An entire team of players is outscoring poor old Aston Villa
The club may be sitting in 14th place in the table but the threat of relegation hangs heavy over the club and that is largely down to their sheer toothlessness in front of goal.
In 22 games so far this season in the Premier League they have scored just 11 goals. At that rate, they will score just 19 for the season, which would make them to lowest scorers in Premier League history, managing one fewer than the historically bad Derby County side of 2007/08 who managed only 20.
January will be a month without Premier League goals too, with their only strike thus far being Christian Benteke’s late winner in the FA Cup against Blackpool and their only remaining game now the fourth round tie with Bournemouth.
That possibly mythical ‘Goal of the Month’ competition may already be decided.
With the next lowest scoring Premier League team (Sunderland) managing eight more thus far, we thought we’d have a look at individual players across Europe to see how many of them had managed to outgun Paul Lambert’s men.
Unsurprisingly, the top scorers in Europe are two men you are very familiar with. La Liga’s charts are led by Cristiano Ronaldo (28 goals) and Lionel Messi (19), but they outscore entire teams on a regular basis. Ronaldo’s tally is better than 10 Premier League teams so far this term.
However across Europe’s top five leagues, 11 players in total are outscoring Aston Villa.
In the Premier League alone, Diego Costa (17), Sergio Aguero (14), Charlie Austin (13) and Alexis Sanchez (12) are all more prolific than Aston Villa have been across 1,980 minutes this season.
Over in Spain, Neymar has managed 12 to join Messi and Ronaldo in the ‘better than Aston Villa’ charts, while in Serie A, Carlos Tevez has 13 for the season.
In the Bundesliga, Eintracht Frankfurt’s Alexander Meier has managed 13 league goals in just 17 games while even traditionally low scoring Ligue 1 has two men more prolific than the Birmingham-based side.  Marseille’s Andre-Pierre Gignac has 13 for the season while Lyon’s Alexandre Lacazette has a Messi like 21 goals in 21 league games.
It gives us no pleasure to bring you these facts. Hell, some of our best friends are Villa fans, but if you do happen to know a Villa fan, give them a hug this morning, The poor feckers need it.
