Aston Villa's players are a disgrace... you would not sign any of them 

The worst team ever to play in the Premier League: those were the words I could not stop myself saying on February 14.

I’d just watched Liverpool tear Aston Villa to shreds and the 6-0 final score in no way flattered my old club. The home team were appalling and my instinct was to make that damning assessment. Immediately, though, plenty of people got in contact on social media to tell me I was wrong. 

The same two examples kept being offered to say I’d been overly harsh on Aston Villa. The first one was Derby County, who finished rock bottom in 2007-08; the second was the Sunderland team of 2005-06 that was relegated with 15 points. 

Derby hold the unwanted records of scoring the fewest goals (20) and conceding the most (89) in a 38-game season, not to mention the lowest points total (11). They set the benchmark for the worst we have seen but, with seven games to go, Aston Villa are in danger of wrestling that tag away from them.

Aston Villa's players have failed to show any fight this season, with Harry Kane scoring here

Daniel Sturridge opens the scoring during Liverpool's 6-0 rout against the Premier League's bottom side

Villa are bottom of the Premier League and without a manager after a woeful campaign

Everything I’ve seen since that capitulation against Liverpool makes me think I was right to be so critical. My adrenaline isn’t running the way it would in a television studio after a live game but I stand by my statement. Here we are on April 2 and Villa haven’t added to their points tally.

Sunderland, remember, were historically a yo-yo club. The squad they had 10 years ago had also only just won promotion and they signed players who were Championship standard. 

Derby, meanwhile, were not ready to be in the Premier League. They came up via the play-offs with a squad of thirtysomethings; 12 months before they were promoted, they had finished 20th in the Championship, so it shows how big a leap they had taken.

But Villa? Six years ago they finished sixth under Martin O’Neill with 64 points, sandwiched between Manchester City and Liverpool. Since his abrupt departure, five further managers have come and gone but the problems have spiralled.

Normally when a side go down, three or four get cherry-picked and the same number are brought in with Championship experience but, given the chance, who would you want your club to buy from this Villa squad? My answer would be nobody.

There will be arguments about them losing Christian Benteke and Fabian Delph last summer, along with Tom Cleverley and Ron Vlaar. In total, Villa received more than £44million in transfer fees but they still spent £52m on players who have been totally inadequate. 

The Sunderland team of 2005-06 went down to the Championship with just 15 points to their name

The Derby side of 2007-08 won once, amassed 11 points and went a record 32 games without a victory

Look at Southampton. They have lost a succession of top performers but they have invested well. Yes, there has been a lack of investment from owner Randy Lerner but, other than Benteke, can you name a good player Villa have signed in the past five years?

Since Liverpool demolished them six weeks ago, there has been no positive reaction. Five games have produced five defeats. Not a single point.

The disastrous sequence culminated with Remi Garde losing his job on Tuesday. The decision to sack him will have no influence on whether they stay up.

Garde has been heavily criticised with some justification, as too has Lerner. Garde looked totally ill-equipped to deal with a dogfight from the start and his quiet ways never looked like inspiring a group that Tim Sherwood had failed to connect with.

In fairness to Sherwood, he galvanised the players last year to keep them up. When he was sacked last October, why did they not go for the obvious candidate in Nigel Pearson, who was available? Had Sherwood gone 16 days earlier, Villa could have had Sam Allardyce. Yet for all the fury being aimed at Garde and Lerner, why is the squad getting off scot-free?

Remi Garde took over in November and never looked like saving the club from relegation

Tim Sherwood galvanised the club with his skills of motivation but was replaced by Garde in November

They have been a disgrace and that 6-0 defeat to Liverpool was as bad a performance, in every aspect, as I have ever seen.

The least you can do in such a position is run and tackle but they won’t even do that — their average distance per game (66 miles) is the worst in the Premier League.

Villa have got the biggest problem you can find in football which is never looking like scoring (their current total is 22) and conceding too many (58) but, to make matters worse, they have got poor players with a shocking attitude, who have failed to show any self-awareness.

At least with the appointment of Brian Little at board level this week, moves are being made to correct that.

I wrote about Jack Grealish last November, when he’d been out partying in Manchester after a 4-0 defeat at Everton. Technically, he’d done nothing wrong but he gave out the wrong signals at that time.

You would think people would learn but now Gabby Agbonlahor has had a similar incident.

Again, Agbonlahor, who has been suspended, had permission to be in Dubai with club captain Micah Richards during the international break but, as someone who has been at Villa Park for his entire career, did he not realise how fans would react to seeing him photographed in a nightclub? It was embarrassing.

Gabby Agbonlahor (centre)was pictured in a Dubai nightclub with Dwight Gayle and Frazier Campbell

Jack Grealish was pictured in a nightclub in November following a 4-0 drubbing at the hands of Everton

Relegation has been inevitable since autumn but that won’t lessen its impact.

Villa — one of only seven teams to keep their place in the Premier League since 1992 — will be the highest profile club to lose their top-flight status in the modern era, bigger than Leeds (2004) and Newcastle (2009).

Why? In my eyes, Villa are the biggest club in the Midlands. In terms of history, the trophies they have won — not least the 1982 European Cup — and their stadium, they outrank both Leeds and Newcastle.

When they do go, there is little chance of them coming back up with that squad. In fact, I would say at this stage that another relegation, rather than promotion, would be on the cards. How will a group who can’t run and won’t run cope with 46 ferocious games?

What makes their plight so bad is the fact this has been the season when strange things have happened and all clubs have been taking points off each other. 

All clubs, that is, bar Aston Villa.

Cruyff reigns supreme 

There is always a debate raging about who is the greatest player we have seen or who is the best manager. As much as we crave it, there will never be a definitive answer.

I have tended to look at things another way, though, and looked for who has been the greatest for football in general. My answer every time would be Johan Cruyff.

Pele and Diego Maradona may have been considered a shade better as individual players than Cruyff but neither could come close to him in terms of what he did as a manager with Ajax and Barcelona.

Franz Beckenbauer, perhaps, has outstanding credentials, given he won the World Cup as a player and a manager, but what sets Cruyff apart is his legacy. Ajax and Holland were nothing, really, before he started to shine for them and his ideas still glow in the glorious Barcelona team we see today.

Johan Cruyff won eight Dutch titles with Ajax over the course of two spells with the club

Johan Cruyff (right) helped Holland beat Uruguay 2-0  in the opening game of the 1974 World Cup finals

Ex-players are forever accused of living in the past but the great thing about Cruyff, regardless of what he had achieved and how good he had been, was the fact he was always looking to see how the game as a whole could be moved on.

I loved Cruyff. I loved the way he played, I loved the way his teams played and I loved listening to his words. His standout quote for me was when he said: ‘Quality without results is pointless. Results without quality is boring.’

During the 2006 World Cup, I had the honour of meeting him — he stayed at the hotel where the England wives were based in Baden-Baden — and it was an ambition of mine to interview him. We tried to set it up several times in recent years but circumstances never allowed it to happen.

It would have been an absolute privilege to have an audience with Cruyff. I don’t think we will ever see another like him.

Man of the week: Dimitri Payet 

Another game, another stunning moment from West Ham’s maestro — his goal against Russia for France in midweek was sensational.

As West Ham enter the defining period of the season, when they have the potential to qualify for Europe and possibly win a first piece of silverware since 1980, it will be hugely reassuring to Slaven Bilic that Dimitri Payet is in such sparkling form.

There is no doubt he will be on the shortlist for the PFA Player of the Year award. He and Harry Kane are the two candidates most likely to deny Leicester’s Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy, and it has been a joy to watch Payet play this season.

Dimitri Payet restored's France's two-goal cushion against Russia with a stunning free-kick

Payet (centre) is back with West Ham, who welcome Crystal Palace to the Boleyn Ground on Saturday

He has set the Premier League alight and after that majestic goal in the Stade de France, there is every chance he will do the same for the hosts when Euro 2016 begins in June. Didier Deschamps, the France coach, is finding it impossible to resist his claims.

Payet’s form also shows the strength of the Premier League.

It says everything for the power our clubs have that a club who have not traditionally been in the fight for the top four have a player who is so important to one of the major nation’s ambitions.