With Aston Villa’s poor form continuing as the wheels fell off back in December with injuries and a serious loss of form, whilst we have pulled some results out of the hat, we go into this Saturday’s clash with Stoke City on the back of two successive defeats.
Fans are again split as they apportion blame for results, but there are those who feel faith in head coach Dean Smith will ultimately be better rewarded – especially come the summer when we shed those who have been serial underperformers for us.
Sitting in tenth place in the Championship table, we are still only nine points from the last Play-Off spot but it’s now certainly going to be a battle to catch up, especially as a number of the sides above us have at least one game in hand.
Smith knows he can’t throw in the towel though and speaking to the Official Site in the build-up to Saturday’s clash, he insisted that with no side really running away with the league this year, we just had to keep taking it one game at a time – show improvement – and see where it takes us.
“Every team is playing each other and no one has run away with it. The break that is opening up is the top four, with Albion winning on Tuesday. Then, it’s a scrap from there. Our job is just to try and win each game when it comes. We know we’re not on a great run at the moment but we’re working hard to change it. We have to go there, battle and scrap and come away with three points. Then we need to climb towards that top six.”
With plenty of fans already resigned to the fact the promotion battle is over this season, anything but victory probably seals that fate.
