Joe Mercer's Villa bounce back from their twelfth defeat in thirteen to make it a second win in three games for the first time since the start of December. Villa’s latest fixture is their fourteenth in forty eight days after their wildly interrupted season delivered the inevitable fixture list congestion in the final two months of the season. As a result, Villa make it fourteen wins, seven draws and nineteen defeats in forty division one games so far this season as a campaign of such promise before the fixture interruption had come completely off the rails following a record for failure that no-one could or would have predicted.