Boxing Day Indigestion...

Puppetmaster Gerry Anderson's death was announced yesterday. Just hours later, it didn't seem evident that anyone was pulling the strings at Villa Park either...

I started to lose faith on the short taxi ride from the city centre pub in which we'd been attempting to anaesthetise ourselves against the horrors to come, having seen the team news on Twitter. One striker. Just one. The team sheet itself looked like this was going to be backs to the wall operation. Unfortunately, it transpired that not too many of our team even knew where the wall was.

We were totally and utterly battered in the first half, which at least meant we got to see some action down at The Holte End. This was capitulation, pure and simple, from a defence that looked like they'd been at the valium and a midfield yet again prepared to stand back and watch the opposition pass the ball. The idea of actually keeping possession ourselves - if only to take some off the pressure off if not to try and create something – never seemed to enter anyone's head.

How got to half-time at nil-nil is a mystery to me – partially because by 40 minutes I'd seen enough and was already quaffing Strongbow in the Holte Suite – though the general consensus was that Mister Guzan was our saving grace... comes to something when a keeper who has had to pick the ball out of the net twelve times in two games is your glimmer of light. This was a big chance for Delph and El Ahmadi to re-establish themselves. They didn't seem that bothered.

Credit to the opposition though, Defoe put on the kind of display that has many of us casting envious eyes at White Hart Lane over the years, while Gareth Bale responded to the constant barbs about his simian like appearance by knocking in three to add the final barbed sprig of holly into Villa's ruined Christmas.

Not sure where we go from here... we can't keep changing the manager but we expected and needed something after the shellshock of the Chelsea and what the team actually managed to serve up was, to my eyes, even worse...

Twelve – nil in two games may sound bad but I always say don't just look at the results look at the performances... the performances were actually even more terrible than those scorelines would suggest and all played out on live telly to the delight of our knuckle-dragging, braying neighbours.

Make no mistake, we're in a dogfight now. We might just need to nip out and buy a couple of dogs...