This season has been a true rollercoaster ride for Aston Villa but despite the excellent first part of the league campaign, the Villans failed to break the top 4 of English football, mostly thanks to the very poor finish of the Premiership campaign. After quite a while, the team started preparations for the new season knowing that they would play in the UEFA Cup and Martin O’Neill was aware that his squad needed strengthening. The boss signed several very good players last summer in order to boost the competition for places and to create a team capable of playing big number of games in a single season. He did improve the squad depth but he only had two or three decent replacements for the starting 11 and that proved to be the biggest problem this term.

The team played great football in the first part of the season, when the players were fresh and they even emerged as the favourites for the fourth place in the Premiership and a Champions League berth. However, the team were also involved in the UEFA Cup, Carling Cup and FA Cup, and there was no way they could play well in all the competitions considering the squad they had. As the fixtures piled up, the Villans started showing signs of weakness and their form started taking the wrong turn. Even though O’Neill decided to sacrifice UEFA Cup, it was a bit too late and the boss was unable to stop the team’s downtrend in results. Villans were also struggling to cope with the pressure as expectations were just too high and that is another reason why they failed to beat Arsenal to the fourth place in the standings.

Even though the team failed to break into the top 4, this season should be seen as a great learning experience rather than a big disappointment. Martin O’Neill has already started thinking about the new season and he is scouring Europe in search for the new signings. The boss will definitely have big gaps to fill as Martin Laursen has announced retirement, whereas Gareth Barry could leave the club this summer. Andre-Pierre Gignac, Joleon Lescott and Philippe Senderos are just some of the names being mentioned and we expect a very busy transfer window at Villa Park. Villa fans will definitely have an exciting summer and they will be reading Soccer rumors columns in order to be the first to find out who is coming to Villa Park. Villa have already proven they had the potential to break into the top four and some of the passionate punters will certainly back them to achieve a top 4 finish in 2009/2010 Premiership season as that could be one of the top Sport picks this summer.