Villa blog: Make or break at St James'

If Aston Villa are to survive, a win against Newcastle United feels like a necessity.

Villa blogger Matt Turvey asks if there is any way forward for a club rooted to the bottom of the table

With talk of spending in January, Aston Villa fans may be feeling relieved. Well, relieved as a person can feel when your team is bottom of the league.

In truth, Remi Garde needs to make changes, not only in terms of personnel but also in terms of attitude. For too long, Villa have been soft touches - a team who has struggled to even be fit for 90 minutes, never mind able to kick on.

Even under Martin O'Neill, many saw Villa as a team who were able to be outrun and outfought with sustained effort. Come 70 or 80 minutes, legs would start to tire and late goals were conceded.

Flash forward to 2015, and Villa have far bigger troubles. A failure to replace a talismanic striker in Christian Benteke is arguably the biggest issue with the club. After all, if you can't score goals, you'll always struggle. Factor in a defence which has had to rely heavily on Kieran Richardson and Alan Hutton in recent times and the problems are visible, both ends of the pitch.

Many are of the opinion that Villa are doomed, and history may well support such a suggestion, but the question is which is the route to success? Do Villa roll the dice and hope for survival based on January expenditure? Or do they take the safe financial option and minimise spending if they are more than likely to go down?

Tom Fox has implied that Garde will be backed with whatever he needs in January, although what that actually means in reality is hard to say. Randy Lerner, once a man who used to lavish money on the club, has quickly become a spendthrift trying to do the minimum to stay in the league.

The issue, as most Villa fans will tell you, is that Lerner has starved the team of real investment. Yes, £50m was spent during the summer, but the majority of that expenditure came from the sales of Christian Benteke and Fabian Delph. Had the pair stayed, Villa would have been fortunate to get even two of their summer recruits. That said, it was release clauses that triggered the exit of the duo, so there was little the club could do to keep them barring changing the minds of the pair.

Which, if we're honest, is rather unlikely. Whilst Benteke has struggled with injury and a new manager's style, Liverpool are certainly a bigger team and they are looking up the table rather than down. Delph similarly can expect success at Manchester City, and both players have done what is best for their careers.

So where next? Can Villa pull off the biggest escape of them all? Or is this the season where the club finally drop through the trap door for the first time in the Premier League era? Time will tell, but a poor result against Newcastle may well be pointed to as one of the key games that cost the club their top flight status.

You can follow Matt Turvey's regular opinions at his own site, Aston Villa Life at www.astonvillalife.com, via the site's Twitter account @astonvillalife, or via his own Twitter account @mturvey_star.