We were in 16th place when we travelled to Anfield last year amidst much doom and gloom and yet we came away with all three points after a hugely satisfying 3-1 victory. We return to Liverpool on Monday night once again in 16th place, and Liverpool in 11th to their 10th last time, but this time Villa have 15 league games behind them, not one.

We haven’t occupied this lowly a league position at this time of year since we entered December 2003 in 17th place with 14 points from the first 14 games. Those of you with sharper memories than my own might recall that 2003/04 was O’Leary’s first year in charge and that he managed to steer his team to a respectable 6th place finish when the curtain fell on the season in May; an achievement frequently heralded as being the equal to the performance over the past three seasons.

It’s a disingenuous claim at best I’m afraid, it couldn’t have happened without the help of an unbeaten Arsenal side dominating the league and the immediate rivals of Everton, Man City & Tottenham all finishing no higher than 14th. We can’t hope for such favours this season and finishing in the top six of this league is hard enough in the best of circumstances, doing so from a position in the bottom quarter of the table in December would border on the miraculous.

However, the tightness of the league table at the moment still offers a crumb of hope; a win at Anfield will lift us into 10th place. The flip side of that, of course, is that a loss would be disastrous, sending Liverpool five points ahead of us and into 7th or 8th place.

But what sort of Liverpool side are Houllier and McAllister likely to encounter on their return to Anfield? Very tricky to say. They’ve shown signs of the green shoots of recovery lately, only for a Black & Decker strimmer to frequently appear sometime in the second half.

Roy Hodgson is still without Steven Gerrard, but rested several key players for the 1-1 Europa League draw against Steaua Bucharest on Thursday and should be able to send out a reasonably strong team with Torres and Ngog leading the line.

The central midfield battle, with Liverpool probably employing the uncompromising duo of Lucas and Merieles, will once again be fascinating. Despite the result, I was impressed with the Clark/Hogg double pivot against the Blues and wouldn’t be surprised to see Houllier give the pair another shot.

In fairness, the manager is still without too many options in any case. Barry Bannan will likely miss the game with the groin injury that forced his early retirement at St Andrews and Ashley Young will be suspended. Step forward Stephen Ireland… dare I write once more that this is his chance to shine?

In more positive news, while Monday may be too early, Marc Albrighton and Emile Heskey returned to training this week and Nigel Reo-Coker is getting close too. Jonathon Hogg and Gary Gardner joined the long list of youngsters signing new deals.

I sense a strange game ahead, it’s impossible to really get a good feel of what is likely to happen. I hope to not be writing about a performance which was technically proficient, but once again failed to yield the result it deserved. I’ll take an ugly three points. I’ll take an ugly point for that matter, just something tangible, something more than potential and promise for the future would be so welcome right now.

Houllier stated his ambition to beat Liverpool at Villa Park in his first press conference confirming his appointment, I’m going to go ahead and assume that he’s just as hungry, hopefully more so, to beat them at Anfield too.