Blog: Villa still have a challenge for survival
With a midweek game feeling as important as the game against Everton at the weekend, Matt Turvey looks at just how important survival could be for the boys in claret & blue.
As Leicester City fail to take points against a Chelsea side destined for the title, Aston Villa fans will have breathed a collective sigh of relief, leaving five clubs below them, with four having played the same number of games.
Having to worry about the results of other teams - wherever they happen to sit in the league - always feels like a sign of weakness, as though your own team can't do enough by themselves to achieve their objective, whether that objective is survival or success.
For a club like Villa, survival has been about as high as the club's objectives appear to have been for the past four or five years, leaving fans understandably frustrated, upset and angry in equal measure.
Villa have just four games left of their seasons, and each one will provide their own challenge. Southampton away will arguably be the hardest, although neither Everton or West Ham will be particularly easy either.
Burnley, although the easiest on paper, will still be putting up a decent fight, even if they may find themselves relegated by the time the game comes around. Previous worries of the last game of the season being a winner-takes-all clash seem unlikely - if only because of Burnley's current lack of points - but Sean Dyche's team will likely refrain from rolling over, even if they are through the trap door at that point.
Getting back to the present, it seems bizarre to think that watching another result could have such an impact on the psyche of the fans of another team, but Villa fans have to take what they can get - even if that means relying on the relative misfortune of the teams around them.
Ideal circumstances would put more Midlands teams in the top flight, and see other clubs relegated in their place, but Villa's survival is of paramount importance, perhaps more than any potential silverware success at Wembley come the end of the month, even if such a statement speaks volumes of the broken era of football we currently dwell in - where finishing 17th is far more lucrative than winning the FA Cup.
If Villa can kick on and stay up, there's a positive feeling that Tim Sherwood - despite his relative inexperience - can cultivate a stronger winning mentality compared with recent managers. Whether Villa survive is something that will become clearer over the next month or so but - for now at least - the spectre of relegation has shrunk into the background for a few more days.
