Sublime To Ridiculous – March Madness
Written by Dan on March 10, 2010
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?