I say too 'back him'. I think he came to Villa in very difficult time, and we had loads of injuries, if ManU would've had 8-10 injuries at the same time as Villa did, they would've also been in shitload of trouble. I think that nowdays crowds and the club owners are too impatient with the managers.
I got lot of more respect toward Randy Lerner not to panic and sack him when Villa was having lot of troubles, teams like Newcastle and Blackburn weren't even playing badly at all, and their owners fired the managers out of the blue - thank god we have Randy Lerner.