Come the end of last season, many predicted Aston Villa to finally turn the corner and start climbing up the table.

In Tim Sherwood they had a promising manager and on the back of the FA Cup final, it was largely ignored that they were outplayed for 90 minutes, the squad would be brimming of confidence and ready to revert to the Villa side under Martin O’Neill.

How everyone was wrong. Once Fabian Delph and Christian Benteke had jumped ship to Man City and Liverpool respectively, they were replaced with a large number of players unproven at this level.

Asking Rudy Gestede to fill the shoes of Benteke was always going to be difficult, especially when he was making the jump from the Championship.

Though he scored on his debut in a 1-0 win over newly promoted Bournemouth, it was an extremely poor performance from the side and they were fortunate to leave with three points.

Many will point out that Sherwood didn’t get “his” players, instead the club went over his head and brought in players who they could sell on for profit a few years later.

This is always a risky tactic, especially when you are relying on young European players to quickly acclimatise to the rigours of Premier League football while trying to avoid relegation.

Very quickly the Villa hierarchy realised that the former Tottenham boss was in over his head and sacked him and made a change, looking to France to bring in Remi Garde, someone who had worked in this set-up and had a track record, although a very limited one, of nurturing “wunderkinds” and overachieving with a young squad.

As the losses mounted, supporters soon realised that this may be the year when Villa fall through the proverbial trap door.

Fans had to wait until January 2 for their second win of the season, 1-0 against Crystal Palace.

That is 19 games without a win. How can any team that wants to stay in the top flight go that long without picking up three points?

Supporters were furious with what the club had become. There was no fight or urgency from the players. They seemed happy to pick up their weekly wage and not actually work for it.

The actions of Joleon Lescott didn’t help either. After another embarrassing loss, this time 6-0 to Liverpool, the former Man City defender “accidentally” tweeted a picture of his £125,000 Mercedes.

A month prior, Lescott and goalkeeper Brad Guzan were on the bench during an abysmal 1-1 draw to League Two’s Wycombe in the FA Cup.

Instead of focussing on the match, the pair were laughing and joking while having a spitting competition to see who could launch their chewing gum closest to the touchline.

Captain Micah Richards had to intervene as fans walked over to voice their opinion but they had every right to ask what the supposed senior players were doing.

Villa picked up their third win of the season in February, defeating Norwich 2-0, but that was it in terms of victories. Over the course of 38 games, Villa picked up 17 points.

Though the Derby side of 2007-08 took just 11 points and have been dubbed the worst side in top-flight history, this Villa side may have picked up the award.

Garde was sacked with seven games to go, with the slimmest of hope and belief that caretaker boss Eric Black could galvanise the squad and somehow avoid relegation.

That wasn’t to be and after being in the Premier League since its creation in 1992, Villa will ply their trade in the Championship next season.

It wasn’t helped by any of the players, which is why the club decided to not have a player of the season award.

No-one would have deserved to win it and it would have been an insult to fans.

Club captain Gabby Agbonlahor spent the final few weeks of the season on a fitness regime which speaks volumes of the mentality inside the dressing room.

This wasn’t a team plagued by injuries to key players. This is club that had been circling the drain for seasons and will not be missed.

That they signed Adama Traore from Barcelona in the summer and handed him a £40,000 a week contract which rises this summer to £60,000 is a joke.

The comedy continues when you realise that, should he stay until 2018, he will get another rise to £90,000.

There has been no forward thinking from the club since owner Randy Lerner put Villa up for sale in 2014. That he sold it to Chinese businessman Tony Xia is far too late for those who support the team.

Lerner had been absent from Villa Park for years and not seen in the stands since O’Neill left in 2010.

The best players have been sold every season and replaced with academy prospects and unproven talent from abroad.

That cannot continue and if Xia is realistic in “doing a Leicester” and returning to the Premier League to win a title in a few seasons, he had better switch on Fifa or Football Manager and do it that way.