Relegation?

[sirlordbaltimore]

How long will it take to the board and to certain fans to realise that this manager is bringing us to the hell? It is inconceivable, he should have been sacked three monts sgo, at least!

12 months ago

at least!

[supertom]

I think we'll get draws with Hull and Swansea and that'll be it for the season in terms of points added. It will be just about enough. I think Palace will beat us, they've been pretty efficient and well drilled under Pulis and I suspect that will continue. He'll be able to outwit Lambert with consumate ease. And this is Pulis we're talking about too.

[rob_bridge]

I think we'll get draws with Hull and Swansea and that'll be it for the season in terms of points added. It will be just about enough. I think Palace will beat us, they've been pretty efficient and well drilled under Pulis and I suspect that will continue. He'll be able to outwit Lambert with consumate ease. And this is Pulis we're talking about too.

Palace will absolute thrash us. We lose to spineless shit like Fulham twice. I was 8 months old when Fulham last won in the League at Villa Park

[Jon Crofts]

I think we'll get draws with Hull and Swansea and that'll be it for the season in terms of points added. It will be just about enough. I think Palace will beat us, they've been pretty efficient and well drilled under Pulis and I suspect that will continue. He'll be able to outwit Lambert with consumate ease. And this is Pulis we're talking about too.

Palace will absolute thrash us. We lose to spineless shit like Fulham twice. I was 8 months old when Fulham last won in the League at Villa Park

A tea towel could outwit Lambert.

Pullis has Palace playing well as expected, well drilled across the middle and the back, we don't have the creativity or the tactical nous to break teams down and further hindered by inept substitutions.

[curiousorange]

Palace deserved the win on Boxing Day, and they're a much tougher proposition now. Among the things I despise about being a Villa fan these days is having to acknowledge trepidation facing teams like Crystal fucking Palace.

[nick harper]

Fulham beat Norwich at home and we lose and it's a gap of four points this time next week. It may start getting squeaky. We are the team in free fall at the moment.

As much as Norwich? If they do lose to Fulham (which I think they will) they'll be at least two points plus a much (irrecoverable) goal difference down on us with four games to go: Liverpool, Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal.

Though at 40-1 for us to go down it's still a little tempting! I think we'll lose our next two (Palace and Southampton) - in fact I feel certain of it. But I reckon we might get a 1-2 points from Swansea and Hull (heady days!) so we still should just about be ok.

That's on the assumption Fulham don't do enough to overhaul us. I agree it would take a pretty seismic shift of results but you start analysing this stuff because no-one can see where the next point is coming from.

[Toronto Villa]

we're going to stay by the skin of our nuts in my opinion which I don't think was remotely on the cards just a few weeks ago. It's been horrendous for 3 weeks and it's put us in an uncomfortable position. Fortunately for us the sides below us aren't that much better or significantly more consistent. I think Norwich might take the final spot with Sunderland and Cardiff.

[mattjpa]

I don't think we are in a relegation battle and I don't think we have been at any point this season.

To be revisited after: Fulham at home, Palace away and Hull at home. The pessemist in me refuses to lie down until we have 40 points on the board (ok this season 37 could be enough).
Its hard to believe that I am responding to Ads about the exact same topic we discussed this time last season - do you honestly think we have moved on or improved (albeit slightly) from last season?
I fail to see any improvement whatsoever and the "quality" of football on offer at home has been dire. For that very reason I will not be renewing- the owner and CEO don`t seem to bother - why should I? OK the Villa are in my DNA but there comes a tipping point and I appear to have reached mine.
Having said that I have "fallen out of love" with football in general for so many reasons - looks like I will be spending more time in the garden in future !!! 

Easy to find out if we've improved and by how much, compare last season's points total with this one's although i expect some will choose to use league placings instead.

League placing is surely the best guide for how you have done in comparison to everyone else. Winning the league with fewer points than the team who won it the previous year doesn't make it any less of an achievement.

I don't think we are in a relegation battle and I don't think we have been at any point this season.

To be revisited after: Fulham at home, Palace away and Hull at home. The pessemist in me refuses to lie down until we have 40 points on the board (ok this season 37 could be enough).
Its hard to believe that I am responding to Ads about the exact same topic we discussed this time last season - do you honestly think we have moved on or improved (albeit slightly) from last season?
I fail to see any improvement whatsoever and the "quality" of football on offer at home has been dire. For that very reason I will not be renewing- the owner and CEO don`t seem to bother - why should I? OK the Villa are in my DNA but there comes a tipping point and I appear to have reached mine.
Having said that I have "fallen out of love" with football in general for so many reasons - looks like I will be spending more time in the garden in future !!! 

Whatever way you look at it though just scrapeing past 40 points each season isn't exactly going to get us even competiting for 8th anytime soon is it?

In fairness we've been mid table pretty much all season, our results reflect this. Anytime we've started to drop down the table our results have suddenly picked up (look at the 7 points from Sunderland, Liverpool and WBA after the awful xmas run and the two wins v Norwich and Chelsea after 1 point from WHam, Cardiff and Newcastle).

But we have failed to kick on every single time and that seems to be a problem with the manager.

I don't think we have been mid table (In the true sense of the word) at any point. Southampton and Newcastle were the only two teams who were midtable this year

[PeterWithesShin]

Sunderland? 9 points off us and have a ridiculous run of away games. They could still survive but not at our expense.

They've got some awful away games, you're right. They've got two games in hand, mind.

I think if the season had another two games on top of what there is left to play, we'd go down. Our current form is just so abysmal and there's no Benteke.

On current form we're 14th. As shit as we've been at times in the last 6 games, none of the bottom 3, or Norwich, have gained a point on us. All but Fulham have less points. Even Swansea have lost a point on us. We won't go down but it's really not good enough to have to resort to such things to decide we're safe for another year.

[SoccerHQ]

Interesting we end with those two away games, we will get battered at City and Spurs are a poor match up for us these days so in their poor form I'd still expect them to beat us.

So even if we're safe we could still be really low in the league at the end, 16th or 17th. There's no way you can give him a new 3 year deal with a final result like that.

[Ads]

I think that is it for Cardiff.

[ChicagoLion]

 
I don't think 34 points is enough, all the 4 teams below us are 1 win away from over taking us.
It just takes one out of the bottom 3 to put a run together. If Sunderland win 3 from the next 8 that would do for us.
We still need a couple of draws or a win.

We should not be any where near relegation but we are getting closer.

[SoccerHQ]

I think Stoke are a good example of changing a manager and he generally changes the outlook and approach to a squad.

They were set in their ways for years under Pulis and had started to be found out big time in the second half of last season. I know we needed a Lowton wondergoal to win it but we outplayed them from start to finish at the Brit this weekend last year. From that game you'd have thought there was only one club moving forward within the next year....

So they made a change and appointed Mark Hughes, someone we could easily have appointed at any point in the last 4 years and he would've certainly been greeted as an underwhelming appointment generally (even if his overall record in league position is pretty good).

Stoke have been bobbing up and down with us in mid table for most of this season but at the crucial part they have got their act together and look good to finish 10th which would be their highest league finish since they've been up and close to 50 points. This is what I was expecting us to do this season.

That's the thing with these targets, it's not like I'm demanding top 6 challenges or anything as we're a million miles off that but when you finish 9th or 10th that's usually with about 50 points so a 9 point improvement on last year was surely not an impossible ask?

I don't even think we'll reach 40 points now so I'm not really sure other than playing the injury card which is very flakily what else Lambert will come up with when asked why we haven't improved from last season.

[levico]

I think 35 points is a stretch for Lambert.

[Steve kirk]

Think we will finish on 36 points, Cardiff are gone, Sunderland and Fulham would have to get 12 and 10 points respectively which is a massive ask plus we may have a get out of jail card in Norwich, fed up of typing this stuff season after season