Saturday’s performance at Fulham was a case in point. With every other club trying to avoid finishing in the top five, a win here would have made Villa’s position certain. The early start could have worked in our favour – get the points, move up to third then sit back and enjoy everyone else worrying about what they had to do. Meanwhile, we could look forward to the next challenge after safely accomplishing this one. And all this taking place at our travelling support’s favourite venue.

That was the idea, but as so often proves the case Villa look like making even the most straightforward task into a Herculean mission. The team appeared to have been picked with one eye on the upcoming trip to Nottingham, with Lamare Bogarde replacing the injury-prone Amadou Onana. If that was the case then it may have been that such an attitude spread to the players because they seemed disjointed, distracted and nowhere near as effective as they could be.

That one eye glancing up the M42 would have been better employed in west London, because from the off Villa struggled to cope with Fulham’s approach. The home side might have started the match in the bottom half, although in this strangest of seasons they still had a chance of Europe even at this late stage, but they were the better team and Villa needed Emiliano Martinez to save them a couple of times.

It seemed as though they might be able to get to half-time level, but two minutes from the break the Villa defence couldn’t clear from another good save and went a goal down. There were no substitutions at half-time and Unai should probably have made changes before he did, with the first coming after 74 minutes. Then again, there wasn’t much difference in the performance when half the outfield players had been replaced.

By then Ollie Watkins and Morgan Rogers had missed chances that on another day might have gone in, although the closest either side came to scoring in a pedestrian second half was when Fulham had a goal ruled for a foul on Martinez. Villa are still firm favourites to be playing in the Champions League but they could have had everything more or less sorted before playing Forest – whose preparations before the big occasion were a bit more successful than ours.

It feels unfair to be criticising players who’ve given so much but we’re headed towards four weeks that could settle the club’s direction for years to come. Leon Bailey and Jadon Sancho have surely had enough opportunities and while Lamare Bogarde might have been good enough to play for the Villa in all but a few seasons over the past three decades, at the moment he’s nowhere near Onana’s standard.