Aston Villa Central

As starts go, Gerard Houllier has made a particularly bad one with Aston Villa; winning just 13 points from his first 14 league games, fuelling the fire with a number of clumsy PR gaffes, a growing army of fans calling for his head.

In part one, we looked at Villa’s history of dealing with the threat of relegation and here in part two we’ll make a direct comparison between Houllier and Jozef Venglos who oversaw a terrible season at Villa Park, but didn’t relegate the club.

That’s setting the bar painfully low I know, so why Venglos? Well, it’s not that he’s the only other non-British manager employed by Villa, it’s actually that his record during his first 14 league games was marginally better than Houllier’s, which prompted further investigation.

Firstly, here’s a list of post-War managers at Aston Villa who took over the reigns with the club in the top flight and the number of points they each amassed during their first 14 games in charge:-

• John Gregory* 34pts
• Tony Barton* 25pts
• Brian Little* 24pts
• Martin O’Neill 23pts
• Alex Massie 21pts
• Ron Atkinson 21pts
• Joe Mercer* 19pts
• Eric Houghton* 19pts
• Billy McNeill* 17pts
• Graham Turner 16pts
• David O’Leary 14pts
• Jozef Venglos 14pts
• Gerard Houllier* 13pts
• George Martin* 10pts
• Dick Taylor 8pts

The managers marked with an asterisks (*) took over the reigns with the season already under way, the others were in charge for the 1st game of the season.

The points shown above came from within one season for all the managers except John Gregory who took over with 11 games remaining in 1997/98, so his record includes the 1st three games of 1998/99. (Seven points if you’re interested).

Clearly Houllier is not among the best of company here, but while Mercer and McNeill went on to relegation during their first (and in McNeill’s case, only) season in charge, Houghton, Turner, O’Leary, Venglos, Martin and Taylor did not.

It was the fact that even Dr Jo had managed a slightly better performance from his first 14 games that set alarm bells ringing. However, as ever, the devil is in the detail.

Mitigating factors

First of all, Venglos came to Villa Park toward the end of July 1990 after Graham Taylor vacated the manager’s seat to succeed Bobby Robson in charge of England.

Taylor’s Villa had finished the 1989/90 season runner up to Liverpool, it couldn’t be argued that Venglos inherited a dysfunctional team and despite no transfer windows to hinder him, he didn’t bring in any new faces of note.

Despite three 6th places on the bounce, Houllier joined a somewhat dispirited outfit, effectively still licking its wounds from a 6-0 thrashing at Newcastle. The side littered with injuries and more to come, the transfer window firmly closed until 2011.

It’s well known that Houllier inherited a less than well oiled machine, but nevertheless, surely he should have been able to achieve a better record from his first 14 games than Dr Jo, no?

Well, that would depend on many things. For instance, how comparable are those 14 games? I think it’s important to compare apples to apples as often as possible, so I put the two 14 game schedules side by side and it makes interesting reading:-

The GA column really stands out, doesn’t it?

Venglos benefited from playing all three teams who would finish in the bottom three that season; gaining two of his three wins from Sunderland and Derby, but losing to Luton who would ultimately finish in 18th place.

He also only had to face three sides who would eventually finish in the top six; losing to Liverpool and Man City, a single point being extracted thanks to a goalless draw against Leeds at Villa Park.

Contrast that with Houllier’s fixture list.

If you had to name the clubs that would likely be contesting the top six before a ball was kicked this season, besides ourselves, you might well have named Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Man City, Tottenham and, perhaps, Liverpool.

Houllier has had to take on all six, Tottenham twice, plus the unique challenge of the local derby against the Blues. That’s eight of 14 games that could be listed among the most difficult of the season, what would be a reasonable expectation for those games under the circumstances?

In fairness, it’s probably the nature of some of the games more than the actual results that has rubbed many fans the wrong way, notwithstanding the various PR gaffes, and Houllier’s demeanour is unlikely to make anyone feel warm inside.

Looking forward

The good news is that senior players are now coming back from injury, the transfer window is about to open, and, while January has many challenges, there are pockets of winnable points littered through the February and March fixtures.

If we’re thinking in terms of avoiding relegation being the one and only concern right now, we have to think about aiming for 40 points as soon as possible.

We currently have 20, there are 19 games remaining. Even Dr Jo managed to take 23 points from his next 19 games following the loss at Luton Town shown in the table above.

Houllier will obviously need to improve upon his 0.93 points per game average thus far, but that seems every bit as likely as some new manager coming in and achieving the same thing.

In fact, looking at the fixture list, it’s slightly more pressing; the final two games are against Arsenal at the Emirates and then the curtain will be closed on the season at Villa Park against Liverpool.

Imagine the final game being a loser goes down scenario. Wow, that would be absolutely terrifying, but beyond awesome to come out the winner.

I’d prefer to avoid that myself though, perhaps hitting at least 42 points, for extra safety, with three games to spare. 22 points in 16 games is a 1.375 points per game average, or five wins and seven draws for example.

It’s not easy to pick those among the fixture list, but that’s what they’ll need to do. Any less and it will end up going right to the wire.

Can you pick out five wins and seven draws before the end of April?

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