After a thrilling and excellent performance against our second city rivals, Birmingham City, we currently find ourselves sat in the automatic promotion spot for the first time this season and we need to continue with our good run of form and not bottle it at the business end of the season.
Steve Bruce has had an awful week personally but he was there to witness a great win over Birmingham and his tactics and substitutions were spot on.
The images of Bruce shedding a few tears after our first goal just show how much passion this man has for the cause and I bet the ‘Bruce out’ brigade are now nowhere to be seen or heard.
Villa now sits 1 point above Derby County, who still have to come to Villa Park and 4 points above 4th place Cardiff City, who again we are still yet to play at home. As much as I would love us to catch them, I think Wolves are pretty much home and dry as far as the title is concerned but we are now front-runners to pinch that second automatic place.
It is our position to lose now and we must hold our bottle if we are to get promoted automatically.
As I have already stated, it is very unfortunate that we still have to play Wolves, Cardiff, Derby and Leeds, however, all of these games are home fixtures – which gives me a lot more confidence that we can collect points and hold on to our place in the table. As long as we don’t lose to these teams and make sure we don’t lose points elsewhere, then automatic promotion is ours for the taking.
Many Blues fans took to twitter yesterday and admitted that we were the better side and some have gone as far to say that we deserve to get promoted. If our biggest rivals say it, then hopefully this means there is some truth in the fact that we should be the team clinching that automatic spot.
Jack Grealish will be a huge factor in our promotion push, as he has been unreal since he came back from his long-term injury. He has won Man of the Match multiple times this season and even won it against Birmingham, where he played a great game and assisted the first goal of the game.
Scott Hogan will also be huge in our push, as he seems to be the first choice striker now. He needs to keep bagging those goals if we want our best chances of going up.
Overall I am quietly confident that we will not bottle this, we worked so hard to catch Derby so we can not let them catch us back. I know for sure this is going to be a close call but I have full confidence in the boys that we can do this.
