Cup Magic Or Aston Villa Madness.

There’s no doubt that Aston Villa are a club in free-fall.

A horrible Christmas period, that saw the midlanders concede 15 goals in three games, was blamed on a young, tired and inexperienced side, and many still believed after the torrid run of results, that Paul Lambert was still the man to turn around a club that has slowly been imploding on itself for the last 18 months.

But the cup shock of losing, over two legs, to Bradford City – or the mighty Bradford City as we here at WFD call them – has sent a major shockwave through even the staunchest of Villa fans.

Every dog has its day, and the League 2 side had theirs against both Wigan and Asrenal in the early stages of the Capital One Cup earlier this season.  They had their day again when Villa went to Valley Parade two weeks ago and lost 3-1.  But that was expected to be the end of their Cinderella cup story, with a tough fixture at the Premier League side in the second leg of the tie still to contend with.

Last night, though, Villa shamed themselves and their fans. 

We should not take anything away from Bradford and their manager Phil Parkinson. Bradford played very very well last night, almost too well in fact.

If this were this a cycling race, I’m sure there would be a number of Villa fans and players calling for random drug tests to be taken by their opponents.

But we should put last nights magic 2-1 loss, that was enough that to send the first ever English fourth division side to Wembley, down to ‘cup magic’, or ‘pluck and guts’ – nor should we go looking for Armstrong style plot stories to hurl the minnows way.

Villa were bad. In fact, they were terrible.

A panic stricken performance in the opening 45 minutes brought wild efforts from Gabby Agbonlahor, Charles N’Zogbia and Stephen Ireland, and all came close to finding the back of the net. Only the fingertips of Matt Duke prevented Villa from adding more then just the one goal to their fight back in the first period.

When Fabian Delph struck another wayward strike from the edge of the area just before half time, Lambert could be seen calming his side down, something I’m sure he did in the dressing room at the interval.

But a calm Villa is a wasteful Villa at the moment, and the Premier League side lost their edge in a dire second half performance. Barry Bannan was woeful with his distribution, and any sense of short sharp passing was lost to a sea of long balls and unintelligent buildup play.  It was hard to work out which side was in League 2 on occasion.

One major problem for the Villans is the lack of a spark of creativity and a level head in the midfield.  It’s a side that’s really missing Stan Petrov. The calming influence of the Bulgarian midfielder hasn’t been at Villa this season - for obvious reasons - and has been missed greatly. The sooner Villa can find a replacement or are able to bring Petrov back – which we all want to see – they will continue to struggle.

They need someone who can hold up the ball and open up space with intelligent, yet simple, passing that keeps possession and allows Villa’s attacking threats to find space created in their opponents defence.  Bannan has tried to take on this role but he, like many, is too willing to fire long balls over the top to the big front men of Christian Benteke and Darren Bent  - on the rare occasion the Englishman plays.

They also have a long-standing problem with dealing with set pieces, a major factor to a number of their losses from the last two seasons. This too must be fixed as soon as possible or Villa will be staring deep into a relegation battle for the remainder of the season, and could easily lose the fight to stay alive in England’s top flight.

Villa will continue to rock between the rare but sublime – such as their 3-1 win at Anfield – and the dire and desperate, if solutions to these problems can’t be found.

Bradford worked hard and have earned their place at Wembley against either Swansea, but Villa did a lot of the work for them already.