Eric Black believes it’s never easy for a team, which is relegated from the top tier, to come back into it straightaway.
Black believes a lot changes for a team when it goes from the Premiership to the Championship. First of all, it has more number of matches to play and thus, at times, the players can feel they are not having enough gaps between the matches to recover. You would need more physical and mental strength than what you probably needed in top tier.
Also, for such teams which are relegated, they obviously would be one of the lesser teams in Premiership. They mostly had a stronger team to play against in that competition and in those matches; they would have different approach than what they would have when they play against a team of the same level or maybe weaker in Championship.
The ambition would be different too and that is to win and not to draw as might have been the case playing in Premiership. So, it would be a little bit of a tough road when you are down to tier two.
These thoughts of Black make some sense and he must be speaking on the basis of his experience too that he had with Birmingham as he was in their coaching staff when they had made it to Premiership about 10 years back.
If Villa loses the relegation battle, and it looks like they do, a few exits would be likely as far as the players are concerned and according to Black, the building of the team after that, the recruitments of new players and all that, should be done very, very carefully. If not, the way back to Premiership would not be smooth by any means.