romavillan

really?! care to share? that's a month early isn't it?

5 games in 15 days? jesus that's tough going isn't it. good news for us, if they get on a bad run in the first games then that's not a lot of time on the training ground to try and sort it out, same with adjusting the shape if they get a couple of injuries etc. or are we clutching at straws?! i'd like to think we're capable of getting 6 points from sunderland, norwich and wigan. how we get them i don't mind at all. anything from man u and chelsea is just a bonus. a point on monday would be huge.

people are going on abotu our form becuase we have taken 10 points from the last 5 matches. so 10 points from an available 15. if we get 10 points from our next 5, we'll finish on 44 points and be well clear. if we do only half as well as the form over the last 5 and get 5 points we'll be on 39 and probably safe.

had a feeling it would be a draw, we deserved to win though, certainly created enough good positive positions in which to score from. that's all positive even if today we didn't manage to get 3 points today. no reason we can't get a point at united, not going to bet on it mind but we could get something there. we just need one of stoke or sunderland to continue being awfull and wigan to run out of steam to be comfortable. one win and a draw should be enough i think.

anyone confirm gabby has an injury or is he rested?

Forget him, Very average player.Kept my eye on him for a fair few seasons now. No strength, doesn't get stuck in and cant even win a header. I've heard his brother is a good player mind... ahah, that and he's left sided so giving him a debut on the right would be pretty cruel. unless you're right sided kevan? double bubble grealish debut if so...

the big clubs have the power and will never support anything that isn't in their direct interest. the last thing that man u, man city, chelsea, arsenal etc. want is a compettive league where they have more competition for the CL spots. look at liverpool, they are struggling to get back in the top 4 after not having the CL cash for a while.

in line with PL's policy instead of spending huge wedge we could try and get alessio romagnoli from roma, 18 years old and a natural centre back with good touch. probably never happen though ay

great memeroies i was down VP loads during that time

there's grealish coming through too i spose so might not have to enter the market at all in order to have the extra option... @BJ10: i think he showed he has the talent when he played several blinders a couple of years ago, the rest is in his head and it's the job of a good coach to get his head right.

firstly i don't want to see anything in bannan's arsenal secondly, we don't have a natural left winger in the albrighton out and out winger style (zog maybe, but it's not his preferred postion). so playing a shape with proper wingers would leave us really badly balanced. personally i'd like to see us get a proper left footed left winger, and with albrighton we'd have the option to play with real natural width. it'd be another weapon for us and allow us to field radically different formations depending on the opposition to be more flexible or give us a massive switch plan b to spring on teams when a is working. thirdly, albrighton has shown he's got talent, he's been in and out of form and out a lot through injury, i'd personally PL to get the best out of him given the personnel to play with 2 out and out wide players.

yeah we aren't 16th in the championship either! well, not yet anyway. i remember "come on you lions" being chanted in the holte end i think. i am talking about 20-25 years ago though

I am a Lambert fan - but if Aston Villa is to thrive, he is going to have to bigger wages for better players, or even to retain the better ones we have (Bentekke, Weiman) - If he is allowed to do this, the probability of some of the big earners not living up to expectations is pretty high. You won't have a succesful premier Aston Villa team, with the players earning half what they would get at other clubs i think the idea is to do it sustainably though? if we stay up we'll have more income, which means more spending power in terms of wages. the route we tried to go down was paying lots of money for established talent and the odd promising youngster. what PL's route seems to be is to lok for value, so players that he thinks can perform to a level above the price he is going to pay for them and give them as wages. benteke, lowton and westwood are good examples of this. now, if we improve in terms of league position with these players are revenues increase, and if we want to keep them we pay them more, and so on and so on. to advocate we splash big now is probably bad timing seeing as we still have some of the hangover left from the last time we did.

a point would do me from the fulham game, we're favourites with the bookies though, with the away win and the draw being similar odds). let's hope the bookies are right but a point combined with losses for our rivals down the bottom would lift us a little further away from the drop.

i don't think we shouldn't have experienced players per se, what we shouldn't have is bench warmers and people who don't give a shit on massive amounts of money. we're getting close to FINALLY getting rid of all the overpaid underperformers. then the new start begins. let's just hope that's in the premier league

39 or 40 would deffo see us safe IMO. if we take a point from the fulham game and the others lose (likely that 2 out of the 3 will i reckon). then we ill have made more progress away from the bottom 3. a win would be a great result and keep us away regardless of results elsewhere, wihtout freak results though a win would see us with a 4 or 5 point cushion with 5 left to play.

has he been there for 18 games already?!?!? yeah down to 10 men best we can hope for here is a draw i spose, no tthe 5 - 0 hammering we were looking for

hopefully chelsea go on to paste them now, and qpr win 5 - 0.

shit sunderland

yeah 39 would do it i think, not sure how comfortably. so 2 wins or a win and 3 draws from 6 games for us. the interesting thing is there are stoke and sunderland on just awful form whilst ourselves wigan and southampton have hit a good run and look like we can keep it up. it would take stoke and sunderland to completely turn it around in 6 games and wigan to maintain their form for us to go down if don't manage to coninue our good form. fulham isn't a must win but it would be a bad weekend to lose seeing stoke have man united, sunderland have a derby against the barcodes and wigan have man city.

this is a funny one, his biggest attributes when coming to us was his technique with the ball at his feet, personally i think it's still a mental issue with him when he occasionally has a shocking first touch, or a slightly heavy touch when he's running with the ball so it gets away from him. if he keeps playing and improving then hopefully his mind won't be focussed on "don't **** this up" leading to mistakes and be more about taking his first touch for granted and thinking about where the ball is going next as it's coming to him. obviously our position in the league doesn't help any of our players think like this though!

2 more wins and we're safe for sure i'd say. on current form, fulham, norwich, sunderland and wigan are all beatable so 2 from those four could realistically be 2 more wins. couple of draws too would see us finish on 41 points and safe as houses. next 3 games are crucial, if we don't beat fulham and get tonked by united, we'll be in deep shit again. win against fulham and sunderland and we're laughing, all still in the balance though!

"we may as well stick with him"?! sounds like begrudgingly accepting him whilst thinking someone else would be better? so you might prefer us to sack another manager, pay him off and start again with someone else? really?

if we stay up and benteke goes in the summer, whilst it'll be heartbreaking to see him go, he'll make us somewhere close to £10m in profit over his initial £7m fee and he will have played a massive part in us getting the ew tv money which is worth tens of millions to us. i can't think of a better recent signing, in fact we can't have made many better signings in terms of the finincial side ever. i'd like to think he'd stay with us for another season at least though if we do stay up. with some investment in the summer continuing PLs project we coudl be a good side next year.