Rémi Garde is an erudite man but when it comes to assessing Aston Villa’s survival prospects the Frenchman knows it is best done with his heart and not his head. With the team anchored to the foot of the table on five points from 13 games, Garde is ignoring the lessons of history and talking about an act of escapology that will inspire others in years to come as Villa attempt to become the first Premier League team to stay up after such an awful start.
To put the size of the task into perspective, only four clubs have been in the same position or worse at this point of the season and all of them – Swindon, 1993-94; Sheffield Wednesday, 1999-00; Sunderland, 2005-06; and QPR, 2012-13 – ended up being relegated.
No club has stayed up with six points from 13 matches, let alone five, and it takes a huge leap of faith – some may say a wild imagination – to believe this Villa side, who have not won in the league since beating Bournemouth on the opening weekend, when sun hats and shorts were the order of the day, are capable of clambering clear and writing their names in the record books.
Garde cannot afford to be so pessimistic or realistic. “Only when it’s done with mathematics can you accept it,” the Villa manager said. “We are not at this point. We are five points away from safety. For the moment, this isn’t something that’s unreachable. I understand that people outside will bet on this position for us at the end of the season [to go down]. But I really think we have the possibility to close the gap to the teams who are safe. There are a lot of points to be distributed. Why can’t we do that?
“Statistics are one thing but sometimes they are made to be challenged. We’ll try to move those statistics forwards and maybe next time another manager of another team will be told that once a team with five points from 13 games have safety. Until we cannot do that, I will strongly believe we can do that. I am committed to the mission I have taken.”
It will look like mission impossible if Villa fail to beat Watford at home on Saturday. With a trip to Southampton up next followed by the visit of Arsenal – a reunion with his mentor and former manager Arsène Wenger seems like the last thing Garde needs right now – the Watford game belongs in the “must-win” category for a Villa side in desperate need of three points and an injection of self-belief. “Us winning would be a huge boost in terms of confidence,” Garde said. “Everybody needs that now at this point of the season.”
Garde claimed the Villa job was not harder than he first thought but it would be fascinating to know whether the 49-year-old would proffer the same answer in private. A spirited display at home against Manchester City in his first match earned a point but that was followed by a 4-0 thumping at Everton last Saturday, when some of Villa’s defending was excruciating.
Quite why Jack Grealish thought it would be a good idea to be partying at a nightclub in Manchester straight after Villa’s heaviest defeat of the season, and at a time when the team are sleepwalking towards the Championship, is anyone’s guess. Garde, though, has made it clear he is not going to tolerate any nonsense.
The 20-year-old midfielder was made to train with the under-21s and has been left out of the squad for the Watford game in a move that would damage Villa’s chances if the academy graduate was playing anything like he did against Liverpool in the FA Cup semi-final last April. That day seems like a long time ago in so many respects.
Garde was not prepared to talk about Grealish at length and the subject of Steve Round also got short shrift. Round, who was David Moyes’s assistant at Everton, met Garde to discuss a position on his backroom staff that neither of them seemed to be keen on him filling.
It was, in short, an odd situation and, needless to say, ended with both men confirming they were taking their conversation no further.
Villa will need more joined-up thinking against Watford if they are to win their first home league game in more than six months.
“The players I have want to improve and respond to the tough mission we have,” Garde said. “I didn’t see any players fed up about the situation or what I am asking of them. So far we haven’t been rewarded by the work we have put in.”
