Can you believe that we’re already at the half way point of the season, played everyone else in league once and about to begin the rematches, starting with Liverpool tomorrow? As promised, it’s time to again compare this season’s league performance with last year. As it’s the half-season point, we’ll also take a quick look a bit deeper into the history books.

Firstly, let’s just look at the usual “Chronological” and “Apples for Apples” comparisons. Last time I did this comparison, after 14 games, we were a point behind last season chronologically, but a point better off by comparing the fixtures “apples for apples”. Now after 19 games we find ourselves with exactly the same number of points (35) as this time last year, but we’ve acquired 3 more points by matching the fixtures.

I did some similar analysis near this point last season and discovered something interesting that lead me to extrapolate the data out to the end of the season, making a prediction of sorts.

The encouraging news is that Martin O’Neill has achieved absolute symmetry between the first and second halves of his two previous seasons at Villa. 2006/07: 25pts + 25pts = 50pts. 2007/08: 30pts + 30pts = 60pts. The pattern is almost too perfect… Villa racked up 35pts from the first 19 games this season!! However, if this sequence continues and the second half of the season matches the first precisely then we’ll finish the season on 70pts. That’s still been enough for at least 4th place in 11 of the last 13 Premiership Seasons by the way.

As we’re all aware, the second half of last season did not live up to the first and 70 points would only have secured 5th place in any case, which proves the futility of making such predictions!

There may be some debate about what caused the disastrous turn in form during the second half of last season, but I feel it was combination of a number of factors, chiefly:

1. The loss of Martin Laursen.
2. The acquisition of Emile Heskey, forcing a change in system.
3. The Moscow incident.

Aside from another rash addition to the squad in January, I don’t see much chance of these types of problems recurring this season, so I’m much more optimistic that the second half of the season will be as strong as the first half.

This isn’t a prediction, I maintain that is an exercise in futility, but it’s not rocket science to point out (once again) that if we maintain our pace we will finish around the 70 point mark and that is likely to place us among the fight for Champions League qualification.

There’s a long way to go and a lot of water to pass under the bridge, anything can happen so instead of attempting to predict the future, let’s finish up by looking to the past. As the table above shows, the first 19 games from this season may have delivered the same number of points as last season, but it’s technically slightly better based on goal difference. That makes it the second best first half of a Premiership to date, only 1998/99 was better with 36 points. Here’s Villa’s 1st 19 games EPL history with the manager in charge at the time [note: there were 22 teams in the first 3 EPL seasons (1992/93, 1993/94 & 1994/95) so the first 19 games during those seasons do not represent the half way point]:-

If you’re interested; the average number of points earned from the first 19 games of the Premiership season prior to Martin O’Neill’s arrival was 27. The average for the last 4 seasons, under MON’s stewardship, is 31 points.

There is a progression and then consolidation under MON that his predecessors didn’t achieve from the front half of the season. It’s possible that we’re close to a ceiling of points that we can reasonably expect from the first 19 games, at least for now, and the key to improving our fortunes over the course of the season resides in the second half.

Clearly we need to see a significant improvement on the disappointing return of 27 points during the second half of last season and I’m as confident as I could possibly be that we will. But I’ll make no predictions!