Sublime To Ridiculous – March Madness
Now that the curse is over I’m expecting Aston Villa to go from one extreme to the other. We may have never won a game in March under Martin O’Neill before Sunday’s FA Cup victory over Reading, but if you’ve looked at the fixture list you may be feeling the same as me.
I don’t blame MON’s little whine about fixture congestion, what sort of manager would he be if he didn’t, but he knows that this only happens to the successful sides this time of year and it’s not new. Nothing will be done, but it’s nice to point out to everyone that we have a lot of games on our plate.
I like to look at it as an opportunity though. With so many cup games recently, we’ve had to postpone several Premiership matches (at the time of writing, the trip to Hull and the visit of Everton are still awaiting a date), but now there’s 5 straight EPL between now and the end of the month. That’s 15 points, we can catch up a game or two that we have in hand and some of the teams above us will have the distraction of Europe to contend with.
I don’t normally bother wasting time with predictions, especially multiple predictions, but just for fun I checked out the fixture list for the top 8 for the rest of the month and came up with what I think the table could look like on April 1st. No joke.
Here’s what I came up with:-
- Man Utd – 10th Milan (Home – UCL), 14th Fulham (Home – EPL), 21st Liverpool (Home – EPL), 27th Bolton (Away – EPL), 30th/31st Possible UCL Quarter Final 1st Leg. 7 points
- Chelsea – 13th West Ham (Home – EPL), 16th Inter (HOME – UCL), 21st Blackburn (Away – EPL), 24th Portsmouth (Away – EPL), Aston Villa (Home – EPL), 30th/31st Possible UCL Quarter Final 1st Leg. 10 points
- Arsenal – 9th Porto (Home – UCL), 13th Hull (Away – EPL), 20th West Ham (Home – EPL), 27th Birmingham (Away – EPL), 30th/31st Possible UCL Quarter Final 1st Leg. 7 points
- Tottenham – 13th Blackburn (Home – EPL), 20th Stoke (Away – EPL), 24th Fulham (Home – FA Cup R6R), 27th Portsmouth (Home – EPL) 5 points
- Man City – 14th Sunderland (Away – EPL), 21st Fulham (Away – EPL), 24th Everton (Home – EPL), 29th Wigan – (Home – EPL) 8 points
- Liverpool – 11th Lille (Away – UEL), 15th Portsmouth (Home – EPL), 18th Lille (Home – UEL), 21st Man Utd (Away – EPL), 28th Sunderland (Home – EPL) 5 points
- Aston Villa – 13th Stoke (Away – EPL), 16th Wigan (Away – EPL), 20th Wolves (Home – EPL), 24th Sunderland (Home – EPL), 27th Chelsea (Away – EPL) 13 points
- Everton – 13th Birmingham (Away – EPL), 20th Bolton (Home – EPL), 24th Man City (Away – EPL), 27th Wolves (Away – EPL) 6 points
Yes, there’s a certain rationale behind those numbers, but you’re not interested in that, you just want to see the table, don’t you!
| Team | Played | Points |
| Chelsea | 32 | 71 |
| Man Utd | 32 | 70 |
| Arsenal | 32 | 68 |
| Aston Villa | 31 | 58 |
| Man City | 31 | 57 |
| Tottenham | 31 | 54 |
| Liverpool | 32 | 53 |
| Everton | 32 | 47 |
Wishful thinking? Maybe, but we can definitely go the rest of the month unbeaten. We absolutely have to pick up the pace against lower opposition though!
What do you think? Doable, or will there be another collapse in March?
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it's possible of course, i'm sure there will be more slip ups like liverpool against Wigan. Just have to hope for th best!
And that's before all the hard games Man City and Spurs have coming up!
Your predictions look just a little bit biased to me! I think even unexpected slip ups aside, we would be a few points below what you have us on, and City/Spurs would have a point or two on us still. Good to be optimistic though
in hindsight, i've probably been overly harsh on everton, but spurs and city are more than capable of completely messing up. doesn't mean it will happen though and we're just as likely. so yeah, i'm biased!!
maybe that will galvanise them to do better with these games than i've given them credit for. we'll only know for sure at the end of the month.
that game highlights the futility of these predictions:-
i pulled the information together and made the predictions on sunday, but wrote this monday morning and scheduled it for wednesday. of course, by monday night wigan and liverpool had conspired to make a mockery of my predictions and i had to edit this accordingly.
so yeah, my first attempt had liverpool on 3 points more.
I guess it all depends on which Villa side turns up for the games.
As you say, we do seem to have a tendency of making it hard work against teams lower in the league.
I'd be well happy if we were to get 13 pts this months.
4 wins and a draw, i'm probably being too generous in retrospect. if the team from the first half reading plays, no chance. the second half team, every chance. we'll see.
“if the team from the first half reading plays, no chance. the second half team, every chance. we'll see.”
Exactly what I was thinking.
Hey Dan, have you considered getting your blog linked to newsnow?
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/publishers/site-submis...
been working on it for a while mate. so far, well you can see the result.
I can't see that you fail any of their conditions, so I'd keep on the case Dan.
they don't provide any feed back so the submissions just disappear into a black hole. i've filed again and attempted to contact someone, we'll see. i've seen some of the dross they do feature, so i have to say that i don't get it.
Ha ha!
I wonder who you mean?
So the reserves won 4-0 against the noses.
The kids are in a semi.
The first team has had a final,are in another semi and chasing 4th.
Looking very rosy atm.
lol, that wasn't a dig at anyone in particular.
it all looks good for the for the next few seasons. does it look anything like a long term plan about to start paying dividends to anyone else?
Dan,
You are being very optimistic, but I like that. If we get 13 points out of the next five games, we'll get champions league football…I'm sure of that. And yes, I also see your point about the long term plan and others I'm sure will follow soon. Just give them some time and don't be too harsh on them.
Villan,
Cheers mate!
Hello karpenter,
UTV mate
sage like advise there.it's possibly a fine line between being optimistic and deluding oneself, but one key difference is that i won't be throwing any toys out the pram if we don't achieve this near perfect record.
villa being villa, it's entirely possibly that we'll slip up against someone like wolves, but then go beat chelsea and still take 10-12 points out of the month!! but with 15 points on offer this month it will be very interesting just how many we can take.