Hoping for some hope about Aston Villa

It's getting harder and harder to write about this club. Not seeing a league win since August will do that to a supporter's brain. I'd like to think I'm a pretty optimistic Aston Villa fan. If you go back and look at where I picked Villa to finish in our preseason prediction posts, I had them way higher then where they've finished every year since I started writing here.

At this point, all that optimism is mostly all gone. I'm pretty much resigned to the likelihood that Villa are getting relegated. I feel like there's not much left that can be done. It would take a pretty impressive run just to get us out of the relegation zone. Even if that is accomplished, the rate at which they would need to pick up points to stay out of the bottom three is more than what they've done this season. Things are real bad. We thought the Manchester City draw was an indication that things were changing, but there's been even more losing since then.

All I want right now is hope. Hope that Villa can go on a run that gets them out of the bottom three. Hope that when I watch a match on a Saturday morning that Villa will win. Even if it's still unlikely, I would just like to be able to rationalize in my brain that it might happen. Right now I just can't do that.

I do feel a lot better about the current manager than I did about the previous one, so there's that. With Remi Garde in charge, I feel like even if this club gets relegated, there's a plan. If we got relegated under Tim Sherwood, seems like the plan would be "hope we get promoted right back" and not much else if that fails. Garde managing us in the Championship makes me feel a little better, even though getting relegated is still going to hurt.

I still love Villa and I always will, unless they do something real dumb. I'm prepared to follow them in the Championship as best I can, even though here in the US, I'm probably not going to be able to watch the matches. All I ask is that this season, we get to a point where I turn on a match and have some hope that things aren't going to be all bad that day.

If we come out of this season, and I don't feel terrible about the future of this club, at this point, I'll take it.