Aston Villa are back in the Premier League after a three year absence thanks to a 2-1 victory over Derby in the Championship play-off final on Monday afternoon.
This is a remarkable feat considering where they were at the beginning of March – they were sitting in 11th place and were eight points adrift of the play-offs. At this stage, nobody gave them a chance of finishing in the top six, but nobody could have predicted the fantastic winning run that they were to go on.
Dean Smith’s men made club history by winning their next ten games, sealing a spot in the play-offs with two games to spare. Their winning streak came to a halt thanks to a controversial draw against Leeds, but the less said about that game, the better.
Villa went into the play-offs as the form team, but they had to come from behind against West Brom in the first leg and made it through on penalties, after they lost the second leg 1-0, thanks to some heroics from Jed Steer.
Fans of a claret and blue persuasion were feeling more optimistic about this year’s final than last year’s mainly due to the fact that Villa absolutely demolished Derby 3-0 and 4-0 during the season.
However, we were never going to get a repeat of those two games, not in a match where a whopping £170 million was at stake. This was, as expected, a nervy game with many errors, with the most costly one being made by Kelle Roos in the Derby goal.
Villa are now a Premier League team and boy does it feel good to be able to write that!
Below you will find our season ratings for every Villa player that played 10 games or more over the course of the campaign:
