Villa, shorn of their undoubted star of the season - Harry Burrows - and their 'keeper, fall to defeat at Craven Cottage. Villa, 7th, face another 6 day break before they face Blackpool but that match at Bloomfield Road presages an absolutely unbelievably condensed fixture list. 

Villa are due to play on:

Friday, 29 March 1963

Monday, 1 April 1963

Saturday, 6 April 1963

Tuesday, 9 April 1963

Saturday, 13 April 1963

Monday, 15 April 1963

Tuesday, 16 April 1963

Saturday, 20 April 1963

Monday, 22 April 1963

It is now clear to all that the relatively empty fixture list in March was a serious error of judgement by the FA with Villa likely to still be completing their games in late May. Meanwhile teams above them in the table have played up to three games more than Joe Mercer's side in a more balanced spread of fixtures.

Joe Mercer's Villa play with the usual seven day separation between League outings for the first time since the 15th December as their wildly interrupted season promises major fixture list congestion in the final two months of the season. Villa fail to score for the fourth time in the last seven and had now lost three in the last six having lost just twice in the previous nineteen games. As a result Villa make it twelve wins, seven draws and eight defeats in twenty seven division one games so far this season as a campaign of such promise begins to falter under the difficult scheduling. Meanwhile, 23 year old goalkeeper John Gavan made his Villa debut after moving from Walsall Wood in November 1962.