It has been a slightly more difficult start than expected for Aston Villa this season, amid plenty of expectation from supporters.
Despite a wretched Premier League campaign last season, there’s plenty of optimism coming from the Villa Park terraces that they can bounce straight back to the Premier League at the first attempt.
But despite the pre-season optimism, Villa have endured a tough start to life in the second division and sit 16th in the Championship, with five points from five games.
They’ve only won once in the league this season, a 3-0 drubbing of a poor Rotherham side earlier in August and people are quickly beginning to doubt whether Villa are good enough to get straight back into the Premier League.
Di Matteo has completely overhauled the squad and it’s a very different side to the one we saw last season, which many not be a good thing all round.
So with that in mind here are three reasons why Aston Villa won’t get promoted back to the Premier League this season…
Too many new players
At the time of writing they made nine new signings, which means there are nine players who are expected to make the starting lineup week-after-week. That’s a lot of new faces to bed in, endear to the supporters and to gel in an extremely tough Championship division.
Villa’s season was so bad they almost had to do overhaul the squad because the players were so poor. The supporters were frustrated and it was an easy way out. Whether it will work or not is yet to be seen.
£49million is a lot to spend if they don’t get promoted and new owner Tony Xiu will have to get off Twitter to make some proper decisions.
Scoring goals is still a problem
Villa might have completed the signing of Bristol City striker Jonathan Kodjia but newbie Ross McCormack is yet to set the world on fire for Villa.
Off course, he needs time to settle back in but for £12million, he should be hitting the net at least 20 times this season and progress has been slow so far. He’s yet to hit the back of the net and has been overshadowed by the likes of Rudy Gestede.
And with long-term injury suspect Libor Kozak coming back from injury too, this £12million might not have been the best spend.
Time will tell.
They don’t have that Championship “spine”
More than anything, the Championship is about having bottle.
Against Bristol City last weekend, Villa could and probably should have won the game in the first half. Every side misses chances and every team has off days. But their capitulation in the second half against Bristol City was poor, even by the worst of standards.
Villa need the ability to go to Barnsley on a Tuesday night and assert a bit of dominance. You can spend all the money you want but if you have’t got a team of scrappers, then you’re going to struggle in this division.
These signs were there against Bristol City.
