Amy Lawrence and Paul Doyle discuss Aston Villa's prospects for next season guardian.co.uk

Guardian writers' prediction: 12th (NB: this is not necessarily Stuart James's prediction, but the average of our writers' tips)

Last season's position: 9th

Odds to win the league: 400-1

Did Alex McLeish hand-pick Aston Villa's opening fixtures? As a manager who starts the season under severe pressure to get his own supporters on side, McLeish could not have wished for a more benign opening to the campaign. With only one top-six opponent in his first 11 matches (and that game, against Manchester City, is not until the middle of October), McLeish has been given a wonderful chance to change a few opinions early on by picking up some much-needed victories.

The Scot had better hope it turns out that way because there will be zero goodwill to fall back on if things go wrong. Villa supporters were never going to welcome a former Birmingham City manager with open arms, although the objections to McLeish's appointment would appear to owe more to the fact that he presided over two relegations in three Premier League seasons at St Andrew's and picked up a reputation for playing dour football in the process.

The latter accusation, McLeish says, is unfair. "I don't necessarily agree with you there," he said, when it was put to him that the attractive football Villa played against Walsall in a pre-season friendly last month contrasted with Birmingham's approach. "There was a lot of terrific football played by that [Birmingham] team last season. I think I've explained this before. I had some Dutch masters at Rangers and we played a brand of football that suited the players. It's horses for courses."

Unfortunately for McLeish, a couple of thoroughbreds have moved on from Villa this summer. Ashley Young and Stewart Downing have switched to Manchester United and Liverpool respectively, stripping the team of two of their stellar performers. Anyone doubting the size of their influence on a poor Villa side last season need look no further than the Opta statistics that reveal Young and Downing scored or created 31 goals.

Any Villa supporters that felt like throwing in the towel after their departures should be a bit more upbeat now that Charles N'Zogbia has signed. The Frenchman has the potential to be an excellent acquisition, and it is easy to imagine him providing a similar contribution to Downing or Young in terms of goals and assists. On the other flank, opportunity knocks for Marc Albrighton, whose emergence last season was something of a silver lining in a dreadful campaign.

Another player who has the potential to fill the creative void is Stephen Ireland. Having sleepwalked his way through his first year at Villa, the word is that Ireland has woken up to the fact that he needs to get his career back on track. If McLeish can get the Irishman playing like he was at Manchester City a couple of years ago, when he was named the club's player of the year, Villa will have a decent array of attacking talent to provide the ammunition for the goal machine that is Darren Bent.

At the other end of the pitch, the signing of Shay Given more than compensates for the loss of Brad Friedel, although questions remain about the defence in front of the new Villa goalkeeper. Richard Dunne and James Collins were poor on the field and troublesome off it last season – what can we expect from the duo this term? Left-back seems less of an issue now that Stephen Warnock has resumed his Villa career after six months with the reserves while the door remains open for McLeish to bring in a right-back on loan to compete with Luke Young.

Elsewhere, Stilian Petrov, Jean Makoun, Fabian Delph and the versatile Ciaran Clark are likely to be competing for two places in what feels like a less than inspiring central midfield. Further forward, Gabriel Agbonlahor and Emile Heskey's involvement would appear to depend largely on McLeish's formation. Thereafter, however, the squad begins to look painfully thin, exposing a lack of depth that could, depending on injuries, be McLeish's biggest problem, especially as Randy Lerner's chequebook is not going to come to his rescue.

Lerner will justifiably get some flak if things go wrong this season after a scattergun appointment process culminated in the decision to turn to McLeish, but nobody can question the American's financial support – he had invested £206m into Villa up until last summer and in January broke the club's transfer record to sign Bent in a deal worth up to £24m. Some of the other figures are less impressive – Villa posted a £38m pre-tax loss in their last accounts, which was on the back of a £46m loss the previous year, and the wage bill for the 2009-10 season represented 88% of turnover.

The numbers become even more sobering in the context of Villa's revised positioning in the Premier League pecking order, where they have lost ground on Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool. In short, the days of being a top-six club are gone, and it is a sign of just how much times have changed at Villa that McLeish has said it will be "extremely difficult" to better last season's ninth-placed finish because of the challenge presented by clubs like Stoke City and Sunderland.

McLeish might well be trying to manage expectations with that kind of talk but it is unlikely to wash with the majority of supporters, who will expect better than treading water in the Premier League and will certainly not want to contemplate the idea that it will be hard to improve on last season, which was a disaster under Gérard Houllier as Villa flirted with relegation amid a backdrop of player unrest.

By appointing McLeish to replace the Frenchman, Villa jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire, and it will need a combination of victories and entertaining football to douse the flames. If McLeish can pull that double off, he will have the Holte End critics off his back and Villa might have a decent chance of being the best of the rest and finishing in seventh place. If, on the other hand, he fails to hit the ground running, the protests will be loud and clear.