HanoiVillan

Disagree. Several of them were excellent, including the one for Weimann's free header which he crossed with his left foot. The corner assist was also superb.

He's hopeless, a real risk in every game he plays. Honestly think Luna is marginally better, I'd rather keep him for next season. At least he's shown promise at some points. Bennett needs to re-learn his technique from scratch, ideally at some other club.

Excellent point. We've been particularly profligate in that department lately.

Certainly at this point, finishing 15th would be a triumph and anything above 18th a relief. Remarkable to be saying that when we were 10th 3 games ago. Hard to see where we're going to get too many points though.

He's a great squad option, a really good backup to have, but we're tragically over-reliant on him.

His main weakness is when people run at him with pace. He gets turned around so easily. It was a great clearance, but otherwise he wasn't particularly good today. I still think he'll leave at the end of the season.

He's 22. If this club weren't in a perpetual crisis, he wouldn't have had 50% of the responsibility he has had. He's shouldering a burden of responsibility that is simply beyond his ability. He should be making the majority of his appearances as an impact sub, and this should be the goal for next season. We all know that won't happen, but it should.

Positives - stadium, groundsman, training facilities, youth program, Benteke, Vlaar, Guzan, Delph, a few others who do a good job on their day. Negatives - painfully thin squad, chairman who either doesn't care or isn't able to help, the urgent need for half a dozen quality players over the summer, manager who gets it wrong more often than he gets it right, lack of investment, toxic home atmosphere, general all-around sense of decay and failure. The investment needs to come this summer. If it doesn't, we'll go down next year. The bottom of the league won't be this terrible again, and we won't have Benteke for the first 2-3 months of the season.

What game were you watching? No he wasn't, he created a number of our best chances and assisted the goal. You honestly couldn't be more wrong about that.

How many years in a row has Arsene Wenger wished for "better luck with injuries"? We can't rely on that. That's the problem.

Why not? Until today I was with you, but not anymore. We have a proper midfielder on the bench in Sylla who could harass the opposition. Lambert waits til 90 +1 minutes to bring in another attacker. Who did he take out? The only one cabable of doing something in Albrighton. Waste of space manager. Oh come on - Sylla's been shocking this season. What do you define as an "adequate" Premier League squad though? Honestly, with a couple of additions I think our squad would be adequate (not necessarily good) just so long as we didn't get **** over by injuries. Fair question, I'll do my best to answer. An adequate squad would be one that won more than 25% of its home games. It would be one that got to the end of gameweek 33 without the fans having a very real fear of relegation yet again. And above all, it would be one in which two injuries to central midfielders - I'll allow 3 counting N'Zogbia - didn't necessitate playing a left-back there instead. You made a point about Sylla, and how dreadful he's been - I agree - but that's part of what I'm saying. He's a 'squad player' who is so bad that a left back is played ahead of him in his preferred position. He can't be a part of an 'adequate squad', whatever we end up agreeing that means. Also, I have to take issue with "so long as we didn't get f***** over by injuries". They're a part of the game, we need to be able to cope with them. These injuries, and a pasting at Man City, would be fair enough, but we did just play the team at the bottom of the table with the worst away record in the league. An 'adequate squad' would be able to cope with that. There are some good players in the squad, and unfortunately they're the ones that are injured. However, they will be ones who get injured, because they play more football. Teams who finish safely in mid-table have squads that can cope with injuries. We don't, which is why I say we need at least 6 signings in the positions I identified in the summer.

We won't be relegated this season, but it'll be interesting to see what Lambert does in the summer. 3 more strikers and a couple of extra left-backs should do the trick. You joke, but we're going to end up needing players for both of those positions. Unfortunately, we're still about 7 or 8 players away from having an adequate Premier League squad, as the dismal team sheet this afternoon proved. 7 or 8? Our squad isn't too bad when everyone's fit, it's just that right now we've been decimated by injuries. Okay, trying to look at it as dispassionately as possible, I strongly feel we need a left back, a right back, a hard-tackling defensive midfielder, a number 10, a wide player on the left, and a decent quality striker. Fair enough, that's only 6.

We won't be relegated this season, but it'll be interesting to see what Lambert does in the summer. 3 more strikers and a couple of extra left-backs should do the trick. You joke, but we're going to end up needing players for both of those positions. Unfortunately, we're still about 7 or 8 players away from having an adequate Premier League squad, as the dismal team sheet this afternoon proved.

There's going to be a lot of strong reactions on here tonight, which is fair enough. The performance was weak overall. However, to be fair, we were missing all of our best players bar Vlaar and Guzan. At least 5 players who would normally start were absent. That's a big loss for any team, and we didn't deal well enough with it. The negatives first of all - Bennett was dreadful. That's no surprise. Lots of people were busy saying, 'give him a go' etc after the Chelsea game, but I never agreed with that. Even in that Chelsea game, he sort of got away with a foul on the halfway line which another ref, on another day, might have sent him off for. He was also responsible for the last minute winner at Newcastle. Today, a dreadfully misplaced backpass that should have gifted them a goal, and then his defending for their first. Honestly, watch it on MOTD. It's like a textbook example of how not to do everything. He jogs away from his man, back into the penalty area. Doesn't close him down. Doesn't tackle him. Doesn't move towards the ball. Doesn't mark another player. Doesn't, in fact, do anything except jog away from the ball while watching the Fulham player over his shoulder. Play Luna next time. Another negative was the substitutions. We were too happy to continue on until things went wrong. Tonev for Bennett should have happened at half time. And what on earth was the point of bringing Bowery on for thirty seconds at the end? Does he have some debts with the bailiff, where he desperately needs the appearance fee or something? There were a couple of positives, though, which shouldn't get lost in the fury - Albrighton was outstanding again. This lad needs to be given a new deal ASAP. I'm starting to worry we're going to lose him. He's pretty much our best player at the moment, and time and again he created great chances our forwards just didn't put away. We need him, bottom line. It was also good to see Holt score, although I'm guessing any sort of confidence boost will be destroyed by the dreadful miss 5 minutes later. Overall, another poor performance, another season where we're wondering how to avoid relegation. I still think we'll do it, but of course we're going to make sure we don't avoid it until the 37th game at least. That's what we do. UTV.

. . . cometh the Holt! Really happy to be wrong about this one!

The replay shows that Bennett was just jogging around, 5 yards away from the player, didn't attempt a tackle, closing down, marking another player or indeed anything at all. I never got on board with the whole 'he's alright after all' from the Chelsea game, 'cos he isn't.

It has been coming, and I have to admit I can't see us getting one back.

Given our injury situation, a draw would be an acceptable result here, so I'm not too worried. Baker and Bennett could yet derail us, though. There's no better game for Robinson to appear than this one. Holt's played well, but when he starts to tire Robinson should have a run around.

It's been as scrappy as you'd expect. Apart from that howler on the left (was it Bennett?) where we set their striker through on goal, we've mostly managed. Don't know how anyone was expecting anything other than this from this fixture. Two really bad sides, the only difference is we have something more in the locker when we have players fit. They are this rubbish all the time. Even if they sneak a winner, they'll not be staying up this season. We will.

Albrighton looking good again! Really happy for the lad.

J Bowz to start up top this weekend?

To be honest, the logic was questioned, repeatedly and great length, during the transfer window thread. Not looking to start any arguments about this, but it really was. Now we need Holt. In the summer, we're going to need to spend some big money on a striker, which wouldn't have been in the plan before.

I'm not convinced. Especially after this season. I haven't seen enough of an improvement in how we play our football this season to suggest that we will improve next season, or that we even have a plan we are trying to follow. I hear a lot about the squad quality and the limitations placed upon Lambert - and perhaps that is warranted. But what I don't hear much about is what we are doing now in preparation for our assumed "quality" signings to come in the summer. Are we suddenly going to be playing better football with a few quality signings? What happens when they are unavailable? Or take a while to settle in? We should be playing now the type of football we want to see later. Our squad should be versed in how the system works, what their role is and what tactics we are using regardless of their supposed lack of ability. It may not work out immediately, but the few quality additions would then actually make a difference with our existing players providing cover already experienced in the way we want to play. That gives us realistic options for rotation due to injury, suspension or form. Instead, I see one-dimensional football with little improvement in style/tactics/formations/roles within the squad after (almost) 2 full seasons. The majority of our football is poor - even some of our basics are awful (watch Bertrand try to find a Villa shirt from a throw in, for instance) - and having to "start again" with a better quality squad really means the last 2 years are for nothing and more seasons of struggle are to be expected till we finally start playing decent football. Just what is the plan, exactly? I don't see enough evidence that we are working to one other than "survive". Just highlighted this bit as interesting. Why do we always seem to lose possession following throw-ins? Surely we must turn the ball over more in those situations than any other team in the league. It's fascinating that even someone who's come in on loan can be just as bad at them.

We'll get five or six points out of the remaining games. Given who we are, we're probably more likely to do it against Man City and Tottenham than Fulham or Hull, but we'll manage it somehow. Don't know how anyone could want Albion to go down - one of the few teams we nearly always take points off! Especially given how gutted they must be we came back from two goals down each time. Think they're in real trouble after the events of the weekend though. Also, got to assume that Norwich go down if they don't win this weekend.

Presumably so, but no matter how daft the lad was, it doesn't warrant lamping him. Apparently the club are 'conducting an investigation', which seems like another Anelka disaster brewing. It's remarkable that the immediate decision hasn't been 'suspend Morrison without pay'. How hard is the situation to parse? Guess the problem is that the manager has little control over, or respect from, the players, and there's a coterie of long-serving players who are basically dressing-room untouchables, but this seems like an absolutely calamitous situation. Odds massively shortening on their relegation after this week.