I was playing snakes and ladders with my grandchildren this week and during the game when I landed on the wrong square and went sliding backwards I thought how this might be a metaphor for football in general and Villa in particular. If we had landed on the wrong square on Sunday we would have slipped back down and would have had to start the climb back up again. As it turns out we had a 'good' roll of the dice and climbed up one of the small ladders on the board and we can now continue to progress. What we need to do now is try to avoid the 'snakes' that will inevitably be in our path in the future. We did ride our luck this season, but luck will not see us through next year.
I can't wait to teach the grandchildren to play chess

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I was thinking along similar lines myself this morning C&B&B. If we had, "slipped back down the snake" to the Championship it would have put us 2 years backwards as a minimum.
Not only could we have become embattled in the Championship, we would have been highly likely to have lost three or four of our best players and would of had to once again go through the lottery of recruitment and building a team. Finally there is the financial element.
As I say, it would have put us back a minimum of 2 years, more likely 3 or 4 years. Instead we should now be able to hang on to our team and build for the future.
How unbelievably fortunate we were in staying up