Recently by Bill Howell

WHAT was once Villa's best season since Ron Saunders and the league title, then their best since Graham Taylor and Ron Atkinson's charge towards second, then their best since Brian Little's fourth and fifth, is now quite simply their best for 12 months.

A year ago Villa were sat where they are now: 55 points from 34 matches, although they were then back in seventh.

They were a team chasing another, Portsmouth, who were in the Cup Final.

Now they are in fifth trying to keep the door shut on another Cup Final team - Everton.

DESPAIR, anguish, dejection, desperation, despondency, ­disheartenment, forlornness, gloom, melancholy, misery, pain and sorrow.

They were not the names of the 12 Villa players on duty at Old Trafford yesterday, but they may well have been.

The ghost of Peter Withe 1983 was close to finally being exorcised.

On Merseyside, Villa deserved every bit of their defeat and players will have been embarrassed.

VILLA's month from Hell continues to wreak havoc with no sign of abating.

Sunday February 15 and supporters dreaming of silverware on perhaps two fronts, were singing songs of Istanbul and were laughing at all the mishaps befalling Arsenal and Chelsea.

Now all folk appear able to do is look over their shoulders at the possibility that all the ridiculously positive advancements of the last two-and-a-half seasons could go up in smoke.

IMAGINE a frail old granny, sat alone in her living room late at night... there's no phone, the room is bathed in candlelight as the meter is running low and a winter chill wafts through the windows and under the doors.

There's no neighbours as she lives in the countryside... then, all of a sudden, there's a firm knock at the door.

Now that's nervy.

FREE dinner for the Moscow 300? How about a round of bacon butties for the home section of the Villa Park 39,000?

They'd just witnessed the biggest give-away since Woolworths cleared their shelves after going bust.

As if being kicked in the unmentionables with exits from both the FA and UEFA Cups wasn't bad enough.

In one fell swoop, or more accurately two, Villa allowed a team so down and out they should have been wearing ripped jeans and muddy T-shirts rather than budgerigar yellow, to nick an undeserved point.