SOCCER ANGLES:Casual observers don't realise just how serious things are at Villa Park, writes MICHAEL WALKER

Unthinkable: it’s the new unbelievable. Judging by the number of times “unthinkable” has been used in the past week or so, its stock has never been higher. It’s unbelievable how much air-time unthinkable gets these days.

It was mentioned on Thursday again, in the Birmingham Mail about Aston Villa. In an “Open Letter to Randy Lerner”, Villa’s owner, the newspaper employed the line: “Going down is unthinkable.”

The thing is, the most worrying for the Villa fans in Birmingham is the situation, the prospect of relegation, is just the opposite. It’s a serious possibility, it’s thinkable.

That is why newspapers write open letters. The concern is so great because Aston Villa suffering a first relegation since 1987 is believable, thinkable, foreseeable.

There is a league table to study to persuade any doubters: Villa have 20 points (after 23 games) and last season Bolton were relegated with 36 points.

Aston Villa feel a long way from 36 points just now. Over their last 38 league games, they have taken 30 points.

Just as bad is that the season before last, Birmingham City – tellingly – were relegated with 39 points.

Finishing above that latter tally could once again be the required mark come May, which means that with 15 league games left, beginning at home to Newcastle United next Tuesday night, it is obvious Villa must start improving.

Yet this week’s aggregate defeat by Bradford City in the League Cup semi-final and last night’s FA Cup exit at Millwall demonstrated that improvement is not forthcoming from Paul Lambert’s increasingly young squad.

Withering

It could be argued they are withering, rather than blossoming – Villa have two points from their last six league games. This leaves them fourth-bottom and while that is a position they would take with a warm, grateful handshake in May, one of several problems is the three clubs below are each eager to have the same embrace with 17th place. And each is displaying more signs of life and greater resistance to gravity than Lambert’s new team.

From the bottom up, over the course of the same six-game Premier League period, QPR earned five points, Reading 10 and Wigan four.

QPR also have a new €10m striker, Loic Remy, who scored on his debut last Saturday.

Reading have a rather different goalscorer – €350,000 Adam Le Fondre, who has five in his last three appearances, including the brace that beat Newcastle at St James’ Park a week ago.

That makes Wigan sound vulnerable – and they could well be – but a demoralising aspect for Villa is that three of Wigan’s most recent four points were won against them.

A further lack of reassurance about Wigan’s plight is that three clubs, not just one, go down.

So the search for comfort goes on.

Newcastle, the team directly above Villa, have four points from their last six but have just gone on a January spree since the Reading result.

Southampton, next up, have eight points and have not lost in the league since before Christmas.

Does their abrupt change of manager signal uncertainty?

Then it’s Fulham – five points from last 18 – and then Norwich City. Lambert’s former club have one point from their last six, the only team in the bottom eight with a worse record over that spell than Villa.

Villa are six points behind Norwich with an inferior goal difference that makes it effectively seven points. Can that be turned around in 15 matches? The answer is a theoretical yes. But as Lambert met the press on Thursday to discuss last night’s trip to Millwall, and to reflect on Bradford and just where the club are, he did not make any kind of suggestion that new players will arrive before the window closes. That means the answers must lie within.

This has the fanbase thinking. One thought is that in bringing down ages and wages, Lambert embarked on a club policy that will take the hit of relegation if it has to. From the Championship, Villa will rise, young and (relatively) cheap.

Financially responsible

This sounds all very long-term and financially responsible until the club accountant steps in to show next season’s proposed €70m TV revenue and the slicing of season ticket income that usually accompanies relegation.

The fanbase has actually stuck with Lambert and the club through this season, and there was a cracking atmosphere as Villa and Bradford emerged on Tuesday. There are positives, there is a recognition that had Christian Benteke taken more of his chances against Bradford then Villa Park would have a most different mood about it. Similarly, victory over Newcastle could alter the landscape.

Then reality checks in: Villa have won two of their last 16 home league games, dating back to last March. They have already had home games this season of the must-win variety – losing 3-0 to Wigan last month was one of them.

Locals see, feel and understand these defeats more than the rest of us, distanced as we are.

We think of Aston Villa, the institution; they think, well, they think the thinkable.

The unthinkable final

What probably does count as unthinkable is what Bradford City and Swansea City have achieved in reaching the League Cup final.

At Bradford, even as Watford, Wigan and Arsenal were being overcome, no-one thought the Bantams would be at Wembley next month.

There were other things to think about, such as life in League Two and how they afford the reported €820,000 annual rent at Valley Parade.

At Swansea, too, even after they won at Anfield in October, they would have been thinking of Premier League survival – after all they’d never been beyond the fourth round of the League Cup before and had no relationship with it.

But now Swansea City can contemplate a first major trophy (outside the Welsh Cup) in their history.

Congratulations are merited everywhere but in the boardroom at the Liberty Stadium in particular.

Sitting with chairman Huw Jenkins in his office 18 months ago, a man who had seen Swansea 92nd in the four divisions a decade earlier, we spoke about what the club had done and how.

Jenkins referred to “various chairmen who have been patronising. Some even made fun of us and the way we play, even though we’d just beaten them. It was as if they were saying: ‘You are nothing.’

“That stays with you, in our board meetings it’s mentioned. Now we get more respect.

“But you don’t forget. Some of these people have more money than us, but I think we’ve shown that thought needs to go into it as well.”