On the 9th of January 1999 John Gregory took his league leaders to Middlesbrough, but unfortunately the goalless draw meant they headed back to Brum with only a point and dropped to 2nd place in the Premiership. Even worse, the team only managed a miserly 15 points from the remaining 17 games and finished the season in 6th place. Losses to Newcastle, Blackburn, Leeds, Coventry, Derby, Tottenham, Chelsea, Man Utd, Charlton & Arsenal killed what started out as a fantastic season.

However, the 40 points achieved from the first 21 games remained Villa’s best performance for years to come. Until today in fact. Martin O’Neill’s Aston Villa side played their 21st game of the season today at Villa Park against West Brom and the 2-1 victory boosted this season’s point haul to 41. That’s correct, this is Villa’s best performance at this stage of the season ever!!

Of course there’s a long way to go and I don’t want to encourage anyone to start counting any chickens, but if we keep this pace up (41 points/21 games = 1.95 pts/gm) we’ll finish the season around 74 points. That would have been a top 4 finish in every Premiership season apart from last year when Liverpool came in 4th with 76 points.

The encouraging news is that Martin O’Neill has achieved absolute symmetry between the first and second halves of his two previous seasons at Villa. 2006/07: 25pts + 25pts = 50pts. 2007/08: 30pts + 30pts = 60pts. The pattern is almost too perfect… Villa racked up 35pts from the first 19 games this season!! However, if this sequence continues and the second half of the season matches the first precisely then we’ll finish the season on 70pts. That’s still been enough for at least 4th place in 11 of the last 13 Premiership Seasons by the way.

We’re also on an impressive run of 9 league games without defeat, the 3rd time Villa has achieved such a feat since MON took charge in August ’06. MON went unbeaten in his first 9 games in charge and racked up 15 points. Again, with the uncanny symmetry, Villa closed out the 2006/07 season with 9 games without a loss, 4 wins & 5 draws for 17 points.

Our current 9 game unbeaten run was achieved with 6 wins & 3 draws, (21 points) and MON was rightly named as the Manager of the Month for December 2008. Without wanting to jinx anything, with games coming up against Sunderland, Portsmouth, Wigan & Blackburn, MON has every chance of bettering John Gregory’s record of 12 unbeaten games in a Premiership Season back in that 1998/99 season. (He actually went 14 games unbeaten if you count the wins over Sheffield Wednesday & Arsenal at the end of the previous season). This is the type of form that’s required to maintain a position towards the top of the table. If and when this run does come to an end it’s important to pick up and start again immediately.

I don’t see us trailing off as we did 10 years ago, but as we only need 19 points from the remaining 17 games to beat last season’s 60 points I’m confident, whatever happens, that we will once again improve on last year. Champions League is a tantalizing possibility, but at the start of this season my genuine hopes and expectations were to improve on last year’s points haul and, in the process, close the gap on the top 4. Personally, anything better than that would be a massive bonus!!