Opposition View: Aston Villa – Heart of the Holte

This Premier League lark isn’t easy. Aston Villa are finding that out the hard way according to fan site Heart of the Holte as injuries mount up, speculations swirls about Jack Grealish’s future and Dean Smith is second-favourite in the next top flight manager to be sacked market.

Villa travel to the Amex for what looks to be a huge relegation six pointer against Brighton without three of their star players of the season so far.

Goalkeeper Tom Heaton, striker Wesley and midfielder John McGinn are all in the treatment room. Any Premier League club would struggle when losing individuals of their quality, let alone a side struggling towards the foot of the table.

They’re hurt, too. We watched on television as Manchester City tore Villa apart 6-1 with some home fans walking out of Villa Park before the first half had even reached its conclusion.

Will Smith and his players bounce back at the Amex? Can they survive the drop despite everything that possibly could go wrong seemingly going wrong? Daniel Horton from Heart of the Holte tells about everything Aston Villa.

Talk us through Villa’s season so far. How are you finding your return to the Premier League?
I think it’s been a tough return to the Premier League. We had to bring in a lot of new players due to a squad full of ageing individuals and people coming to the end of their contracts, but a lot of these have struggled to adapt to the step up in class.

We’ve been defensively quite poor, especially in the second half of games, where we tend to concede most of our goals – and that despite the fact that Tom Heaton and Tyrone Mings have been two of our better players this year.

However, we are still well within reach of 17th, which was our main aim for this season, so there is still a chance of survival – if we bring a goalscorer into the club this January.

You’ve obviously been very unlucky with injuries. How big a blow is losing both Heaton and Wesley for the rest of the campaign?
Massive, absolutely massive! Perhaps down to poor luck or poor recruitment, these two injuries have hit us hard – as well as the injury to John McGinn which has possibly hit us even harder. The injury to Tom Heaton in particular has been the bigger blow of the two, as he was such a good purchase, especially at just £8 million. And then the Wesley injury left us without a recognised striker, ready to play for the club.

This showed against Manchester City, as Ørjan Nyland could have done better for some of the goals and Anwar El Ghazi didn’t trouble the defence as much as Wesley possibly could have – even though Wesley hasn’t necessarily hit the ground running.

At least we have brought in Pepe Reina, who I think will start against you but it seems that we will, again, start without a recognised striker, which isn’t ideal.

Dean Smith is second favourite in the next manager to lose his job betting market. Can you see Villa replacing him with somebody between now and the end of the season?
In all honesty, no. He did so well to get us up to the Premier League, when nobody really expected him to due to the position we were in when he took over, and so that brings him a lot of time.

Whilst a small minority of the fans have started to call for a change, the majority are still massively behind Dean Smith. We saw last year that he has the ability to turn a poor situation around, so hopefully he can do it again and take us on a good run up the table.

Whilst he’ll know himself that we haven’t been good enough for large parts of this season, he has been massively let down by the recruitment team and some of the signings they have made, so I think a lot of eyes will be on them in this transfer window to see if they bring in the necessary quality to keep us up.

Who has been Villa’s star player so far? Any disappointments?
Without a doubt, Jack Grealish has been our player of the season so far. McGinn had a great start but then started to tail off and sadly got seriously injured, whereas Grealish started steadily and grew into the league, to become a player that pundits and other fans cannot stop talking about – whether positively or negatively (for some reason). He has adapted brilliantly to the role of captain and is without doubt one of the best players I have ever seen in a Villa shirt.

It would be harsh to single out any players in particular as being disappointments because we haven’t been good enough as a team for large parts of this season. The likes of Marvelous Nakamba, Douglas Luiz, Trezeguet and Wesley (amongst others) haven’t quite hit the heights we were hoping they would but it takes a while to adapt to the Premier League, so I believe the blame for that lies at the feet of the recruitment team, for leaving us in a position where we were solely reliant on these players being an instant hit.

Speaking of Grealish, will you hold onto him this January? Or beyond the summer?
We will definitely hold on to Grealish this January. We don’t need to sell him and he wouldn’t want to leave us mid-season. I’m not sure whether he’ll stay beyond the Summer though.

Sadly, for us, he is far too good for our level. He should be playing at the very top. We can only hope that if he gets an England call-up, whilst he’s at Villa AND we manage to stay up, that he’ll stay to fulfil all his dreams at Villa. That’s quite unlikely though and I think he’ll go at the end of the season, regardless of what happens, with every Villa fans’ best wishes.

When we met at Villa Park, you picked up the three points with virtually the last kick of the afternoon. What did you make of that afternoon?
I thought it was a really entertaining game, between two evenly matched sides on the day. Mooy appeared to let you down, with a silly challenge whilst on a yellow, but it looked like becoming a day where things might not go our way, with a contentious goal disallowed by VAR. So to win with virtually the last kick of the day was incredible. It’s just a great way to win any game of football. I’d be delighted with a similar game and the same result this weekend.

The relegation race looks like it’s going to go right to the wire. Who do you think is going to end up dropping into the Championship come May?
I’d love to be optimistic and say that I was sure we’d be safe but in our current predicament, without John McGinn, a recognised striker and our first choice goalkeeper, I think we’re in serious trouble.

I think that Norwich are almost certain to go down, so I think it will be them and then two between Villa, Bournemouth, Burnley and Brighton. It will definitely be an entertaining run-in for the neutrals but not for fans of the teams involved.

Finally, a prediction for Saturday please?
It’s a really tough one to call! I think both sides need a win, potentially Villa moreso. However I think you will have a slight advantage, playing at home.

Add to that the fact that we can’t keep a clean sheet to save our lives at the minute, means that we are going to find it difficult to win the game. So I’m going to be as optimistic as I can be and predict a 2-2 draw – a result I’d be quite pleased with.

Thanks to Daniel for answering questions. You can read his thoughts on Aston Villa over on Heart of the Holte as well as giving him a follow on Twitter.