Roberto Di Matteo: Out-thought, outfought and out the door at Aston Villa

After all, the last three incumbents have lasted barely 18 months combined.

Of their respective tenures, Di Matteo's has been by some distance the shortest, with the Italian in post for just four months and only 12 games.

Even Remi Garde lasted longer, yet while the Frenchman could point to the mitigation of having no financial support in January, Di Matteo can have no such excuse and it was, ultimately, his failure to turn a £50million summer investment into quick results which led to his downfall.

This is not a decision which will have been taken by lightly by Tony Xia. Villa's owner made the former Baggies boss and Champions League winner his first managerial appointment following his £76.2million takeover, despite advisors encouraging him to choose David Moyes or Nigel Pearson instead.

Even last week, there was a recognition inside the club the Italian needed more time to turn things around and that 11 games – or five since the end of the transfer window – was an insufficient sample size on which to judge a manager. Such a view was shared by many observers, this writer included.

What Di Matteo simply could not afford was the result, or more particularly the performance, his team delivered at Preston on Saturday. It was only their third league defeat, yet Villa were out-battled and outplayed by an opposition side put together at a fraction of the budget. The manager's team selection and tactics, meanwhile, resembled those of a man starting to confuse himself.

Di Matteo will no doubt consider himself unlucky and it seems strange to think it is barely three weeks since Villa's thrilling attacking display against Nottingham Forest.

The fact they didn't win that game was a big part of the problem. Villa have blown four leads in the final five minutes of matches, a habit which could not be dismissed as mere misfortune.

After Brentford took a point at Villa Park, four days after Forest, Di Matteo's outlook seemed to change. Gone were the attacking formations, replaced initially by three at the back, a system which just about worked at Ipswich but then backfired horribly against Newcastle. Then, against Preston, in a game the manager entered under considerable pressure, Villa delivered their worst performance to date.

More concerning was Di Matteo's inability to spot and rectify obvious problems. He looked increasingly lost, unsure of how best to try and reclaim control.

Attentions will now turn to Villa's search for a successor, with supporters forgiven if they already feeling pessimistic. Di Matteo, when it comes down to it, was just the latest in a long line of poor appointments.

There's a different dynamic this time, however, with Steve Round will be leading the search. Villa's newly-appointed technical director has barely been at the club a month but is thought to have already drawn up a shortlist of possible targets.

Round is a forward-thinker, given a brief of modernising every aspect of a club which for too long has gone stale. His list is therefore more likely to include candidates of the David Wagner or Dean Smith-mould than Steve Bruce or Neil Warnock.

No matter how obvious it might sound, this is an appointment Villa simply cannot afford to get wrong. Di Matteo has paid the price because the club still harbour ambitions of promotion this season but if they fail to find a strong replacement, a long-season of struggle at the wrong end of the division could quickly become reality.