We finished 6th in the Premier League last season for the 3rd season running; apparently evidence of stagnation for a significant proportion of fans. The fact is, and forgive me for repeating this once again, Aston Villa hadn’t achieved three top six finishes on the bounce in the top flight since 1933.

Hopefully it won’t be another 77 years until we can taste such putrid stagnation, but right now you’d be forgiven for thinking it feels that way. Those three 6th places certainly seem like sweet nectar compared to our current situation.

Here’s another cold fact: our record after 19 games, this season is our 10th worst at this stage in the top flight since World War II.

You may already be aware that we’ve suffered the indignation of relegation from the top tier three times during this post-war period. A simple deduction should lead you to conclude that if there were nine seasons in the past worse than this one so far, but we were only relegated three times, at least six of those seasons can’t have ended in the worst possible manner.

As it happens, it’s seven.

Some history

• I’ve tabled the 25 worst top flight seasons at the 19 game point below (click to go full size) and highlighted the three seasons that ended in relegation in red, the current 2010/11 season is in blue.
• As usual, the points have been recalculated on a three points for a win basis to allow a consistent comparison.
• The manager named is the manager in charge of the 19th game, the asterisks indicate the seasons we made at least one change to the manager.

I’m usually the first to recommend caution when looking at seasons of old. As far as I’m concerned, the further back you go, the less value there is in drawing comparisons with the modern day Premier League. I include the data for fear of being accused of believing football was invented in 1992.

Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that only one Premier League season was worse at this stage; 1994/95. We had already brought Brian Little in and it was a scrap, but we weren’t relegated.

It was close though.

1958/59

We were relegated in 1959 after finally replacing Eric Houghton with Joe Mercer 20 games into the season with Villa rooted to the bottom of the table. Mercer’s first game was against Man City at Villa Park and it ended in a 1-1 draw.

Ironically, by the end of the season, Villa were barely better off in 21st place and were relegated with Man City finishing in the safety of 20th place, just a point ahead.

Mercer brought us back to the old first division for the 1960/61 season as Division Two champions, achieving 7th and 8th in the seasons that followed, but was flirting with relegation again by 1964, finishing in 19th in a 22 team league.

Dick Taylor took over, and you’ll see his first season wasn’t a huge improvement; the first 19 games ranking 3rd in the table above, but we weren’t relegated.

However, neither 1964/65 (16th) nor 1965/66 (16th) were great omens for Taylor and it’s perhaps surprising that we stuck with him throughout 1966/67. Less surprising that it resulted in relegation, signalling a dark time that would lead to starting the 70’s in the old third division.

1986/87

The most recent relegation – and most shocking given how soon it followed winning the league and European titles – came in 1987.

Graham Turner, Tony Barton’s successor, was replaced by Billy McNeill just half a dozen games into the season after a 6-0 mauling at Nottingham Forest which left us in 21st place with just 3 points.

McNeill started poorly with a 4-1 loss at home to Norwich, but four wins from the next six games gave some hope, lifting the team as high as 16th, but it was a false dawn.

A series of disappointing losses and draws led inevitably to finishing the season at the very bottom of the table with 36 points, three points adrift of Man City in 21st.

Enter Graham Taylor to begin a stint at the helm that would take us back to the top flight and Taylor eventually to Soho square and documentary infamy. Do I not like that!

Positive change

Changing manager in 58/59 & 86/87 did not prevent relegation, but neither did sticking with the manager in 66/67. But some seasons possibly were rescued through change.

We were in 19th place, separated from the relegation zone in a 22 team Premier League by goal difference when Brian Little took over from Ron Atkinson in November 1994.

It came down to the final day, but we ultimately finished in the final safe position, 18th (four teams went down that season with two promoted, creating the 20 team league we have today), three points above Crystal Palace.

We began 1950 with Alex Massie in charge, went through a lengthy period of 15 games I can’t attribute to any manager, before George Martin took over in December with the team three points above the relegation zone.

We finished in 15th, just five points away from disaster.

Among the 25 worst seasons shown in the above table, John Gregory took over from Brian Little fairly late in the 97/98 season, the team flirting with danger, six points from the relegation zone.

And of course, Tony Barton took over the reigns from Ron Saunders in February and simultaneously guided us to mid-table safety and European glory.

Summary

• Three relegations, two despite changing the manager, one from sticking the course.
• Nine seasons were worse than this one at this stage; two ended in relegation, but seven did not.
• Of the seven that did not end the worst possible way, we stuck the course with the same manager five times, but switched manager during two seasons.
• Ron Atkinson was shown the door on the back of a long record which highlighted a truly awful run of form where he took just one point from his final nine league matches, and an ever deteriorating relationship with Doug Ellis.
• Alex Massie’s exit in 1950 is more mysterious and difficult to include in any discussions regarding the wisdom in changing management during crisis.
• History tells that clubs are more likely to avoid relegation by sticking the course, but are by no means guaranteed. No such thing is possible.

Coincidentally, the 2010/11 season at this stage is only worse than 1990/91 under Jozef Venglos by virtue of goal difference. So in Part II (coming up later today), we’ll look at why Gerard Houllier is less likely to get us relegated than Dr Jo.

One final thought…

It might be rash to make the assumption, but imagine that the Wigan game had not been postponed and we somehow managed to come away with all three points. Maybe that might have produced a lift heading into the Tottenham game, maybe it wouldn’t, but it would have meant that our record after 19 games this season would have been at least 23 points; Man City being the 20th game.

Scroll back up and look at the table again. Where would 23 points from 19 games have placed this season? The Wigan postponement looks more and more costly every time I look at it.