. And that nearly didn’t happen by the way.

“As much as I loved and enjoyed my first spell under Doug, he never understood or could never deliver what was needed to take Villa on to the next level.”

In contrast, says Taylor, the O’Neill-Lerner combination is a perfect combination at a perfect moment.

He says: “What they’ve shown is that Martin needed Villa as much as Villa needed Martin. The top managers in this profession are control freaks. When I look back on my career now I realise I was the same – ‘I’m in charge, it will be done my way.’

“And Martin has that. And the beauty of the relationship between manager and chairman is that Randy Lerner is happy for him to have that.

“He has said to him ‘You do that, Martin, we don’t need a Chief Executive, we don’t need a Director of Football. You get on with your side and I’ll get on with mine’.”

He is less convinced about the Baggies’ ability to keep their heads above water in this first Premier League campaign under Tony Mowbray.

The former England manager clearly has a high regard for how Mowbray carries himself through the shark-infested waters of English football and admires the Albion manager’s commitment to a stylish route to survival.

But, ultimately, he believes it to be a flawed philosophy.

“I am not trying to teach Tony to suck lemons,” says Taylor. “He seems a bright and intelligent young manager.

“But Albion need to score more goals if they are going to stay up and in order to do that they need to create more scoring options. If Manchester United need, say, four chances to score one, for Albion it is 10.

“It’s all very well scoring great goals from outside the penalty box but the reality is the bulk of them will come from inside the area. And if your football isn’t creating that ratio of chances inside the opposition area, then it doesn’t matter what your style is like . . . you are in trouble.”

Villa’s keener edge in the two areas of the pitch which matter is why Taylor believes Villa will emerge on top on Saturday.

But will they do it? Will they make that top four breakthrough?

“The last time I had a bet was with one of the groundsmen at Bodymoor Heath who watched Peter Crouch have his first training session with us,” Taylor says.

“I said ‘What do you think?’ and I could see the doubt on his face as he said ‘You’ll need to build him up a bit boss.’ I said ‘I bet you a tenner he plays for England.’

“Of course, I had long gone when he did but I got my tenner in the end!

“Villa must maintain this form over the mid-season and it must co-incide with Arsenal not coming back at them. If so, then yes, it is on for them. I tell you what, I would have a fiver on them finishing in the top four this season. But I would have fifty quid on them doing it next season.”