VillaChris

Be interesting to see if any of the unheraled players get international recognition if they win the league. Could be a bit like when we won it in 82 and hardly any of our players went to the world cup. Albrighton for England? Will Huth get even a sniff of a German call up? Unlikely but if Mertasacker can get 80 odd caps.....Is Kante French? Going to be difficult for him to break in when France are so stocked up in central midfield.

Fuming....Neville losing and where is Zatman?! Losing to Betis who apparently haven't won in 12 games. They're only 4 points off relegation now. They have to sack him now as they need to pick up points. As I've previously said last 7 games include Sevilla and Villareal at home and Real Madrid and Barca away.

1-1. Would be disappointed if we don't score. If Norwich can score 4 past them and Sunderland 2 we should be able to muster a goal even with our limited options. They do have a great record at VP though. Even in recent years when we've regularly got results at Anfield and pushed them close they've still come to VP and won Just hope we come out firing out of the blocks. So often we start passive against top half teams, go a goal or two down then start playing and we create chances and realise the defences aren't that great. And probably the only time I'll say this all season but really wish Gestede could get fit for this as Liverpool back 4 always have nightmares against him.

Man. United never do great at Stamford Bridge, even when they were league after league under Fergie it was usually an away ground they frequently lost at. Think 1-1 or 2-1 Chelsea. Were Arsenal really evens to win at Bournemouth? Great price.

Not a big Rugby fan at all but did enjoy watching the WC so will be watching the 6 nations a bit more. Shouldn't there be another team added in to it now? I say as it's a bit lopsided surely e.g. some teams get 3 at home and 2 away and others just 2 at home. Say you get 3 at home and one of your away fixtures is Italy, you're at a massive advantage to a couple of the other teams. It's a bit like half of the premier league only having 18 home fixtures.

What an excellent crossfield ball for the chance for Bacuna, not the first time he's done that this season. If Adama can get fit soon and allowed to start games then that could be an important tactic for us, Veretout getting him the ball as quickly as possible so he's one on one with defenders. Barry used to do that so well giving Young the ball early. Veretout has aspects of his game similar to Barry so if he can be half as good that's a very good signing for us.

We're down. Woodytom suddenly even being 0.0001% positive on the teams chances has a perverse effect on my confidence as to our survival.

Leicester will have champions league though next season which wasn't the carrot we had for Young, Milner and Downing to stay nor will Everton have it for Stones and Lukaku. That will make a massive difference, Bale and Modric were happy to stay at Spurs when they were in the CL but as soon as they stopped qualifying started putting feelers out to the agents.

He still played an awful ball yesterday, was trying to remember when and was reminded on the highlights as it lead to the Bassong chance. Funny old game, he gets punished for that like he did v City and we go 1 down and probably lose and yet another 20 posts of what a load of rubbish Gana is.

I've always said 9 wins this season will be enough as we'll draw a couple more this season it's fair to say. So we need 6 more. As I've said before I break down each month and needing 7 points on average. We narrowly failed in January getting 5. Already this month we're on 3 so 4 points from Stoke and Liverpool is needed. April it looks possible given the fixtures but March looks very hard. But if we can average around that each month then we'd go into the Newcastle home game on 34/35 points. We certainly wouldn't be relegated at that point so I'm sure pretty much everyone would sign up to that scenario.

What helps them is the points tally to win the league is dropping all the time. To get to 80 points now Man. City need to win 11/13 games. Unless Kompany comes back next week no chance as they are a total car crash at the back. Plus they'll invetiably drop points when the CL starts again particularly as they're also in the two other cups. Contary to popular belief City don't actually have that big a squad somehow despite the money. Take a look at their subs bench yesterday, how on earth is Celina? Spurs are doing well but they still have so many tough games left in their schedule, still have to go to Man. City next week, West Ham, Stoke, Chelsea, Liverpool, they simply won't win all of those games particularly as they'll be starting europa league again soon so will have to play Thursday-Sunday. Only word of warning for Leicester will be this: Exactly 7 years ago, 7th Feb 2009 we went to Blackburn and won 2-0. Think we had 51 points that day, so only two less than Leicester. We only were third at the time which probably gives you an idea of how strong the prem was back then compared to now but as everyone knows we collapsed and only won 2 out of our last 14 or whatever it was. I wonder how Leicester would react if they had a Stoke type game e.g. 2 up with 10 minutes left and they only draw. That to me is the only thing that can hurt them now as they've shown they can react to a couple of winless games as they had over xmas.

Anyone missing him then? He tries his heart out but his lack of quality pretty much summarized our first half of the season.

I thought he was alright yesterday, people seem to be having a downer due to the shot he blazed over at 2 nil. I've seen him have poorer games than yesterday, come on this thread to state it and had about 5-6 posters saying how well he played. I actually like him somewhere in midfield as with Gana also playing well now we have mobility and energy again at long last. Never under-estimate that at premier league level even if the footballers technically aren't very good. It's certainly better than the statuesque Sanchez-Westwood combo we had for a lot of the first half of the season.

Did I really hear the comms on our game yesterday saying that was the first time we've been 2 up in a league game this season....unless he just meant games at home.

It's odd though, many people who've met Berahino say he's a great lad, Ian Wright was saying that on MOTD a few weeks back, the Peterbrough chairman was saying it when he was on loan there, dosen't he do a bit of charity work in the Handsworth area aswell? His story is very inspiring so I dunno does he just become a total arse at training between 10-1 and then revert back to being normal?

The trouble with last season's table is Leicester were only 5 points adrift of getting out and there were plenty of teams on 24-27 points. It's annoying Swansea have gone on such a good run lately as their last four games are very tough....away to Leicester, home to Liverpool, away to West Ham (last ever game at Upton Park) and home to Man. City who hopefully will still be in title contention. I think to stay up we also must win at Swansea.

Still a lot of work for them to do. The media have relegated us for weeks and yet we're just four off Sunderland now and it really should be just three if Liverpool weren't such dozy f***ers! Bad feeling they'll finally lose again to Newcastle in a few weeks which is a result we don't want with Newcastle being further away.

Ouch.

Trust me if ourselves, Norwich and Sunderland all struggle to get much above 30 points some of the clubs above will ease off once they hit 35 points.

Last Danish squad had loads of players who play in the Danish league like Agger. The championship is a higher standard than that.

What sort of team did they have out today? Bit worried that Sturridge, Coutinho and Skrtel all are in full training and in contention to return next weekend. Sturridge had barely played for a year when we play them in September, he really should've had 4 goals that day and has a great scoring record past us.

So yeah Tim said bring Gabby back into the fold and we'd stay up....

I remember years back their used to be punters who'd put a quid on every team winning the league...I wonder if anyone still does that....

What the pink socks....TBF Ruddy isn't much better, I usually think he's the worst starting regular keeper in this league when he plays.

I'd be intrigued if anyone comes up with a formula that has us staying up without beating Newcastle at home. For me that simply is a game we have to win so if you bank on us doing and add the 3 points now then the task is much better, 5 points off Newcastle with 12 games to go. They still have many tough fixtures home and away left but we simply must capitalise on weekends when they lose whoever we're playing otherwise the gap will just stay as it is and the games will run out.