Aston Villa are set to call time on Rémi Garde’s troubled reign as manager this week as the club begin the task of preparing for life in the Championship. Garde has cut a forlorn figure for weeks and was expected to depart in the summer but a new-look Villa board is ready to accelerate its plans and sack the Frenchman after accepting there is nothing to be gained by going through the motions until the end of the season.

Garde has won only two of his 20 Premier League games in charge since replacing Tim Sherwood at the start of November, failing to have any positive impact on a team that had only four points to their name when he took over. At the time of his unveiling Garde spoke about the positive vibe he felt after speaking to Randy Lerner and listening “to the way he wanted to fix this bad situation”, but his relationship with the Villa owner has unravelled.

Steve Hollis, Villa’s new chairman, chose his words carefully when asked about Garde’s future at the club’s training ground on Friday and was not prepared to give any guarantees that the former Lyon manager would be given the job of trying to win promotion from the Championship next season.

Working closely with David Bernstein and Mervyn King, two recent additions to the board, and advised by Brian Little, a former manager and player at Villa, Hollis is conducting a thorough investigation into every aspect of the club. It has not taken them long, however, to realise that Garde looks and sounds like a broken man and with relegation a formality, that it would be in everyone’s best interests to go their separate ways.

It is understood that Garde and Lerner barely communicate and things do not seem much better between the Villa manager and some of his players. Garde strayed into dangerous territory when he publicly questioned his players’ commitment last month, even if there was some substance to his comments. He has chopped and changed the team without success and the impression within the club is that players feel resentment rather than determination to prove him wrong once they have been left out.

Garde feels badly let down by the club’s failure to back him in the January transfer window, when Villa failed to make a single signing at a time when they were bottom and in desperate need of new faces. From that moment on the Frenchman felt that it was a matter of time before he would be out of a job and it is believed that he conveyed that message to Tom Fox, who resigned from his post as chief executive officer on Thursday.

Fox’s departure came 48 hours after Hendrik Almstadt left as sporting director and Garde’s imminent departure is unlikely to be the last in a cull that Hollis hopes will provide the opportunity to re-energise a club who have been fighting relegation for six successive seasons. Paddy Reilly, the director of recruitment and part of the old regime, is clinging on to his position for the moment.

Nigel Pearson is the leading candidate to replace Garde, although Villa will not be making a permanent appointment until the summer, with Kevin MacDonald and Eric Black likely to be asked to take over in a caretaker capacity until the end of the campaign.

Although the possibility of turning to Steve Bruce has been discussed and there is respect for the fact that the Hull City manager has a track record of winning promotion from the Championship, his previous employment at Birmingham City, Villa’s bitter rivals, makes a move for him unlikely. Hollis is acutely aware that Villa supporters are angry and frustrated and the last thing the board want to do is risk antagonising that fanbase further.

Pearson, on the other hand, is out of work and keen to return to management. He demonstrated at Leicester City that he is capable of rebuilding a former Premier League club that had badly lost its way, although it is unlikely that he would be able to bring in his former assistants, Steve Walsh and Craig Shakespeare, both of whom remain with the Premier League leaders and are close to agreeing new contracts.