This was the most nervy ninety minutes against this lot since the championship season that never was. 

Almost seven years ago to the day we edged past Villa 1-0 before a vastly relieved SJP crowd to keep our title hopes alive, and although it was far short of a classic we pressed until Ferdinand's goal came, and then kept the Villans out by any means.

Fast forward to 2003, and a season in which we've habitually triumphed on home soil and served up win after win, even if on occasions the performance was less than memorable.

However, all that came crashing down last weekend when the men from Old Trafford came to toon, and suddenly our air of invincibility has gone. We may have been winning home games without quite knowing how sometimes, but crucially we've lost that knack and are now floundering. 

Despite being a goal up after some daftness from the opposition and application of the rules by the tangoman put a chance within Nobby's range, we never worked ourselves into position to get that killer second goal. Unconvincing is the word.

And just like Saturday's depressing afternoon at Loftus Road, we were again made to pay by a team on the verges of trouble in the league, but hardly scrapping for their lives.

One looked across the pitch for big personalities, big hearts, big performers to win this game for us. Unfortunately there wasn't much that took the eye....

Clad in bandages, Shearer was looking groggy and not at his best. Bellamy had once again descended into a sulk after Winter failed to penalise a Villa player for upending him just outside the area. Dyer somehow managed to fill in 90 minutes doing something totally unmemorable in the middle, Solano never got down the channels into cross-delivering range and as for Viana...words fail.

The perennially popular Portuguese player was given his treasured start in a central position, on a sunny day at St.James' with the prospect of some space to work in. He responded by claiming some early possession, but then proceeded to drop deeper and deeper down the field, unable to get involved at all.

By the end he was a forlorn figure, lacking only a Yorkshire accent and a pudding bowl haircut from being a facsimile of Batty - that's Batty the incisive passer, not Batty the midfield destroyer. On this evidence frankly, Viana could do with following Chopra to Watford to learn how to play football in this country in the same way Bernard got his wake-up call at Feethams - the difference is we got Olivier for nowt, while Hugo cost a packet.

Maybe we'd have held on for a win, had Woodgate not been forced off him a hamstring pull and the defence not been crucially weakened at that set piece. Maybe we'd have done better than a late Lua effort against the post if we'd given him some of the damn ball after bringing him on, rather leaving him stuck out wide, unmarked.

Even though a 1-0 win would have been as important and lustily celebrated as that 1996 victory, the cracks that have appeared in our squad would only have been papered over. 

But it wouldn't have mattered to be honest- at this time of the season it's not only the teams in the relegation scrap that need to a adopt a win at any costs mentality. Our lot have failed to impose their will on two inferior clubs in succession, and not even had the good grace to look that bothered about it. There has to be a middle ground between the idle dawdlings of Bellamy or Dyer and the regrettable daftness of Griffin against Fulham.

A few months ago we laughed about how the day of reckoning on April 26th was coming, amid talk of screwing down the mackem coffin lid. We just assumed our forward progression would continue, but now suddenly we're the ones in the spotlight.