Villa beat Palace in Boxing Day victory.

 Villa beat Palace in Boxing Day victory. 

In the bigger picture football almost seems like a petty irrelevance but since the game is still functioning at every level it would be absurd to overlook its overall significance. It was always there in the background over the Christmas period and will always be there even though the environment it's been subjected to in is so utterly alien as to be almost beyond our understanding. 

Boxing Day football used to be a lively, knockabout day for football in the old days. In fact it was Boxing Day 1963 when football seemed to be overcome by just a day of complete madness. In the old First Division the princely sum of 66 goals were scored and if you didn't know otherwise you could swear that most of the players who turned up on that day were ever so slightly under the influence of intoxicating alcohol. 

Still, here we were 57 years later and the game is now almost unrecognisable from those heady days of mud-caked pitches and festive hangovers. West Ham must have thought they were still nursing sore heads after being on the wrong end of an 8-2 drubbing by Blackburn Rovers while Fulham hit double figures with a 10-1 thumping of Ipswich Town. It all seems a long time ago which indeed it was. Roll forward to the present day and the players of Aston Villa and Crystal Palace were still sober enough to realise that Boxing Day was just the beginning of another hectic holiday period for both teams. 

At Villa Park yesterday Aston Villa, who almost fell through the relegation trapdoor at the end of last season, were a side pumped up, revitalised and rejuvenated, a side going places while Palace were going nowhere in particular. There are moments over a traditional Christmas period when football seems to get bogged down in its own foolishness, tiredness and a lethargic rut. The players are willing and able but the bodies would rather be on some sun-kissed island in the Caribbean or dipping toes in a swimming pool. 

Aston Villa, for their part, are enjoying some welcome breathing space after the stifling threat of relegation last season. Under Dean Smith, a Villa supporter since he was a wee lad in shorts, Villa are progressing rapidly and attractively. In fact Villa were so ultimately dominant against Palace that the game was all but over after an hour or so. That Villa won comfortably with only 10 men rendered their achievement all the more commendable. 

It is hard to believe now that Villa were once giants of a game where the long ball was still the common currency and sponsorship had just made its shocking entrance into the game. When Ron Saunders was Villa manager, Aston Villa were a stunning revelation, a team of free flowing fluency on the break, clever on the ball and lethal in front of goal. They had Tony Morley on the wing, the imperious Gordon Cowans in midfield and Andy Gray up front. Villa were a side in perfect harmony with each other, moving the ball quickly and decisively and then relying on the thrustful pace of their deadly attack. 

After wrapping up the old First Division championship in 1981, Villa went on to win the holiest of grails with a now-legendary European Cup Final victory a year later. Villa fans still crow about Peter Withe's headed goal against Bayern Munich which ensured that the European Cup was theirs for the taking. And they did most impressively. Since then Villa have staggered and stumbled in recent seasons and after being relegated briefly to the Championship a couple of seasons ago, Villa are now riding a crest of a wave. 

They have now risen to sixth in the Premier League after a neat, well organised and controlled performance against Palace where the passes were whisked from feet to feet in a manner that the missing Villa fans would have been most taken with. Villa were pleasing, positive and cohesive, a team of thoughtful attacking movements and the ability to switch gears without dropping any stitches. They cherished and caressed the ball as if it were something to treasure and admire from the mantelpiece. There was a method and purpose in their attacks, a point and intention to their game that some of us didn't really think they possessed.

Earlier on in the season Villa produced quite the most extraordinary football in wiping the floor with Premier League champions Liverpool with a comprehensive 7-2 victory which even now beggars belief. Of course we are living through strange times but Villa were rampant against Liverpool that day and in retrospect that may well have been a pivotal moment in Villa's season so far. One of the oldest teams in the Football League had sliced open one of the classiest practitioners. Liverpool, now very much the new kids on the block, had been ransacked, blown out of the water and left shell-shocked. 

Yesterday at Villa Park we witnessed a team with all of the right kind of footballing ambitions, a team who may just have been casting their minds back to the class of 1981 and trying manfully to re-create those mesmeric rhythms and magical patterns. Occasionally Villla looked workmanlike and mundane but then they discovered that Palace had recently been crushed by Liverpool 7-0 at Selhurst Park and eagerly set about their task. Palace were clearly not palatial and even though they may have given that impression before the Liverpool game, the crown had slipped alarmingly and the robes were very dishevelled looking. 

Once again it was Villa's Jack Grealish who we came to see because we knew and he knew that people were watching and England manager Gareth Southgate must be longing for the Euros next summer. Grealish was exceptional, a midfield architect, engineer, a locksmith, a pickpocket, a swaggering boulevardier, a delightful bundle of creativity, mischief, always assured on the ball and with plenty of time to find the right man at the right time.

 Grealish is suave, silky, comfortable at all times, running with the ball as if somebody had thrown the ball back to him from next door's garden. Grealish was at times unstoppable, impudent in the extreme, arrogant and disdainful at times because he was the man in control. When you look at Grealish it is easy to make comparisons with those other ball-playing artists, those individual non-conformists, those cheeky imps, the ones who do it their way rather than the way others would like it.

With socks rolled down and legs working like pistons, Grealish was here, there and everywhere, ubiquitous, an all encompassing influence, picking the ball up deep in his own half and then floating across the pitch as if he had all the time in the world. Grealish was the man who would be instrumental in most of Villa's more positive and penetrative moments. He was the man who, controlling the ball with his feet after a defensive clearance, powered his way into the Palace half  in a matter of seconds and then, spotting striker Ollie Watkins overlapping him, laid the ball off easily to Watkins, who although looking as if he had lost the ball, simply rolled the ball to Annar El Ghazi. El Ghazi it was who walloped home a perfectly judged shot into the back of the Palace net for Villa's third. 

But this was Villa at their best, never afraid to string their passes together almost geometrically and finding tight little angles to play off each other as if it had become second nature. When Villa were reduced to 10 men as a result of Tyrone Mings rush of blood to the head, Villa looked as though they'd be facing a laborious, uphill struggle. Fortunately for them Mings sending off worked in their favour and Villa lifted themselves off the floor, working their way back into the game almost effortlessly.

From the start Aston Villa though were by far the more progressive of the two teams and it wasn't long before they took an important lead. A slide-rule pass along the ground found Watkins who stepped over beautifully, cut inside his defender and eventually found Bertrand Traore who, capitalising on Palace hesitancy inside the box, didn't clear the lines and the ball fell to Traore who slammed the ball firmly into the net from close range.

Then as the first half Villa kept progressing ambitiously through the centre of the pitch, pressing Palace back into their own half whether they liked it or not. Palace, to their credit, did have several purple patches where Wilfried Zaha burst past defenders as if they weren't there and then twisting his way through a tangle of legs, a bright vision of trickery and sorcery, dropping the proverbial shoulder and easing his way around his opponents with occasional ease. But Zaha, in tandem with the often excellent Andros Townsend and the energetic Patrick Van Aarholt couldn't match Villa's much greater panache.

With Matt Target venturing into attack to support his colleagues with a co-operative hand at all times and Matty Cash, an intelligent purchase from Nottingham Forest, sparkling at full back with a precocious maturity, Villa were both measured and precise in every attack launched when the ball was offloaded to both Targett and Cash. 

Then the likes of Traore, the superb Douglas Luiz and Aahmed El Mohamady and, notably the always available Annar El Ghazi combined in intricate webs of deceit. Villa's patient, probing style began to pay dividends. Then came what seemed like the crucial defining moment. Villa's Mings lashed out recklessly in a needless tackle and received his marching orders. It was an early bath for the Villa defender and 10 men Villa soldiered on valiantly. 

In a most improbable Villa act of resilience, the home side battled back onto the offensive. Midway through the second half, a ball lobbed hopefully into the Palace penalty area was helped on its way before a sharp cross into the heart of the Palace area found Watkins who headed the ball against the bar where young defender Kortney Hause showed wonderful presence of mind to leap up and nod the ball over the line if only just. 

Then came the El Ghazi special third when, trapping the ball from Watkins pass he fired the ball over the Palace keeper Vicente Guaita from the widest of angles. Villa were home and hosed, the game theirs quite emphatically. Palace, for all their brief passing flourishes, were always likely to be second best now and although conceding seven goals in their last two matches, manager Roy Hodgson is too canny and experienced a coach not to get too downhearted about Palace's predicament. Surely brighter days lie ahead for those flying Eagles. 

By the end you began to look at the Palace shirts and found yourself comparing them to that distinctive 1970s design and thinking of those starry-eyed romantics who went by the name of Malcolm Allison and Terry Venables. There were no song crooners or men with fedora hats and cigars in evidence but this is one Palace that will always have the right kind of connections.