switters

WBA are there for the taking, frankly. McLeish should be going for the win. Weimann for Gabby and Carruthers for one of the 3 DMs. They will both be unfamiliar to WBA defenders and could make the difference. McLeish doesn't seem to learn anything from last season's experiences where he went for draws at the end of the season but it turned out they needed a win to stay up..

Dunne with our first creative moment Good chance that.

Jesus Cuellar. Air kick in the 6 yard box

Same. Certainly the home crowd will be on his back in a big way after he broke Shane Long earlier in the season. He is stupid enough to get riled, particularly if their players have a go at him..

I expect a huge gap between Zog-Gabby-Heskey and everyone else. Lots of hopeful balls for Heskey to flick on and the 2 pacy players to chase. Might work if WBA defence is asleep, but I suspect Olsson and Ridgewell will be happy enough if that's all we can offer. It's a lineup that should threaten at set-pieces, but we've rarely managed that this season.

Really should be Weimann rather than Gabby. Half-fit Gabby in v.bad form doesn't suggest big goal threat to me.. Warnock played okay in midfield the other day so that's sort of understandable, though Herd, Clark, Warnock does not suggest much creativity..need Zog to step up today like he did for Wigan last season.

Have to applaud HackneyVillain. Almost spot on with the ones played (only got Pool loss and Bolton draw the wrong way round).

i agree, i think the fans have been very patient, and i also think thats because he came from Bham City so we gave him an extra chance to improve. I think it's actually because fans burnt out on protesting in the summer before the season started. If owners don't listen before they hire him, they're hardly going to turn around and sack him if you protest again a few months later.. Once it had been McUnLeished on us, we were pretty powerless. Had to wait until it got really bad before the fanbase was energized enough to really try again..lots of draws and drab football just sapped the spirit from everyone.

On the OS now.. I stopped reading after this, hold on for the points, there was half an hour to go! Has AM wrote this? I love the way it says 'ultimately', as if we were in front for most of the match and threw it away at the end. We were in the lead for all of 90 seconds!

Finally someone's written an article that is absolutely spot-on.

Weimann or Zog with current team, I imagine. Bannan if he's on.

Conversely if we lose to Bolton it'll be: Villa 36 QPR 34 Wigan 34 Bolton 33 Blackburn 31 Within 3 pts of relegation spot with 3 games remaining, and Bolton with a game in hand. I still reckon we'd have to lose all 4 matches to go down now, but it's possible. After the Fulham win we had a 13 pt gap on Wigan, 11 on QPR - 6/7 games later and both are 2 points behind.

Bannan did a bad shot, no doubt, but the mass of criticism thrown at him when he played less than 10 mins is a bit excessive. Weimann should've hit that chance first time, tbh.

Conclusive If that was our goal, I'd be fuming! Borderline at best

1 win in 12. 6 goals in the past 10 games. We're pretty much safe via draws, but it's very poor stuff. Expect another draw vs Bolton. Lichaj, Weimann, Ireland probably the pick today. We lacked badly at finishing and final ball. Defence kept Sunderland to a few chances but they did have the (non)offside goal and a couple that were much closer than we came at any point.

Very lucky with the iffy offside decision. Sunderland looking more like winning this.

He is on the bench

Selection looks fine. Excellent to see Warnock and Hutton benched. The question will be the motivation. Will Gabby show up for the first time in weeks/months? Will Albrighton & Zog perform?

The most telling thing is that even in this exceptional season (for them), he still averaged precisely 1 goal per game. Which is generally relegation level of goalscoring.. In that whole season they didn't win a single match by more than 1 goal. They scored 3 goals only once. They ended the season with 1 win in 10. In fact, McLeish specializes in ending the season badly. 2 wins in the last 13 last season. 3 wins in his last 18 in his previous relegation. And here we are with 2 wins out of our last 14. Sadly our board probably didn't even look at these things, they saw 9th place and a Carling Cup and that's it.

Nah, just slightly lazy when it comes to formatting. Weirdly enough I didn't have to pick the colours of the lines..excel defaulted correctly!

Think they were better off at this stage by a point or two A couple of graphs I compiled, comparing Villa this season to Birmingham last season. First the accumulation of points: Then the position after each match:

A couple of graphs I compiled, comparing Villa this season to Birmingham last season. First the accumulation of points: Then the position after each match:

Cut them in half. Take the 'proud history' home and leave the 'bright future' behind :winkold:

I'm not sure about your maths. Just simulated on the BBC predictor the worst possible scenario results (we lose every game and all the teams below win every game - with exception that I have Wigan beating Wolves and Blackburn beating Wigan). Under this scenario Wigan were 17th with 43 points. We go down in 19th on 35, with Blackburn 18th on 40. Obviously this includes some seriously unlikely results, but it's possible and 2 points is clearly not enough to be mathematically safe. The only games against each other the bottom 6 have are us vs Bolton, Wigan vs Wolves and Blackburn vs Wigan.

The real depressing thing was seeing just how much better Wigan are than us. We haven't played half as well as that at any point this season. They had pace, quality on the ball and the fight to win it back & close down when they lost it. Of course they were under pressure for spells, but they showed what you can do when you have teamwork and tactics. We saw it last season that the players really play for Martinez - they are motivated to succeed. They do not play for McLeish. Lerner should watch our performance at Arsenal the other week back-to-back with Wigan's tonight and then, once he's fired McLeish, issue a grovelling apology to the fans for inflicting this season on us.