Not so much a poetic view, but an Aston Villa view on the next four games

Last season someone made a comment that as soon as we lost, I posted, but if we won I didn't post so quickly. To some extent, I took that to heart, as the person that left that comment was saying it because he or she thought I was doing it for effect.

The thing is, when you lose so often or put in poor displays more than good displays, there is a fair chance that seeing as the time I post is pretty much determined by how much time I have, I'm going to post more often than not, just after a match where the performance wasn't so great.

But this season it's been okay and I've very specifically left his post a few days, because it didn't matter what I posted after the Arsenal match, there was always going to be those that said one thing and others that said something else.

The top four in four

The truth also is that this run of matches was always going to be tough. Liverpool have surprised, by not doing as well as many would have thought, but looking at where they spent a lot of money, maybe we shouldn't be surprised, but Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City are matches that some will have predicted we pick up no points.

And if you're one of those that have predicted that, you've only got two more games to go. And judging by the way Manchester City and Chelsea are playing, we'd have to be happy to get a point from the next two.

But even if we do lose against Manchester City and Chelsea, they're not the important games. The important ones are Everton and QPR. I gave Lambert until October and I stand by that. For the life of me I don't know why he was offered another and took another contract four games into the season, but the owner thought that the right thing to do.

If we beat Chelsea the manager will get a new contract

What the owner doesn't understand is that if we have a horrible October and things don't go as they should against the likes of Everton and QPR, it's not as if, come November, December or January, if things don't go as we'd all have hoped, that there will be other teams banging on the door to get Lambert.

As Robbie Savage said; the football hasn't really changed despite the good start. For me, that are four more games for the manager to show us and I really do hope that it happens, because it looks as if he is learning and he has brought in the necessary experience.

But the football also has to change. We give the ball away too easily and we sit too deep. It's not always about carving out an opportunity as quickly as possible.

But all that written, none of us should be that surprised of the result against Arsenal. We can be surprised in how it happened, it was a mad four minutes, but when you have 29% possession and only two shots on target against a side like Arsenal, you have to be extremely lucky to get the points, let alone one.

Where there is hope, there is opportunity

And this is where I end it with some optimism; we can get something against Chelsea and Manchester City if we play the way the manager likes. Save the football for Everton and QPR and don't put men behind the ball.

It's ironic that I write that, but we're in that place where I have little faith that the manager knows how to play the other way and with him only putting the likes of Grealish on for bit parts and not playing Joe Cole, it doesn't look like he wants to play that way.

So we have to go into the next two games with a little hope. Because if we can get something from one of those games, or even both, then it will create the optimism needed for the two that follow and they really are important games.