Aston Villa boss Remi Garde is fighting a losing battle to keep the Villans in the PremierLeague this season
Premier League whipping boys Aston Villa suffered a 6-0 home feat by midtable Liverpool on Sunday in game that saw the Villans biggest home defeat in the Premier League era. There were very few positives to take from the game.
What I took from having watch Villa play a couple of times this season is that they may be the worst team I have ever seen on the Premier League pitch, even if they have not got the lowest points total.
Years of decay coming back to haunt them
I feel sorry for Villa fans. Their club has been abandoned by US owner Randy Lerner, who got fed-up of investing his own money in improving the team. For the last few years Villa’s quality has been gradually diluted to such a degree that there is now very little of it in their team.
Departures quality players have been commonplace in recent windows. Well at least we know there will not be a mass exodus of quality players in the next transfer window, as there is unlikely to be a queue of clubs looking to sign the current Villa players in the summer.
Mediocre at best
The Villa squad is now full of mediocre players, who are quite frankly not good enough for the Premier League. How Villa got to the FA Cup final last season is beyond me. The likes of Christian Benteke, Fabian Delph and arguably even Tom Cleverley inspired a decent run of form toward the end of last season.
All three departed the club in the summer and a mass of relatively unknown players arrived in the summer. The two best signings have probably been Jordan Amavi and Jordan Ayew, who have been relatively successful since joining in the summer.
Unfortunately for Villa, Amavi currently has a long-term injury, while Ayew is currently suspended after being sent-off against West Ham. The pair are relative youngsters compared some of their teammates.
The new arrivals cannot be completely blamed for the Villans demise this season. The likes of experienced duo Micah Richards and Joleon Lescott have let their team down badly this season. In the Liverpool game that was illustrated perfectly, as the Villans were cut apart time and time again in defence.
The former-England international pair should be the ones guiding the younger, or in Villa’s case the lesser quality players through games. Instead they looked like they were clueless in defensive situations.
Denmark international Jores Okore has shown promise in a Villa shirt, but yesterday’s game one to forget for the centre-back. Midfielders Leandro Bacuna, Idrissa Gueye, Ashley Westwood and Jordan Veretout just lacked any creativity and cutting edge at all, which seems a theme in this campaign for the Villans.
Spanish playmaker Carles Gil is a nearly man. That is why he is playing for Villa and not a team challenging further up the table in England or his homeland. He can be creative, but more often than not he lacks end product.
Villa stalwart Gabriel Agbonlahor has been a Premier League player for far too long in my opinion. In seasons gone by he used his pace to decent effect, but he never had the end product either to go with his blistering pace.
Never prolific, he has lived on potential for too long and it is obvious he is never going to become a great player for the Villans.
Heading for the Championship
It is now clear that Villa are indeed heading for the Championship. Last weekend’s 2-0 win over Norwich gave Villans fans slight hope of a revival and I did in fact believe they had a chance of picking something up against Liverpool.
However, the bookmakers already have the Villans relegated at odds of 1/100 to go down to the second tier.
Villa could arguably be the biggest club ever relegated from the Premier League and it is a crying shame that a club with such a fantastic history and place in English football should be experiencing such awful fare at the moment.
One positive that Villa fans may take from relegation will be the fact that hopefully a number of their underperforming players will be offloaded in the summer. The way some have played this season though, it may be hard to find takers for them.
The Villa fans deserve better than their current situation, but quite simply the team has been left to disintegrate over the last couple of years, and this season’s likely relegation is a result of lack of caring from the top of the club.
Are the Villans the worst team to ever play in the Premier League?
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