Well there'll be a lot of talk about Villa being "in form" but the truth is that they're a good team and Unai Emery had worked wonders. I'm not suprised by the loss but am a touch dismayed by the manner of it, I'd have put good money on us coming back into it at some point (the first half last week at Brentford was worse and we ended up winning that) and we never looked like doing anything. Had a glance at our board and there's a bunch of "worst performance of the season" stuff in amongst the happy clappers, i think it's a given. We've lost 6 games in total this season and that was the only trully abject performance i can think of (even against 2-0 against Liverpool with only 10 men we were creating some chances).
Villa aren't getting top 4 this year but it will be interesting to see where they go from here. FFP will limit them a bit (they've spent about 1/3 billion on players in the last few years but the sale of Grealish brought back £100m) but they've got a very good core of players.
As for us it all hinges on next couple of home games really. Tottenham and Brighton. If we win those then I think we'll get top 4, if we don't then i don't think we will. Losing away to a good Villa side is unlikely to break our season.
Good luck to the rest of you in your games this afternoon. Obviously I don't actually mean that but it can be nicer to follow the rest of a weekends fixtures after your team has already done.