Villa 1-3 Southampton. Dec 21st.

A couple of weeks ago we lost 4-1 at home to a fantastic Leicester side who have swaggered their way to second in the table with a season chock full of dominating performances. Sometimes you have to hold your hands up and congratulate a side who are streets ahead of you. Today we lost 3-1 at home to a side that are not streets ahead of us, indeed they were one of only three clubs behind us until the final whistle consigned us to the relegation zone. The boos that rang out do not auger well, it’s dawning on our home support that if you can’t compete with the likes of Southampton it’s time to worry.

We got off to the worst possible start with McGinn going off with a fractured ankle after just a few minutes. He’s not been on form in recent weeks but at least you know he’ got the ability to come good so to lose him not just for this game, but weeks to come, was a blow. Did his teammates roll their sleeves up and say we’ll win this one for you Johnny Boy? Did they hell, instead they simpered to a limp defeat with yet another performance to suggest they aren’t good enough and couldn’t care less either.

We were two down at halftime, first Ings knocking in a rebound after Southampton advanced to our goal with the minimum of fuss, not a tackle to be seen, and then a free header (yet again) with six Villa players standing motionless in the vicinity, like guardsmen on sentry duty. It goes without saying that our opposition scored again early in the second half, we concede early goals virtually every second half, and the game was over as a contest. Grealish scored a worldy of a consolation goal but consolation goals are of no value to us whatsoever, we simply have to start accumulating points or we are going down.

Our Christmas schedule could almost be considered a Yuletide gift in it’s own right, we have fixtures against the bottom three (Southampton, Norwich and Watford). Well we’ve goofed our first opportunity, let’s not fluff our next set of lines or we’ll start 2020 rock bottom.