O'Neill is a fantastic manager and has been given time and money to build his own team and get them playing in a system that the players are comfortable with - that's why they're now reaping the rewards and doing so well at the moment. But if you look back at his first season in charge of Villa in 2006-2007 it was a poor one - they were the last team to remain unbeaten in the Premiership but that record is a little skewed to say the least as it comprised something like only 3 wins and 6 draws from the first 9 games. After that they went to shit for a fair few months - who remembers the night we battered them 3-1 at their place in November 2006? We could've been 5 up after the first half hour and this was with Pearce in charge of us. We were fantastic that night but Villa lacked any kind of organisation and tactical nous. They certainly didn't look like a side managed by Martin O'Neill for sure. And it wasn't an isolated performance either - they went 11 league games without a win between Nov 11th and Jan 20th, and by the turn of April 2007 they were only 5 points off the drop zone, 1 point behind us. A 9 game unbeaten run to the end of the season meant that in the end they stayed up comfortably but for large parts of that campaign they were piss-poor to watch - in truth O'Neill got his team winning games in the nick of time but the 9 game unbeaten runs at the start and the end of the season distorted what was basically 20 games of shite in between. Personally, I think there are a lot of parallels to be drawn between that first season under O'Neill and our season so far under Hughes - O'Neill found it hard to get the best out of the players that were there before he arrived at the club and you can say the same for Hughes. Also, O'Neill appeared to show he was tactically inept in some games that season and the same goes for Hughes in some games this season. But eventually O'Neill got the balance right and I still have faith in Hughes doing the same. Providing the worst doesn't happen to us this season, relegation, and providing there is a significant improvement in our results hereon in then I wouldn't have much of a problem in giving him another crack at it next season.
I'll also add that Villa have been extremely lucky so far this season with injuries and have been able to play a settled side in most games. Not that I'm using our injuries as an excuse for our league position because I don't like doing that, just that I'm pointing out that a lack of injuries has been of some benefit to Villa.