Villa bouncing as rivals keep pace

It was a fantastic night under the lights at Villa Park on Saturday, as the race to the Premier League hots up as we are now 10 games until the end of the season. I don’t think many could forsee Villa demolishing a very good Wolves team, who are still 7 points clear at the top of the Championship., even though they have just won 1 game in their last 5. Villa are having to win every game at the moment, and Bruce knew going into the game against Wolves that Cardiff and Fulham had already won, which must have added extra pressure!

On Saturday night, Villa were electric, and the team Bruce has put together over the past 18 months is really flexing its muscle. The team is well balanced, and settled, especially with Jack Grealish coming back to fitness and slotting nicely into the number 10 role. A big shout out to Lewis Grabban as well, who is giving us a little extra up top, and with 4 goals in 4 games, he looks like the man to fire us to to the Premier League, he just has a knack of being in the right place at the right time! Over the past 30 games, Villa have taken more points than any other team, which shows the impact a bad start of the season has had on the Villans. Taking 7 points from the first 7 games has left Villa constantly chasing the pack, and are still 4 points behind 2nd placed Cardiff.

The pace of Fulham and Cardiff is frightening, and you have to tip your hate to Neil Warnock in particular, who has turned a run of the mill Championship team to contenders in 18 months on a small budget. Fulham are also in the form of their lives, and with a talented squad, you can see them going unbeaten until the end of the season. With Villa’s 10 games left, it’s looking like they will need to win 8 of those to secure automatic promotion to the Premier League, anything less and

Villa now host the re-arranged QPR game on Tuesday, before travelling to Bolton on Saturday. Yet another big week coming up in the Championship, and if Villa can win their game in hand, it creates a 4 point cushion over Fulham, which gives us a little breathing space. Meanwhile Cardiff travel to Brentford who have a fine home record and picked off Villa in December. One thing that is looking certain is that the race for the automatic spots is likely to go down to the wire.