Recently it’s become the practice that each season a new local rival is promoted to the Premier League so Villa can have a derby game, while the existing one drops back down to their real level.  It’s quite a nice arrangement, freshens things up each year.  Those Scouse derbies are so stale!!

This season it’s The Baggies that have the privilege of playing at a big club without needing a hotel the night before. The Baggies, or to use their full name ‘Bottom of the League West Brom’, are, well, bottom of the league so we can probably end this here and declare the 3 points in the bag. Right??

Woah there, not so fast!! It’s fair to say that we’ve had the odd piggy back ride on lady luck’s shoulders in the last few games, so let’s not take anything for granted. We’re also going through a period that a lot of detractors pointed to in that we’re missing a few key players. You know the opinions I’m referring to; “We don’t have enough quality, a few injuries and we’re stuffed. Mid-table at best.” type thing. You’ve probably read similar comments all over the interwebz.

I mentioned in the Gillingham review that Gabby, Barry & Luke Young were omitted from the squad despite MON saying he was going to “treat the competition with the dignity it deserves”. Turns out the they had knocks of varying degrees, so I was apparently barking up the wrong tree when I suggested that Ashley Young played like he felt he should have been given a rest too. Sorry Ash, so what was your excuse then??

This was on top of missing Laursen & Cuellar. Laursen, Cuellar & Barry are fighting for fitness and might make an appearance, but surely we can afford to give these players some more time with the players MON does have at his disposal?? Barry’s groin injury is a great example of some sensationalist tabloid journalism from Setanta who headline their article ‘Surgery fear for Villa lynchpin’. Read the same story at 4thegame, headlined ‘Barry injury boost for O’Neill’, and the surgery angle gets a brief footnote; “We will just keep monitoring it and there is a possibility he might need a bit of surgery”, quoting MON from the OS.

So it’s far from cut and dry that we’ll win this (when is it ever anyway??), but despite some doubts about our fringe players I think we should have enough quality available to finish off West Brom. Might not be pretty and the winner may come late, but I’ll take it.

As I find myself saying over and over right now, this is another huge game that needs to be won. Man Utd are only ahead of us on goal difference, but have two games in hand. On Wednesday they’ll use up one of those games at home to Wigan, but first they have to go to Stamford Bridge on Sunday. Arsenal host Bolton and Liverpool travel to Stoke, both on Saturday. Looking over our shoulder, Everton entertain Hull at Goodison.

It’s tight around the top, are we really catching the top four or are they just dropping points?? Well, win this game and we’ll move to 41 points from 21 games. That would be our best ever performance at that stage of a Premiership season. Yup, we’re catching them!!