Unless you’ve been living in a cave recently you’ll be fully aware that America swore in a new President on January 20th. You might not be so aware that it’s almost obligatory in American politics to talk about what will be achieved in the first 100 days of an administration. Given the Yes We Can theme, it’s quite fitting that yesterday’s home game against Wigan was MON’s 100th Premiership game in charge of Villa. Certainly a good opportunity to do a like-for-like comparison with previous managers, no??

As you’ll see in the following table, I thought it would be rude to exclude Ron Atkinson even though he only managed 98 league games – he did get the closest to taking us to the title after all!!

So John Gregory achieved the best points total for the first 100 games in charge, beating MON’s total by 4 points.  But it’s interesting to note that MON’s team lost the least games, drew the most and scored the most goals by some margin.

Brian Little created the stingiest defense, but wasn’t exactly prolific at the other end though. Still, it was effective coming in only 3 points behind MON.

It’s important to note though that John Gregory inherited a pretty decent side from Brian Little, but was underachieving in the bottom half of the table at the time. He kicked off his account with wins against Liverpool & Chelsea and continued to rack up the points at an impressive rate. After 33 league games Gregory had managed to amass 70 points (2.12 pts/gm), which makes MON’s 39 points from the same number of games look quite pathetic.

Obviously MON had inherited the side largely created by David O’Leary and, to a lesser degree, Graham Taylor, which explains this less than auspicious start, notwithstanding the unbeaten run in his first 9 league games. As MON has continued to cut the dead wood from the squad and bring in his own men it’s encouraging to note that he’s closed the gap on Gregory from 31 points behind after 33 games to just 4 after 100.

So having observed that MON’s league record over a little more than 2 and a half seasons compares very favourably with some of our foundest memories in the Premiership it seems a good time to ask ourselves a question… do we see Aston Villa getting better or worse from this point forward?? Hopefully you’ll share my view that things will get even better and they’ll have to if we seriously expect to be consistently challenging at the very top of the table. The significance of this?? Well the managers shown above didn’t improve their record after the first 100 games, which probably makes a lot of sense or they’d possibly still be in the job!!

The only fair way to compare a manager’s record over a different number of league games is on a points per game basis. We know that MON’s pts/gm ratio is currently 1.58. So how does that stack up against the previous Villa managers’ career records in the Premiership?? Let’s see…

As you’ve no doubt noticed, MON is top of the table based on points per game. He also has the best goals scored per game ratio of 1.52 goals every game on average. The goals conceded per game ratio isn’t bad either, but is perhaps an area of opportunity for improvement. The good news is that MON’s Villa side has the best ratio for goals scored to goals conceded – for every trip Friedel makes to the back of the net to retrieve the ball we knock in 1.31 goals at the other end. We’ll score one more than you… well, 0.31 anyway!!

So if MON does continue to improve this team and we retain our lofty position for seasons to come it’s clear that his record at Aston Villa will easily become the best manager we’ve had in the history of the Premiership.

These are encouraging numbers, but they won’t necessarily put silverware in the cabinet and that’s ultimately how any manager at this level will be judged. I personally believe that we’re in pretty good shape to see our lads lifting something that’s silver and has handles in the very near future, possibly this season.

Here’s to the next 100 games!!