This page is designed to provide as meaningful comparison between the records of Aston Villa managers in recent years as possible. Domestic and European cup competitions have not been included for several reasons:

• Large variances in quality of opposition from season to season determined by nothing more than the luck of the draw in the case of the domestic cups.
• Except for the final game in a tournament, knockout competition can only add positively to a record (wins & draws); the team cannot add more than a single game to the loss column per competition per season.
• The league is the “bread and butter” of any football club and there will be times where cup competitions are not given the same level of importance as other times.

Further, to keep the comparison as relevant as possible, and for similar reasons to the above, the records from the years spent in the old Second and Third Divisions have also been excluded. Top flight only, Post-World War II.

You can click on the tables below to see full-sized versions. All tables are sorted by the Points Per Game (PPG) column.

You can also compare all 56 top flight seasons since World War II at the same stage here.

* Gerard Houllier’s record includes the final five matches of 2010/11 when Gary McAllister took charge of the team in his absence. The records for other caretakers are shown, but excluded from the main table.

(Last updated: March 28th 2012)

First XX Top Flight Games

Comparing the record of the current manager with the overall top flight records of his predecessors is all well and good, but some managers, such as John Gregory, started very well and tailed off over time, others, such as Martin O’Neill, didn’t set the world on fire immediately, but did improve as time wore on. Who’s to really know whether a manager will improve in time or whether this is really as good as it’s ever going to get?

There is obvious logic in comparing the records of managers at the same stage of their careers. We do just that in the following table, but this time we have to exclude Joe Mercer, Ron Saunders and Graham Taylor (first term) as they took charge with the club in the lower divisions. Their first XX games were not in the top flight and it would not be fair to use the first XX number of games that were in the top flight as they already had the benefit of the games in the lower divisions to put their stamp on the team.

(Last updated: March 28th 2012)