3rd in the Premiership, 1 point off the leaders – Let the good times roll!

By: Martini Extra Dry | September 27th, 2008

What a great start to the season we’re having. Four wins and one draw (and one game we won’t mention), leaving Villa sitting very proudly in third place in the Premier League. It’s not even one of those 3rd-till-United-play-tomorrow type 3rds either, we cannot be caught by anyone who has games in hand.

I know it’s only early in the season but it’s still a great acheivement for us and we’re going to enjoy every minute of it.

So far this season Martin O’Neill has named the same starting line-up for all six games, only Brad Friedel and the two full backs making it into the team (and Curtis Davies if you want to count him as a new signing). The team can’t really be said to have set the world on fire, not performing spectacularly and leaking goals that they really shouldn’t have leaked… BUT they’re getting the results. You hear managers saying that they don’t care about how they get the result as long as they do. Well that’s been us this season.

I’m not saying we’ve played ugly or poor football, just that for a team to be sitting third, above Man Utd and Arsenal, you’d expect them to have played better than we have. West Brom dominated us and lost, Sunderland gave a good account and lost, Man City played badly but got two goals and Stoke beat us. We have only kept a clean sheet in the 0-0 draw against Liverpool. Our defence certainly needs to improve, Tottenham are sitting rock bottom with less goals conceded than us.

The attacking side of our game has simply been too much for teams. Young, Barry, Petrov and Reo-Coker have provided Carew and Agbon with so much good supply that it would be a crime if they weren’t two of the three top scorers in the league so far.

So let’s enjoy every minute of being top three but let’s also hope that O’Neill is working hard behind the scenes to get the back four performing to the quality we know they are capable of.