Aston Villa blog: New start, same team
Football's back but not as we know it, during what has been an incredibly difficult year for this country one of the ongoing side issues was football and what happens to it.
I think most of us believed the will of the money men and Premier League was to play the season out whatever happens, so that is where we now are.
If I’m honest I didn’t miss football as much as I thought I would, maybe that was because we were three quarters of the way through yet another bitterly disappointing season supporting Aston Villa, and if anything it was a relief that the games were cancelled albeit in the worst scenario possible.
When the restart was announced us fans once again started to gradually reacquaint ourselves with the remaining fixtures and league table.
Being a Villa fan has been a tough job over the last dozen years and it doesn’t look like easing up anytime soon, pre-Sheffield United I was doing my best to convince myself that the break will have done us good and the players struggling for form and fitness would come back firing, with Jack Grealish our talismanic captain leading us to premier league safety.
Fast forward two games and I’m afraid my optimism has taken a huge hit, whilst it’s not all over and there is at least two, if not three, teams struggling for form like us I’m finding it hard to make a case for us coming out on top of them.
Sheffield United were there for the taking as Newcastle showed, we did ride our luck with Orjan Nyland's mistake, but we had at least two or three good chances to win it.
The biggest disappointment was the lack of urgency and desire seemingly on the pitch. The players didn’t look like a team second bottom fighting for their lives.
It felt flat and unfortunately nothing much has changed from pre-lockdown Villa.
I tried to stay positive and put it down to the bizarre circumstances the players found themselves in and waited for the Chelsea game, surely that would be a better performance, surely with games running out Dean Smith would rotate the squad and try something new.
Unfortunately having digested the defeat to Chelsea, it's clear than none of that happened. Same team, same lethargic performance, same lack of urgency and desire.
I simply can’t understand with nine games left why we aren’t going all-out trying to win every fixture, the philosophy seems to be trying not to lose instead of trying to win.
Surely it’s better to go down fighting than giving up so tamely every game?
We now head into now the most important game of the season in Newcastle away and with the games to come after it's hard to make a case that anything other than a win will be good enough.
So as always, we sit and wait and pray that maybe just maybe things will finally turn.
