Former Aston Villa player Kevin Phillips says that Steve Bruce’s side has no chance of finishing in the top two of the 2017-18 Championship season.
Villa find themselves fourth in the Championship table, seven points behind Cardiff City who have a game in hand.
Phillips says that Villa’s chances of finishing in the top two is “done and dusted” after they lost two back to back games against Queens Park Rangers and Bolton.
“Wolves are different because they’re a class above everyone else when you look at their players – they had a blip against Villa but bounced back straight away,” wrote Phillips for the Express and Star.
“On the other hand Villa – and we’ve done it ourselves at Derby where we’re seven games without a win – lack that consistency.
“It just shows you the class Wolves have got in their ranks and unfortunately for Villa I’d suggest the top two are now done and dusted. I would put Villa’s two defeats down to two things.”
Villa went on an unbelievable run of seven straight wins that put them strongly in contention for automatic promotion, but following their two straight defeats they have blown their chances.
Phillips points out that lack of consistency in one of Villa’s major problems. However, he hasa theory about why Villa failed to win their last two games.
Both QPR and Bolton are struggling in the Championship and on paper those two were winnable games, but Phillips has blamed Bruce for not picking the same side that won 4-1 against Wolves.
He also points out that complacency played a massive part as well as Villa didn’t raise their game against QPR and Bolton thinking they would beat them easily.
“Bruce suggested he perhaps should have changed two or three players in the midweek fixture against QPR,” Phillips added.
It’s not a young squad he’s got there and he probably should have freshened it up. We’ve had that at Derby this season, a lot of these things become apparent after the event.
It’s easily done – you come off the back of a fantastic result, you pick the same team and say ‘go on lads, do it again’. But so many times it doesn’t happen and credit to Steve, he came out and took the blame.
The second reason for me is complacency, which plays a massive part of it. After the big win over Wolves you’ve got QPR and Bolton next up, two teams who’ve not done well this season. You look at it and think ‘we should just turn up and we’ll beat them’.”
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