Matt Maher: Past, present and future in mind as Aston Villa meet Preston again

It had been the same almost exactly two years previously, when a 2-0 defeat at Preston spelled the end for Roberto Di Matteo after just 12 matches in charge.

Villa’s most recent visit to Deepdale, which came nearly three months after Bruce’s last stand, also provides a marker of the remarkable transformation which has taken place over the course of just a few years as the clubs finally prepare to meet again in Sunday’s FA Cup quarter-final. 

The final fixture of 2018 came when the early momentum of Dean Smith’s reign had begun to stall. Jack Grealish had been sidelined with a shin injury, while injuries in defence meant Smith had no option but to field a back four which included three right-backs in the shape of Alan Hutton, Ahmed Elmohamady and James Bree. The pivotal signing of Tyrone Mings on loan from Bournemouth was still more than a month away.

An Elmohamady own goal, which cancelled out Tammy Abraham’s first half opener, meant Villa had to settle for a 1-1 draw. It was the fourth time in five Championship matches they had failed to win and they would claim victory in just one of the next nine before Grealish’s return to fitness, coupled with defensive reinforcements, helped spark a club record 10-match winning streak and surge to promotion which represented the first major step on the journey from then to now.

Meetings with Preston are always going to prompt reflection. Yet Sunday’s Cup clash is more about where Villa can go next, than where they have been.

Every match, from here until the end of the season, has the potential to be huge for manager Unai Emery and his team. The next 17 days already look momentous with two quarter-final ties, the other in the Champions League against Paris Saint-Germain, dotted around key Premier League fixtures in the race for a top-five finish. Should it go well for Villa, the next half of April becomes even bigger.

You have to go back much further than 2018 for the last time they found themselves so deep in a season, still fighting on three fronts.

Perhaps 2010, when Martin O’Neill’s team reached the League Cup final, were knocked out of the FA Cup at the semi-final stage and were still in with a shout of a top-four Premier League finish with two matches to play was the last occasion.

But that League Cup final came in February and it was a similar story in 2000, when Villa exited the semi-finals of that competition in January, before going on to finish the season at Wembley in the final of the FA Cup.

Even in 1996, Villa entered the final weekend of March with just two competitions still in their sights, having lifted the League Cup a week previously. A 3-0 FA Cup semi-final defeat to Liverpool on March 31 quickly reduced that to one.

Instead, this current season to date most closely resembles 1982-83, when Villa reached both the quarter-finals of the European Cup and FA Cup, while going on to finish sixth in the First Division. 

In both cup competitions on that occasion, their involvement did not progress beyond the last-eight. This time there is a belief they can go further. Arguably not since 1996 has there been such confidence they can end a trophy drought which has now ticked into its 30th year.

The FA Cup offers the quickest and - on paper - easiest route to glory, though Villa are far from the only remaining participants sensing a big opportunity.

Rarely in recent decades has the world’s oldest cup competition felt so wide open. Most of the usual suspects have fallen by the wayside, with nine of the past 10 winners already knocked out. Of those clubs remaining, Manchester City are the only ones with a pedigree of winning trophies. Everyone else has either a lengthy major trophy drought, with Villa’s remarkably the shortest of the other seven or, in the case of Bournemouth, Brighton, Crystal Palace and Fulham, have never won one in their history. Occasions like this weekend really do not come round very often.

In drawing Preston, Villa got the opponents the others wanted. The Lilywhites, whose own last major trophy win was the FA Cup in 1938, are the only remaining participants outside the Premier League and the undoubted underdogs.

But they are also at home, a place they have not lost for 15 matches and where they have already claimed one top-flight scalp this season after a record-breaking 16-15 penalty shoot-out win over Fulham in the Carabao Cup.

Just 5,530 were at Deepdale to watch that piece of history. More than four times as many will be present on Sunday, with the 23,000-capacity stadium set for a rare sell-out. The BBC cameras will also be in attendance, in anticipation of what they hope will be a shock.

This is the first time Villa have been drawn away in this season’s competition and the atmosphere will be a test of their mentality.

Cope with that and their quality should see them through to a Wembley semi-final and another memorable date in a season not short of them.