7-1. Seven – One. Wow, that’s the worst beating I’ve ever seen Aston Villa take. We conceded 5 in the Premiership just 5 times before. If you go back to the pre-Premiership days, there were a couple of games in which we conceded 6 in the last few decades, but the last time we shipped 7? October 1964, Old Trafford.

Yesterday was actually the 9th time that we’ve conceded 7 away from home in the league, we’ve never conceded more by the way, and we’ve also been on the wrong end of that scoreline 4 times at Villa Park. However, most recently 1935. To say football is a little different now would an understatement.

So yesterday’s 7-1 beating at Stamford Bridge was bad. Really bad.

But it’s important not to overreact; it was an absolute freak result. If you’ve already looked at the Statshacks you’ll know that there is very little difference between the games at Villa Park and Stamford Bridge statistically other than the scoreline.

Most importantly, yesterday’s loss was damaging to our goal difference, potentially to confidence levels, and while the three points would have been really welcome, we’re still doing very well compared to previous seasons at this stage.

Here’s how we stood after 31 games for the last few decades (I’ve adjusted the points for the seasons prior to ’82/83 when it used to be 2 points for a win instead of 3) [I’ve highlighted the years with better points totals in red and the years with a better position in the league in green]:-

Don’t get me wrong, I hate the fact that we were so badly humiliated yesterday, of course I do, but we’re still in a very good position. The other teams have tricky run-ins, if we can re-group, get our heads back, we can still go on to finish strongly this season.

Maybe this game will prove to be the catalyst, only time will tell, but it’s done now and it’s time to look forward to the next one.