Aston Villa's Home Draw with Fulham a Real Sign of Recent Progress

Rewind three months and Aston Villa fans were fearing the very, very worst.

Fresh from a 3-1 defeat to League Two side Bradford City, the claret and blue side would go on to lose to Southampton, squander a two-goal lead away to local rivals West Brom and lose to Championship side Millwall.

With the club hovering in and around the bottom three, a torrid post-Christmas period only served to pile misery on the fans and open their eyes to a real threat—relegation.

But now, fresh from a home draw to Fulham, Paul Lambert's men are looking up the table, not down. They're not eyeing the trapdoor below, they're clipping the heels of those above, looking to drag them into the mire and clamber out themselves.

Momentum is a word thrown around an awful lot in football these days—what is it? Can you quantify it?

Villa certainly have it, and the feeling around Villa Park when the final whistle blew was one of a missed opportunity.

Every home fan in the ground had expected a draw at the very minimum and harboured serious hopes of a victory, and that serves as a reminder of just how far the club has come in the past few months.

In January, an inexperienced, young cluster of mistake-ridden individuals were doomed for relegation and potential humiliation. In April, a promising, potential-laden group of young men are in a position to really build on the good foundations at the club.

Funny how a run of results can change almost everything, isn't it?

Craven Cottage is a ground Villa have done well at in recent history, but the meeting that occurred earlier this season was a drab affair for the away side. A relatively lifeless performance coupled with a cheap goal from a corner in the final stages of the game led to a 1-0 loss.

Villa fans went into that game accepting that a point would be well-earned and valuable, and such is the shift in momentum now that 37,000-odd fans walked away from Villa Park on Saturday thinking "we should have won that."

As long as Villa continue to trickle along and pick up points—not losses—the team will successfully stave off the possibility of relegation, and the very fact that Villa are ruing a missed chance can be a positive sign.

This likely won't turn out to be a critical missed chance, and the progress the players have made since beating West Ham, in addition to certain teams looking lost in their quest to win another game, are big reasons to be very positive about Villa.