Martin O’Neill has talked about needing to win the next 6 games to have a chance of finishing in the top 4. He’s probably right. That’s clearly the intention within the camp: Carlos Cuellar most recent updates on Twitter and Facebook talked about tonight being the first of our “cup finals” to get to the top four. That’s pretty encouraging, at least for me.

I suppose the only downside with that mentality is that the instant they fail to win one of the next six – I mean if they fail, obviously – then does that not destroy the motivation that they have? As if it’s suddenly no longer worth pursuing. I don’t know, but I certainly hope they all give it everything until the final whistle of the final game, no matter what.

I frequently talk about the futility of making predictions, but it’s too tempting not to indulge now and again, even if doing so proves the point.  Yes, apparently I was hopelessly optimistic!

Going in, we all knew how bad the month of March has been under Martin O’Neill. However, despite the frustration of the draws and the embarrassment of the Stamford Bridge whooping, March 2010 still turned out to be MON’s best since joining Villa, returning an average of 1.20 points per game.

Yes, this does serve to highlight how low the bar was set with the previous seasons delivering 0.67, 0.40 & 0.25 respectively, but credit where it’s due; it was better. I decided to look at our entire history in the Premiership month by month on a points per game basis and I discovered an interesting little factoid. So far this season, we’ve not suffered a single month where the points per game ratio fell below 1.00.

Not interesting? OK, well here’s a little quiz question for you then (answer at the bottom) – only one manager has so far managed to steer Villa through an entire Premiership season without suffering a single monthly points per game ratio of less than 1.00. Can you name that manager? (The answer might surprise you)

Extrapolation

Just for fun, this is not a prediction y’understand.

MON’s average points per game ratios at Villa for the months of April and May before this season are 1.79 and 1.50 respectively. (It should be noted that May generally only contains 1 or 2 games though) If we achieve the same rates this season, with 5 games in April and 2 in May, we should expect a return of about 12 points. Of course, we’ve already played the first of those games, getting three points against Bolton.

We had 51 points before the Bolton game, so, based on these averages, that would extrapolate to a finish of 63 points. That’s 1 point better than last season, but is highly unlikely to be enough to deliver a top four finish. You can see why MON is saying that we need to win the remaining games.

We currently have 54 points, so if we were to win the final 6 games, we’d finish the season on 72 points. That would be a 10 point improvement on last season, which would be phenomenal, and would have been good enough for at least 4th place in 15 out of 17 Premiership seasons.

I have a feeling that the final outcome will be somewhere between the two, but we clearly need to at least match our average April and May performances under MON to deliver a single point improvement on last year. If we do that at least, where it places us in the table is out of our hands. That’s down to how everyone else around us does, we can only control our own record.

Home And Away

So, six games to go and it’s three at home, three away.

While our home record isn’t bad, we could have done with 1 or 2 of the 7 draws being wins. Then again, when you actually look at those 7 draws – Man City, Tottenham, West Ham, Arsenal, Man Utd, Wolves, and Sunderland – it’s probably just the last 2, and possibly the West Ham game, that might have made you wince a little if you were shown those results at the start of the season. Given that Wolves and Sunderland came during the infamous month of March and we had to fight back from being behind in both, I’ll take them!!

We’ve only lost twice at home; Liverpool were extremely fortunate to leave with all the spoils and the less said about the opening day debacle against Wigan, the better. But still, overall, not a bad record at all.

So the sequence of the final six games in terms of venue works quite nicely for us I think. Starting with Everton tonight at Villa Park, we follow that up with trips to Portsmouth and then Hull. Then we have a certain home derby game which I’m sure will be fairly low key (/sarcasm). The away game at Man City is potentially huge and precedes the season finale; Blackburn at Villa Park.

Even with my eternal optimism, I can’t honestly see 18 points there, but there could be a decent haul if things go our way. As I keep saying, whatever we do with these 6 games, where we place in the final table will be defined by the teams around us. Tottenham are about to enter the triple whammy I’ve been looking forward to tonight at home to Arsenal. They’ll follow that up with matches against Chelsea and Utd, but I didn’t expect that they’d be entering this sequence off the back of losses to Sunderland and Portsmouth at Wembley. Whether that helps or hinders them remains to be seen, but naturally we all hope it hinders.

So here’s hoping to a cracking start and a superb atmosphere at Villa Park tonight. If we do win, we’ll move back above Liverpool, but retain a game in hand. And if Tottenham lose, we’ll be within a point. A pretty tasty prospect I’m sure you’ll agree.

Oh, yes, quiz question – would you believe that the only manager to go an entire Premiership season without suffering a single monthly points per game ratio below 1.00 is David O’Leary? It’s true, 2003/04. Martin O’Neill could be the first to repeat that achievement this season.