Aston Villa 1 – Crystal Palace 0: No Villans No Cry

The official hashtag for this game, #AVLCRY, didn’t bode well. Given how much heartbreak we’ve suffered this season, I think most Villans were expecting this match to bring further tears. Despite a recent slackening in form, Crystal Palace were bringing the league’s best on-the-road defense to Villa Park and a team with the lowest home scoring record in English league soccer with, if memory serves, 6 home goals this season.

Also a team that hadn’t won in 19 games.

But we won! We won, we won, WE WON! Sure, the goal itself was an absolute goalkeeping howler that is likely to haunt Hennessey to his grave, but the three points are ours and nobody can take them away from us. Only 21 games played and we’re finally in double digits! What’s better is that Villa truly deserved the win. Yes, Palace created a couple of very nice chances, one of them with less than a minute played, but on balance, Villa had more possession, better passing, and, while the final ball still let them down too many times, did genuinely look like scoring more often. They played with heart and commitment and finally held a lead to the end.

Aston Villa 0 – Manchester City 0: A New Hope

You only come to see the Villa!

That flutter in my chest—was it hope? Or merely a sign that I shouldn’t have ordered the egg-and-sausage omelet at kickoff?

I’m Not Crying

Forty degrees as I rode my bike toward the Globe at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning. The wind had my eyes watering and hoping that no one saw me before I could dry them. They might think I was crying in advance of the expected result in a battle of first against worst. (Testifying for the defense: Flight of the Conchords.)

En Garde

My prediction for this game had been an 0-3 Villa loss. Granted, that was in the misty days of yore, a full 23 days earlier, back when a man named Tim Sherwood was the manager of the team. Gather round, children, and I’ll tell you the tale of a man whose magical powers were contained in his gilet. Once vanity caused him to forswear the sacred garment, his days were surely numbered . . . .

The choice of Remi Garde as the new Villa manager was an intriguing one, but with a team mired in last place and enduring a seven-game league losing streak taking on the team at the top of the table, it didn’t seem reasonable to expect much. I think I speak for most Villans when I say we were hoping not to be embarrassed too badly. At best, we wanted to see signs of improvement. And even if Villa were to get hammered 6-0, no one would have blamed Garde.

Chelsea 2 – Aston Villa 0: Plumbing New Depths

Did anyone actually expect us to win? I didn’t. And, for the first time the season, I didn’t even want to watch. Instead, I spent my Saturday morning taking a bike ride and architectural tour with my wife while my sons stayed home and watched cartoons.

I suppose that makes me a bad supporter, but I don’t feel too guilty. I have spent quite a bit of time and money watching Villa play badly in recent years, and it felt strangely liberating to just opt out. The time was well spent.

When I caught up with the game later, it seemed as though it was badly played on both ends, and Chelsea didn’t win it as much as Villa gave it away. Another horrific distribution error by Guzan and an unfortunate deflection off Hutton were all the hosts needed to take three points.

Liverpool 3 – Aston Villa 2: Going from Bad to Worse

When you steal two goals at Anfield, you expect to bring a little something home with you

Definitely Not Panicking

I’ll be brief: that was horrible.

Yes, I could be glib and say that we were bound to play poorly at Anfield one of these days, but strangely, it’s getting to be as hard to be funny about Villa as it is to find something new to say about losing yet again.

We were comprehensively outplayed and yet still could have come away with a desperately needed point—had we not let ourselves down with some truly shocking defending on Liverpool’s third goal. I swear, my AYSO teams are better than AVFC right now. (And they at least got the results. Later that day, the U12s won 6-2 and the U10s won 3-1.)

The drop zone: not just a crap movie starring Wesley Snipes and Gary Busey

Aston Villa 1 – Birmingham City 0: The Globe Pub Is Ours

Ten men on their deathbeds–at least as far as our employers are concerned.

Nik: Enjoy the game!
Brian: You don’t enjoy derbies.

A Game of Two Halves

The 2015–16 edition of Aston Villa clearly has more potential than last year’s model—but while they suffer a historically bad start in league play, a key question is whether they can realize that potential. And with Sherwood’s managerial tactics clearly at fault in a a couple of games, another question is whether he would learn from his mistakes before it was too late.

Fortunately, the old cliche—it’s a game of two halves—is rooted in actual fact. If yesterday’s League Cup game against Birmingham City had consisted only of the first half, I’m not sure extra time and penalties would have been sufficient to determine a result. They might still be playing. In fact, I’m not entirely sure that, due to some ripple in the space-time continuum, there isn’t an alternate universe in which they are still playing an ugly, uninspired game for 18 hours and counting.

Aston Villa 0 – West Brom 1: Great, Now Even Chelsea Are Better Than Us

All Is Darkness

It’s not the end of the world…yet.

An 0-1 loss at home in a game we desperately needed to win. That’s 4 points from 6 games, for those of you who track such arcane statistics. At this rate, we’re on track to finish the season with 25 points and a one-way ticket to the Championship. All that while scoring a whopping 1 goal per game!

You could argue that we’ve faced reasonably stiff opposition. Of the 5 teams that have beaten us, 3 are currently in the top 8. (Manchester United in 2nd place, Crystal Palace in 8th, Leicester City in 4th.) But then picture our draw against last-place Sunderland, and try not to think of all the tough teams we have yet to play.