Some time ago I suggested it was likely that Aston Villa would finish the 2008/09 season around the 70 point mark and that would probably be enough for at least 4th spot. Wrong and wrong again!! However, despite what appears to have been a terrible collapse in form in the later stages, this has still been another season of growth. Champions League may have slipped through our fingers this time, but the club has certainly moved tantalizingly close to turning the Premiership into a real 5 or 6 horse race. Arsenal will surely testify to this. The likes of Man City and Tottenham might want to argue that they are genuine contenders to gatecrash the party along with ourselves and Everton, but that remains to be seen.

The most obvious measurement of progress is, of course, the points total. Fortunately – from the perspective of this post – MON managed to beat last year’s total. Just. 62 points this year, 60 points last time out. OK, maybe not mind blowing, but when you consider that the competitive season started in July for Villa, the team played 12 games in Europe and progressed further in the domestic cups, then it’s surely obvious that we’re in a stronger position to be able to even match league performance with the previous year. Not only was MON able to throw some second stringers into less important games, he actually did it!!

Speaking of growth and improvement, this was MON’s 3rd year in charge of Villa and each season he’s delivered more points than the previous season. Aston Villa hadn’t achieved 3 consecutively better EPL seasons before, but that might actually illustrate the depths we were plumbing when MON arrived. Let’s not take anything away from MON’s achievement though, the club has consistently improved in ways not seen before.

Maybe the slight disappointment of 6th place and 62 points also illuminates how high we had been flying and what might have been, but reality check time – only two Premiership seasons have been better:-

• 1992/93 – 71 points (after 38 games) – 2nd
• 1995/96 – 63 points – 4th

There wasn’t any European football to contend with in either of those seasons, but Villa did win the League Cup in ’96 and made the semi-finals of the FA Cup the same year. I’m thinking that emulating the 1995/96 season is what we should be really hoping for next season – a trip to Wembley and some silverware would surely be satisfactory?? We’ll also have to maintain a respectable campaign in Europe of course, which raises all kinds of “what would you rather” conundrums for those who recognise that there’s little possibility of seriously challenging in all competitions.

But back to this season. It really was the 2nd half of the season where things fell apart, wasn’t it?? Here’s the thing though; while our 27 points didn’t get close enough to matching the 1st half season 35 points, it wasn’t the worst 2nd half of the season we’ve ever seen. That particular honour belongs to John Gregory in 1998/99 who only racked up 19 points on his way back to the club house. When you consider that was on the back of what remains the best ever front half of the season then Gregory must surely be grateful that the internet didn’t exist in it’s current form or there’s no way he’d have kept his job. Can you imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth now if the team followed up the best ever 1st 19 games with the worst ever 2nd 19 games??

So overall, this season (from a points perspective) has been Villa’s 3rd best in the 17 year Premiership history. But everything’s relative. For example, if we had scored 75 points in the 2007/08 season it would have been our best ever, but still would have only been good enough for 5th. Yet in the highly competitive 1996/97 season Man Utd managed to win the title with 75 points!!

So how have our performances trended in comparison with the league winner recently?? Let’s just look at the last 6 years and express our own points tally as a percentage of the winner:-

• 2003/04 – 62.22%
• 2004/05 – 49.47%
• 2005/06 – 46.15%
• 2006/07 – 56.18%
• 2007/08 – 68.97%
• 2008/09 – 68.89%

It’s pretty clear that we were slipping away from the leader under DOL and have reversed that trend under MON, although stalling a little this season, it’s already been covered that the team had a lot more on their plates. Bare in mind that Sheffield Utd were relegated in 2006/07 with 42.7% of Utd’s title winning 89 points. While Villa’s fortunes have been turned away from that sort of relegation potential, there’s still a long way to go to be genuinely challenging for a top 4 finish. On average, the 4th place finisher in the Premiership has had around 79% of the winner’s points total – is it really likely that we’ll close the gap so dramatically next season?? Probably not. That said, without such a major blip towards the end of this season, the trend would have looked a lot healthier, even if we hadn’t made it.

Another exercise of relative comparisons is to measure Villa’s performance in direct competition against the other 6 teams who have been ever present in the Premiership; Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Man Utd & Tottenham. During the 90’s, Villa averaged 17 points a season from these six opponents. During DOL’s 3 seasons in charge that return had dropped to an average of just 7 points per season. In the last two seasons Villa have scored 14 & 13 points respectively from these same games. Back in 1992/93, when Villa finished 2nd, a massive 24 points were taken from the other six teams. Villa haven’t managed anything close to that since and that’s probably why we haven’t finished any higher than fourth since either. But the point is that I think we’ve returned to the position when the other teams take a visit from the Villans or a trip to Villa Park seriously again. Man Utd were held to a goalless draw in B6 and, if they’re honest, will admit they were very fortunate to have won a point, let alone all three, at Old Trafford. Sure Liverpool tore us a new one at Anfield, but that was a complete freak of nature. You won’t find anyone worth paying attention to who predicted that before kick off, even given Villa’s terrible run of form at the time.

I’ve seen some people pointing out that the team scored far less goals this season compared with the last and that’s true. I use a ‘goals per game’ metric in my tables so that I can easily compare with seasons gone by when there were often more teams in the division and therefore more games. Last season was an extraordinary 1.87 goals per game, which you’d have to go all the way back to 1935/36 to find a better goals scored per game ratio in the top flight by an Aston Villa team. (Oddly enough, we must have had the worst defense ever seen that season as we shipped 2.62 goals per game and were relegated from the old First Division!! Seriously). While the 2008/09 ratio of 1.42 goals per game doesn’t compare favourably with 2007/08’s 1.87, it is still superior to all of the previous Premiership seasons.

The much maligned defense actually tightened a little, conceding 1.26 goals per game compared with 1.34 the previous season. That provides a ratio of 1.13 goals scored for every one conceded. 2007/08 aside, you’d have to go all the way back to John Gregory’s 1999/00 team to get a better ratio of goals scored to goals conceded. These might be small numbers, quite possibly meaningless to a lot of fans, but they are clear signs of improvement in the team, especially if you argue that competing in this league is tougher task than a decade ago.

There will no doubt be some readers who haven’t even made it to this point, dismissing this post on the basis of the old adage of “lies, damned lies, and statistics”. That’s fine, I’m always willing to concede that statistics are like bikinis in what they reveal is very interesting, but what they hide is vital. However, while there may be some subjectivity on my part in the numbers I’ve selected for publication, the numbers themselves are, to the best of my knowledge, absolute facts. It’s my contention, based on these statistics, that the 2008/09 Aston Villa team is superior to the 2007/08 team and therefore superior to any team we’ve had the privilege to support for many, many years. The path of steady improvement has continued for another season.

Now, one may wish to argue about how Tottenham will be much stronger next season starting from the first kick off with Redknapp in charge. Everton will probably be in the mix again and Man City will be throwing so much money around that they’ll have to be a contender for the best of the rest. Yada, yada, yada. All entirely subjective ifs, buts and maybes, otherwise known as opinion. We heard it all before last summer – and the summer before that – and yet here we were again fighting only Everton for fifth spot. Maybe if it’s said often enough, it will eventually be correct that the likes of Spurs will be seriously up there again and we can all bow to the prophetic whiners all over the internet.

Until then, I’ll stick with my statistics, thanks. Unless someone can show me an opinion that can be metaphorically compared with a bikini!!

UTV!!