So the question we are all asking is why this has happened. On forums I have seen many reasons given including some by myself but I think I should expand on them here.

Personally apart from the Citeh game I do not believe we are playing badly, in fact for parts of Chelsea and Spuds we played as well as we have done. But in the previous games like at Hull/Pompey I believe we lack something to pull results from games we were struggling in, so why has this happened ?

For many the obvious reason is when MON pulled us out of the UEFA, the theory I guess goes is that by putting too much on CL he somehow piled the pressure on. Whilst this theory does have validity if the players can not handle that pressure then actually have they not got a more serious issue to be looked at ? I would say that in fact a few players have been found out by this pressure and MON will have to look at even replacing them in the summer. This brings me to players in particular who I think have had an impact in our ability to fight back.

The players are Barry & Carew. Now I can already the howls of derision and I can hear all the arguments against this but let me state my point on both

Barry

After Xmas, when he declared he was staying until the summer he was great, he was controlling the ball and becoming a dominant force in midfield, especially the 2/3 games after he was given the captaincy back after Laursen’s injury.

However for the last 6 games, he is now resembling the player we had at the beginning of the season whose head has been turned. As the most senior player I would expect him to be dominant but he has been merely OK if not worse. For me his performance against Spuds especially when compared to Petrov’s was merely OK and it was Petrov who was driving us forward. I think he will go in the summer now and he has told us that.

Especially after the summer where he has not apologised for what he did and not refuted the NOTW article then he most certainly should not be captain and I think this has affected team morale especially if the other players suspect he should be gone.

NRC should be made captain ASAP

Carew

The thing you have to acknowledge with Carew is that he scores goals, there is no question of that and we have seen him do that recently

However I happen to think he is a lazy bugger and since the infamous lap dancing incident and the ‘back injury’ I am convinced the relationship between MON and him has broken down.

We know what MON is like and anything less than 100% from a player is not tolerated and whilst he may start against Liverplop I really do not think he is a long term fixture at Villa. This is especially so when you look at the performances when he has played (take the Carew blinkers off) and you will see some very mediocre and lazy performances.

Now, I happen to think Carew is a very nice bloke and gets on with his team mates but when a rift develops between a popular player and a manager and maybe some think MON is being unfair to him then this can cause some problems with team spirit as we may have seen. This may have worsened when Heskey was brought in as for me an obvious replacement for Carew who because of his ‘back injury’ could not be sold in January.

Now as I said I do not expect many to agree with me but I think we can agree something has happened to the resilience and fight of the players, these for me are far more likely reasons rather than the UEFA cup and assorted other reasons I have read.