Regardless of what happens in our remaining two games; Man City and Blackburn, Aston Villa’s performance over the course of the 2009/10 season will be at least the 2nd best in the 18 year life of the Premier League. It will make no difference how you choose to compare the records from each season, only 1992/93 can rank higher.

However, some people feel the need to wait until the season is over and our final position is confirmed before they can make a decision about whether we are still progressing. If you’re in that group, this could be the post for you as I explain why position is relative.

There’s 20 teams in the Premier League, which we all know means each team plays 38 games over the course of a season. You may not know that the total number of games in a Premiership season is 380. That means that Aston Villa participates in 10% of all the games in an EPL season. More importantly, we play absolutely no part in 90% of the games. 342 to be precise. What happens in those games defines where our record will place us in the league. There’s nothing we can do about it, but our position is no more than our record relative to the records of the other 19 teams in the league.

For instance, let’s consider our main rivals in the race for fourth place; Tottenham, Man City and, to a lesser degree, Liverpool. We played Tottenham twice, in both cases it finished honours even, what Tottenham achieve in their 36 other games is out of our hands. With a win each, it also effectively finished honours even between ourselves and Liverpool over two games, we have no control what they do in their other 36 games. The same will be the case with City when we’ve played them and with each and every team in the league.

The only record we can control is our own. The only record you can look at to measure improvement is our own. Everything else is relative.

It’s laughable that I’ve seen comparisons drawn between the pair of 6th place finishes that MON has achieved the last two seasons with David O’Leary’s 6th place from his first season in charge back in 2003/04. It’s suggested that David O’Leary, as clearly awful as he was, managed to steer Villa to 6th, so MON achieving the same, especially given the expenditure on players, is no better.

Let’s look at Villa’s record from 2003/04:-

Excluding the first 3 EPL seasons which were contested by 22 teams, meaning the season lasted 42 games, and the 2003/04 season this record belongs to, do you know how many of the remaining 13 seasons this record would have achieved at least 6th place in? None. 56 points was good enough for 6th place only in 2003/04, the best it could have achieved in any other season was 7th, more frequently 8th.

So was there anything different about 2003/04? Two words: The Invincibles.

Arsenal; only the second team in history to go through a season in the English top flight without suffering a single defeat. Not to detract from Arsenal’s achievement, that takes some doing at any level and they were a quality side, no doubt, but does that not also raise questions about the quality of competition in the league that year?

Take a look at the 5 teams that finished above DOL’s Villa side:-

The now familiar top four and Newcastle in 5th. Note that Newcastle only grabbed 5th ahead of us by virtue of a superior goal difference. If DOL’s team had scored just 5 more during the season and conceded 3 less, they would have had that 5th place. What then? Would we really be lauding DOL’s achievement and complaining that MON has failed to reach the illustrious heights of his predecessor in three seasons? I would hope not!

With Villa in 6th, that must surely mean that we were leading the second pelaton, the next tier of teams; Tottenham, Everton and Man City? You know, heading up a competitive pack chasing to crash the party. Nope, Tottenham were next “big club” 11 points back in 14th place. Just take a look at the teams between us:-

In fact, Tottenham lead Blackburn, City and Everton as the final four teams above the relegation zone:-

And note the team in 19th. They may have lived the dream, but they were awake and hunched over in front of the bathroom mirror by May 2004. The reflection was not a pretty sight.

What I hope this illustrates is that our main competitors, the teams we would all name to be our main threat in the chase for Champions League qualification, were no such thing in 2003/04. Spurs, City and Everton were more concerned about avoiding relegation than dreaming about Europe.

2003/04 was also notable for being Chelsea’s first season under current owner Roman Abramovich and the £150m he had just spent on new players and, aside from Everton getting a foot in the door the following season, it was also the season that established “the top four” teams as we now know them. With the usual suspects establishing their quadopoly, Newcastle hanging on their tails and the other major teams down the wrong end of the table, is O’Leary’s 6th place finish all that impressive?

Or, ask yourself how 6th in that league, that year really compares with the über competitive Premier League we enjoy today. Conjecture of course, but how do you think a team that could only amass 56 points in the 2003/04 league would do in the 2009/10 league? Personally, I doubt they’d see the right side of 50 points, but it’s nothing more than a whimsical opinion.

Here’s what I do know: the following season; 2004/05, O’Leary finished in 10th with 47 points, but the 56 points that bagged 6th the previous season would have only been good enough for 7th. In 2005/06, thankfully his final season, he continued falling backward, this time 16th with 42 points. Even so, his best season record would have only been good enough for 9th place in 2005/06.

Not only was O’Leary’s side getting weaker, it was doing so as the league was getting stronger; more competitive.

Back to today. We play Man City on Saturday. Of course that does have a baring on both of our records this season and will influence our final positions. It’s a real six-pointer for sure. On Wednesday, Man City play Tottenham, a game which potentially has just as big effect on where we will finish. Do you know how much influence Aston Villa has on that game? None.

On Thursday morning we’ll look at the table and all 20 teams will have played 37 games. We’ll then know whether 4th or 5th position “lies in our own hands” or whether we’ll need to win at home to Blackburn and additionally hope for favourable results elsewhere.

Regardless of results, over 38 league games this season, 2009/10 will be the best Aston Villa performance since 1992/93. Mathematically, we could finish anywhere between 7th and 4th, but wherever we finish, the record over 38 games remains the same. If you don’t look at this sequence and see progress, if you need to see how everyone around us did first, then there’s nothing more to be said:-

That concludes this post on relativity. Next up in the science series will be “Gravity: The Leeds Utd Story”, followed by “Germ Theory: The Fall and Rise (But Mostly Fall) of Birmingham City”.