Things were looking ominous for Thomas Frank’s side before the trip to the Etihad. It has to be Brentford’s incredible 2-1 victory over Manchester City just before the World Cup break. Parker’s assistant Gary O’Neil stepped up, and with new owner Foley investing around £50million ($62.8m) in the January window, he was able to steer Bournemouth clear of a relegation many had forecasted. This frustrated head coach at the time Scott Parker, who said the squad were “under-equipped” for the Premier League just four games into the campaign, comments which led to his sacking. Outgoing owner Maxim Demin was always unlikely to strengthen an asset he was looking to sell, so Bournemouth’s summer transfer outlay was minimal.

The process is understood to have begun in the summer and was formally completed in December - a crucial stretch of the Premier League calendar. It kickstarted a turbulent chain of events, but the club now seem to have found their feet. It has to be Bill Foley’s Bournemouth takeover. Villa’s deserve credit for one that has gone astonishingly well. Club owners get rightly criticised for bad decisions. Emery’s Villa are now in a European chase that nobody saw coming. The Spaniard has secured a remarkable 42 points from 21 league games so far - two out of every possible three - the best record of any Villa manager in history. Replacing him with Unai Emery changed everything. Villa were circling the drain under Steven Gerrard after a miserable 3-0 defeat at Fulham in October.

But to lose on penalties and for Saliba’s injury to end up a lengthy one, it was the worst of both worlds and unsettled the defence in the run-in. If it hadn’t happened that night, it might have happened in the following game, or to someone else. It turned out to be a costly night as they lost both Takehiro Tomiyasu and Saliba to injury, with the latter’s absence proving to be a huge miss in April as Arsenal dropped nine points in four games to hand Manchester City the initiative in the title race.

A season on the brink by john feinstein