We still need two more wins, warns O'Neill

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The Villa manager travels to Ewood Park today without his first-choice strike force after John Carew was ruled out of the Easter programme with a calf injury.

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With doubts surrounding £9.65million striker Ashley Young, Villa will be facing a difficult task to improve a run of just two wins in 19 games.

Their 14-point haul from that half-season of matches would cast them among the Premiership's dead beats and only an 11-game unbeaten start to the campaign has prevented them from being in the relegation places.

With Wigan visiting Villa Park on Monday, the outcome of these back-to-back games will see them safeguard their status or leave it in even greater doubt.

O'Neill said: "We are not safe, not at all. I went to watch Charlton last Saturday and they have plotted how they are going to get out of trouble.

"They mentioned that there are eight clubs whose fixtures they have looked at. We are one of them — and quite right rightly so, because we don't have the requisite number of points on the board.

"Anybody in the bottom eight or nine who do not have the points on the board would be looking over their shoulder.

"It's not new to me, it happened in my first season at Leicester when we got up. Despite the fact that we ended up winning the Coca-Cola Cup, it was always a difficult season. Personally, I think we probably need to win another two games to be certain, but I think these are difficult games for us.

"We have never been too good to go down from this division, even when we drew at Arsenal on the opening day of the season."