Aston Villa comment: Roberto Di Matteo deserves more time

Reports in several national newspapers have claimed the Italian faces the axe if his team fail to win at Preston on Saturday. That all feels horribly premature.

There is no doubt Di Matteo should be feeling the pressure with Villa having picked up just one victory from their opening ten Championship games. It's a record which is clearly not good enough and, at a club which demands to be in the promotion race, he will not be given forever to turn things around.

Nevertheless, he should be granted a little more leeway. Just weeks ago, the message coming from the club was to judge the manager and his team team once they had completed their summer business.

Since the transfer window closed, Villa have played five games and drawn all of them. Di Matteo may have made mistakes, yet it still seems a dreadfully small sample size on which to judge a manager, particularly when his team have come within a whisker of winning three of those matches.

As frustrating and as mind-numbing as the constant late goals might have been, there remains the sense Di Matteo and his team are close to cracking it. Patience is finite, of course. Indeed, among some supporters, it has already run out.

Di Matteo, however, should at least be provided a few more chances to resolve what should be, in theory, a relatively straightforward problem.

Just how at risk his job will be at Deepdale remains open to debate. The manager himself appeared relatively relaxed in the aftermath of Tuesday's 1-1 draw at Barnsley while it is understood Steve Round, the club's newly-appointed technical director, is eager for the manager to be given more time.

The final decision will however lie with Tony Xia and the club's owner is a difficult man to read. After a summer spend of more than £50million, the Beijing businessman is entitled to demand a swift return on his investment but may conclude, after weighing up the evidence, that getting rid of Di Matteo now potentially poses more risks than benefits.

For while results ultimately decide the fate of any manager, it is perhaps unfair to judge Di Matteo's short reign solely on them, at least not yet.

Villa, after all, has been no straightforward job. The 46-year-old inherited a dressing room reeling from the shock of relegation and with well documented problems. In the space of one transfer window he was successful in transforming the mood, moving a host of unwanted and problematic players out of the door while recruiting those ready to change a culture long turned rotten.

Last week, skipper Tommy Elphick described the club as having become a completely different place and it is this off-field improvement Villa would be putting at risk by axing Di Matteo too hastily.

This is not a situation where the manager has lost the dressing room. Performances have, by and large, been there, even if results haven't. Indeed, that has been the most frustrating aspect.

You cannot sack a manager and expect there not to be repercussions. Such actions cause ripples and at a club like Villa, still looking to find their feet, there is a danger of things could quickly become destabilised.

Villa, and Xia, can't and won't wait forever. Yet sacking Di Matteo at this point would be a risky move which could potentially create far bigger problems than the one it intends to solve.