Defeats for West Ham, Norwich and Bournemouth plus only a draw for Villa over the last couple of evenings is fantastic for us. With Villa playing Wolves Saturday and none of the others playing till after the weekend this is a fantastic opportunity to put a fair amount of daylight between us and the bottom four. Two wins and we would be 7 points clear or at least if we got 4 points but that's a minimum as far as I'm concerned
If we don't go down this season, we'll be down next season. Let's just get it over and done with. We don't belong in this league.
Not that we should be thinking of next season yet, but the Championship is poor this season, nothing scares me about those teams, especially as there'll probably be a shortened transfer window
I think we would stay up in the champ nothing more. Very few of the current squad would remain. There would be no money for replacements as we struggle bring costs down in line with lower revenues and conserving cash. The dead wood that we couldn't shift would be the team. You've seen what happened to Sunderland, Huddersfield, middlesbro, Bolton, stoke, etc etc.
Oh, **** knows what happens if we go down, absolutely depends on who goes and who stays, could very much be back to the dark days. What I'm saying is, whoever stays up, the teams that join them won't be as good as in previous years, Leeds need a lot of work on their squad will all the loanees they have, and everyone from Fulham below are no great shakes. This could be an epoch-defining season, stay up and we could be well set for a few more seasons in the PL at least, go down, and we could be back where we were pre-Pozzo struggling to stay up in the Championship
Burnley play West Ham soon - let's hope West Ham are as ineffective. An Liverpool don't play the kids against Villa. Big pressure on the 3 games at home now.
We had a great chance to pull away but blew it. You cannot trust this Watford side. 6 wins from 31 matches proves they are not really fit for purpose. Seeing a Nigel Pearson side play like that last night makes me question whether he's the right guy as well. It was such an insipid performance. We didn't lay a glove on them and were just not up for the fight. It's the least we can do, is take the pitch and take the game by the scuff of the neck with our attitude. There was none of that yesterday. I give us less than 50% chance of staying up now. That game yesterday was another squandered opportunity. We showed that we are just not good enough. We're too easy to play against, and far too nice. We probably need to win another 3. Where it is still possible, I think it's highly unlikely a team that is so poor, winning only 6 from 31, would win at least 3 of their last 7 games. They don't seem to have the desire to get the job done. I hope players read comment like this and it angers them, and they take that out on the pitch, but I doubt it. They will feel like victims and will blame the fans for their lack of understanding.
I had a horrible thought last night. We're going to be level on points with Bournemouth going into the final match, and then let in a last minute goal to send us down and keep them up aren't we? It'll be like 2015 again...
Couldn't agree more. It's certainly worrying times. I thought we were ok against Leicester and the game could of gone either way. Yesterday imo there was only one team going to win the game. We improved a little with the formation change and Doucs coming on but created very little. Half chances but so did Burnley. All will be forgiven with a solid home win against the Saints but their pace on the break is of great concern to me. First and foremost I want to see some passion and fire in our players hopefully a few results will follow if they display these traits. Let's be honest you can be bang average and still have that in abundance.
Unfortunately I think Burnley will have really run out of gas by the time that they play West Ham, I expect West Ham will take advantage (fingers crossed they can't though, West Ham are every bit as unreliable as us). Don't imagine Liverpool start with too many of the kids for the rest of the season, they still have the record 100 points to chase, and there'll be ample opportunity for giving the kids the chance to earn a medal now that there's 5 subs per game. Let's be real, they've had the league sewn up since November...
Villa 0-1 Wolves. Villa made very few chances. We’re out the bottom 3 for a few more days at least. Just like Thursday’s game, tomorrow represents a real chance to give ourselves a bit of breathing room. Let’s hope we’re up for the fight this time.
Wolves look like a fantastic side and they've done a fine job against our relegation rivals. Thanks Wolves!
Villa’s next 2 games are Liverpool and Man U. After their game against Newcastle, Muff have to play Man Utd, Spurs, Leicester then Man City. Starting to think we may only need 34 points to stay up. Maybe the bottom 5 will just lose every remaining game and we’ll survive on 28!
Three from three, shame that they don't have any more games against relegation threatened teams, but at least I can finally take that mask off!
I don’t agree with this. Second half we actually looked a lot better, you have to give Pearson credit for that. He’s got us set up to succeed but the simple fact is we don’t have anyone who can reliably finish, again it’s a catalogue of missed chances. If we had a reliable finisher we’d be well into 40 points already, I think Sarr is our top scorer with only 6 which is pathetic. Also 2 more wins will be enough. 36pts will stay up.
Wolves have done us a massive favour this last week or so, but I thought Villa looked a lot better in comparison to us against Burnley. Much more organised, just extremely blunt up top. How a win against Southampton would take the pressure off us. Can't keep relying on the other teams slipping up, bound to be a few freak results before the end of the season.
It really doesn't look beyond the realms of possibility at the moment, the standard of football since the re-start has been atrocious
Was a gamble to go with 4-4-2, backfired spectacularly, hopefully we don't see that again all season...
Wolves weren't at their best at all, but still could and perhaps should have scored a few more. I don't know what's up with Pepe Reina, because Nyland has made multiple howlers that he's been very very lucky to get away with. We do have to be careful though still, one of these games they might just fluke something, same with West Ham or Bournemouth
This will 100% go to the final day and since West Ham and Villa play each other, I really think we're hoping whoever loses that will be the third team down. I thought Villa have the best squad out of the 5 teams, but after watching seeing how they struggled to break down a Wolves side who weren't at their best. Not that they needed to be mind you: Villa could still be playing now and still wouldn't score. If there's no fight tomorrow then it confirms this squad do not want to stay up. I can take relegation if the team isn't good enough but still put a shift in, but after watching what they produced against Burnley, there's many of that team that look like they can't be arsed