VillaFaninLondon

Finally a change made by Gerrard. We should be pushing for a winner and fitter than Leicester given the amount of games they've had and the rest we've had but no.....

FFS Gerrard freshen up the team, it's all Leicester now.

Wonder how long we have to wait today for Gerrard to make a change.

Coutinho has been very poor.

Sell Konsa. Last season must have been a fluke.

It's not like they've signed world beaters. Their form is ridiculous.

I do wonder why we love playing out from the back in and around our 18 yard area. It's absolutely ridiculous and no wonder we give away cheap goals so much. Leicester play out from the back but their defence is 40 yards up the pitch doing it that's the difference. Bailey needs to be running into the spaces more often - when he has done we've looked dangerous. Just a shame the final ball has been woeful every time.

Rubbish half but not losing. Surely have to improve in the 2nd half. I see Newcastle are winning again. Is Howe the new Guardiola what the f*** is going on.

Another stupid, brainless, reckless decision this time by Bailey to give away a free kick.Completely unnecessary. Idiot.

We are absolutely brainless playing the ball around our defence. It's like we want to gift them a goal or something.

Luiz with a hoisted pass to absolutely no one. Still we've started better than recent games.

Sitter by Bailey. No wonder he's only scored once for us.

What is Martinez doing. Reflection of his season.

That's good then as he has a habit of scoring against us.

Gerrard better hope Konsa improves massively after that Spurs debacle. Weird why he's playing him again so can only assume he's done really well in training. Nakamba would have given us more protection but is on the bench again. Hate Ashley Young being at LB but that's happens when you buy a player who's always injured. The front three looks exciting, let's hope it clicks for them today.

Cash settled in quickly and has been one of our better players this season but I don't think he transformed the team like Martinez did or VVD and Allisson did for Plop.

Now I know you're on the windup. If our players lack talent then sure as hell every team outside the top 6 have a problem then.

I'll give you Martinez but he's an exception rather than the norm.

They can attract top talent yes but VVD was seen as overpriced at £75m and his form had suffered at Southampton that season so it looked a risk. Yet he goes straight in there and looks a world beater. Or you can give the example of Newcastle - suddenly they have all this money to spend and all their signings have pushed them from relegation zone to 11th yet they signed players like burn, Targett and wood who are hardly players we’d want. Buendia and Bailey may well come good but I don’t understand why we rarely buy a player and he does well from the off. Probably the last one I can think of was Benteke and that was nearly 10 years ago.

That's a fair point but Liverpool handled Coutinho's sale far better than we handled Grealish's. Both got huge money for both but while they reinvested it extremely intelligently to fix areas of their team that needed fixing and have gone from scraping top 4 with Coutinho to winning titles and CLs without him, we've gone backwards. If we'd used the money more wisely we'd probably be competing for Europe this season.

I think finishing 10th would be papering over the cracks but of course I'd much rather that than finishing 14th or 15th. And in league position at least it represents improvement. Finishing below ANY of the 5 teams currently above us would be a huge failure which is why we must finish if possible above all of them. If we win at least 3 of our final 7 games then I think we could sneak into top half. I would still regard it as a failed season on the whole but I would be pleased that we managed to salvage something from a bleak season at least and I believe it will help us attract higher profile targets in the summer.

It's so quiet on here because it's been an absolutely awful season and people are probably choosing to bury their head in the sand. I will watch tomorrow and I really hope we put in a good performance. A win tomorrow and I think we could end the season quite well and possibly sneak top 10, but I'd take even a point at this stage if it means we can have a weekend without Villa losing for a change.

Gerrard needs to stop the rot by getting at least a point here. It would help if we don't gift the opposition any easy goals especially so early in the game.

He's a stubborn manager so probably won't change it but given results have been absolutely awful recently, given we have spent a fair whack of money on wingers that just sit there on the bench each week, and given Digne might miss the rest of the season which means 70-year-old Ashley Young at LB, I think an adaptation of tactics and a change of formation would be wise. Young is too old to play as an overlapping FB and Cash is too often caught out of position playing so high up. It might work a bit better if Nakamba comes into the team but I still think he needs to change a few things if we're to end the season on a positive note.

We should be finishing above the 5 sides currently above us (Brighton, Brentford, Southampton, Palace, Newcastle), anyone thinking any different really is downplaying our underachievement. That would put us in top 10 but the way we are playing currently I have very serious doubts we will finish above any of them let alone all of them. Things have to change on the pitch and quickly. I am basing this on the players we have compared to those 5 sides directly above us, the expectations of us compared to them this season, how much we have invested compared to them, the depth of our squad compared to theirs, and the size of our club compared to theirs. We beat all those clubs on those metrics. I think the likes of Palace, Newcastle, Southampton and Brentford were predicted by some neutrals to get relegated this season, most neutrals had us in the top half at the very least, so we should all be very angry to be where we are in the table. If we win the games we should (Norwich, Palace, Burnley at least once), we might still finish in the top 10 especially if we can take a couple of draws on top of that. If Gerrard can't get us competing against teams better than us then he has to at least getting us beating the teams around us or below us.