It’s all hotting up.
The 2024/25 campaign has turned into quite a mixed one for Aston Villa and manager Unai Emery. Our start to life under the Spanish gaffer was phenomenal in terms of our performances levels and our consistency, but that has significantly slipped this year – and frustratingly so as we are still more than within reach of having another phenomenal season.
Individual players have suffered with their form and have just not reached the heights that we know they are capable of, we have also been significantly hampered at points with defensive injury issues, and that is before we even get to playing squad changes as we have done our best to juggle financial fair play constraints in an effort to further improve the whole first team squad.
For those fans who like online casino games and have access to a Betpanda Welcome Bonus, you may as well use it to improve your own game play and enjoyment in what is a growing market, and here we are in March, only two points shy of the European qualification spots in the Premier League and it could be three season’s on the spin when it comes to European nights and adventures. Having largely stormed through the newly revamped Champions League format with only a couple of slip ups, we hold a 3-1 advantage over Club Brugge in the Last 16 knockout phase and come the end of the month, it is FA Cup Quarter Final time as we make the trip to Deepdale to face Preston North End.
The season could easily be another one to remember, and every Villan will be hoping that our injury issues have begun easing just at the right time, as the business end of the season at Villa Park needs to be a far more consistent one if it is to be another year of improvement. Boosting our hopes of that happening is the fact that on Saturday evening we finally managed to banish a hoodoo that has been dogging our league form this year.
Our return to Europe’s top competition has come at a cost to our league form and in some ways with the extra fixtures and the travelling that is not exactly surprising, but ahead of our narrow 1-0 victory over Brentford, we had failed to win any of the prior seven games we had played immediately following a European match.
That is not quite the disaster that it sounds, it is not like we suffered defeat in all of them, but just one extra win would have made a meaningful impact on our league placing at this point of the campaign, and it would have been telling as all of the sides above us (excluding league leaders Liverpool) hold a game in hand on us right now.
The fact that we managed to end that run without Emi Martinez makes for even better reading, and almost free scoring loanee Marco Asensio was also missing having reportedly picked up a knock. Given the ridiculous nature of how our fixtures have stacked up, with only two games set to be played for the remainder of the month, it is the perfect time for the players to get some rest and relaxation in after a tough fixture run.
We all know the issues we have in our game play currently, so it is also the perfect time to get some real minutes back in on the training pitch in an effort to solve those and hopefully get back to a more consistent run of clean sheets as well.
Then, we can see what happens.
