Manchester City 2, Aston Villa 0: Bill Howell's big match verdict
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IMAGINE a frail old granny, sat alone in her living room late at night... there’s no phone, the room is bathed in candlelight as the meter is running low and a winter chill wafts through the windows and under the doors.
There’s no neighbours as she lives in the countryside... then, all of a sudden, there’s a firm knock at the door.
Now that’s nervy.
Right now it would be hard to disagree with Mark Hughes’ pre-match comments that maybe Villa are perhaps beginning to feel the tension of it all.
Six games without a win, although admittedly three were cup ties.
Arsenal are breathing down their necks like rabid dogs.
Just three points seperate the two sides in the race for fourth place.
It could so easily have been eight points had they not gone to sleep against a poor Stoke team.
“It can’t be nerves affecting us because we have never been in this position before,” offered O’Neill after this defeat that finally ended the club record seven straight away wins.
An eighth would have put them on a pedestal with Bill Nicholson’s Tottenham greats of 1960/61 as well as two fine Chelsea sides in recent years and a cracker of Arsene Wenger’s.
That’s right. Eight away wins on the spin achieved just four times in the history of the game.
So if it wasn’t nerves were the nightmares of that late surrender on Sunday still affecting his players during a woeful first half?
And are the ghosts of Moscow still haunting Martin O’Neill?
“They’ve been at it since July 18,” O’Neill added, once again, by way of explanation.
That sunshine break to Dubai has therefore came at exactly the right time to rest tired minds and limbs.
Although O’Neill would love a game tomorrow in a bid to try to put the wrongs of that wretched first half right.
Next up: Tottenham, Liverpool and Manchester United. Arsenal are looking at Blackburn, Newcastle and Manchester City.
Villa could be playing catch-up by the time they take on Everton at Villa Park on April 12.
Would they have taken the current league table back in August? You bet.
Would they have taken it last Sunday at around 4.30pm when they were sailing towards a rare home win? Not a chance.
