Goodbye automatic promotion, congratulations to either Cardiff or Fulham, and hello to the play-offs! It’s a new mini-era for Aston Villa who can play out the rest of the regular season from here on out.

Don’t be fooled though, a loss against a directionless Ipswich Town at this stage is still pretty unacceptable. Villa must be confident, learn new things about their current line-up

Here’s more on Aston Villa and Ipswich, in a match that is more than a foregone conclusions.

What to know about Aston Villa

Aston Villa are still an incredibly stupid team for missing out on an automatic promotion spot, because it’s something that the club could have quite easily achieved. They just decided to crap the bed and roll over against incredibly vulnerable teams like Hull and QPR.

Oh well, with their last win, the team guaranteed a play-off spot at the end of the league season, so that’s something to celebrate. Very good news all round, and it only gets better if Villa can fulfil their potential and call themselves a Premier League team come the end of May.

It’s time for a bit of rotation and to learn a bit more about the capabilities in the squad. Let’s see what Josh Onomah can do in central-midfield (he was more than decent against Leeds in that role). Let’s see if Scott Hogan can play off Lewis Grabban up front. Could Villa change formation? Why not? As long as we don’t sacrifice wins, goals and points, Villa should be flexible and should experiment. I’d like to see James Bree, Keinan Davis and Callum O’Hare feature if possible, at points. All three are ready for the first-team picture at this point.

What to know about Ipswich

Poor Ipswich. Stuck between fates. A life with Mick McCarthy, a life without. Still, the club has made their choice - or rather Mick did, with the long-serving manager feeling that it was time to leave after a vocal minority made it clear that he was no longer wanted. A wee bit unfair for a manager who has delivered for the club on an absolute shoe-string budget. Honestly, the budget at Ipswich Town is akin to that of trading penny sweets for a Pokemon card. There’s no winning, and you’ll have to steal. With that remit, Mick has done a great job, and yeah - it was time for a change, but not like this.

Ipswich can’t offer much against the might of Villa, but I said that about Norwich, didn’t I?

Prediction

6-1 to the big Villa boys. Not at all serious, but we must do it for Mick.