El Segundo

How do you know this for certain? Did you know her? As for what the photo proves, how about that too many people in this country have their priorities well and truly the wrong way up.

Yep there's not too many other places where you'd get to see hundreds of thousands of serfs and peasants loyally tugging their forelocks and bowing and scraping, like in the olden days. Except with selfie sticks.

It's hardly "hounding him out" if he's already had 34 games worth of "patience". Who we replace him with isn't relevant to whether Gerrard's competent or not and anyway that's Purslow's job. We could have said the same when sacking Smith, many did say the same about Bruce and then we got Smith. Personally I'd have Smith back over Gerrard any day of the week, the results were no worse and the football 10 times better.

You do know how many games he's had right? 30 odd games is not turning on him quicker than usual, plenty of managers have been binned for far shorter periods of ineptitude. Reverting to his favoured midfield three last night after seeing how much better we looked with Luiz in the team against City smacks of him not being able to learn and adapt. If that's his approach, how is more time going to help?

I'd say it's potentially a pyrrhic victory but it remains to be seen. If it means Gerrard stays too long and takes us down - as some, including me, fear he might - that would be pretty devastating, and would clearly demonstrate damage to the long term progress of the club. As for the rest of the definition, I certainly felt any sense of achievement last night was negated by the latest in a long-ish line of dreadful, boring , clueless performances that really do not offer much promise of an enjoyable or successful season ahead. In response to other posts, comparing our situation to pre-Wenger Arsenal, and Gerrard's to Ferguson's in the late 80s is ridiculous, unless you are happy with 90's style dinosaur football and happy to ignore the changes in the financial structure of the game since those days. Ferguson's situation was a massive exception at a time when financial pressures were nowhere near what they are today, and unlikely to ever be repeated. If we want to play like Arsenal in the late 80s and early 90s we may as well just get McLeish or Bruce back. And just which top players is Gerrard going to get through the door by playing shite football and hovering around the lower reaches of the table?

That old paradox where you always want your team to win but doing so unfortunately serves to extend the tenure of a Manager you'd rather see gone. The first twenty five minutes was dreadful by both teams - it looked they were trying for the first ever minus 2 all draw in history. It was very like watching a Steve Bruce team, no pattern, no tempo, no intensity, no sense of knowing what they were meant to be trying to do, and hardly any creativity. I like McGinn, but he isn't playing well and he was like a runaway miniature sumo wrestler the first few minutes, just running around barging into people. On the plus side Coutinho looked a lot better, and Mings was immense. Dendoncker was strange, played about 25 minutes and only saw him touch the ball once. I didn't realise how huge he is. Looked to me as if the ref gave a foul against McGinn at the end for winning the ball with his head while colliding with a high boot? Incredible. At least it's a win - but somehow it didn't really feel like one.

Proof that he really isn't learning

Good question - must be hard to fit a 12 foot tall green lizard creature into a box the size of a little old lady.

And "Still dead"

When we signed Watkins Brentford used the money for Toney - we should have gone straight for Toney. Would like him as a future signing too. Not sure how strong the links were but Bergkamp would have been a brilliant signing.

Last season's games and the whole of Gerrard's reign are a much stronger indicator of whether we are in danger of relegation than the 6 games this season taken in isolation. 38 points might well be enough to stay up, but the points per game trend has been downwards, so we won't even achieve a point per game moving forward if that continues. Who's to say a new manager could turn it around? You said yourself there is a risk a new guy won't' work out. That risk is the same whether we get a new manager now or in 6 weeks time, but at least if we recruit now and it doesn't work out we would still have more time to change things again. I also agree the squad is better than the performances but that is irrelevant - it's the actual results that count. You don't want the club to waste 10 months investment in the Manager. So far there is little or no return on that investment - it's already been wasted. For me there is a much greater risk we will lose our PL status costing us tens if not hundreds of millions in future revenue. We could live to regret sacking him. We could live to regret keeping him. Which one involves the greater risk? I just don't see why, after 32 games and 9 months, you think Gerrard might suddenly turn into Arteta or Potter over the next 5 or 6 weeks when there has been absolutely no indication that he is capable of that. We will have simply wasted another 5-6 weeks and have a much harder job of protecting our status and revenue streams.

The problem with your stance is it ignores the fact he's already had 30+ games to try and prove he can do the job. All he's shown in that time is that he can't, not to the standard required. He's also shown he hasn't learned, and we have been in near-relegation or relegation form for the bulk of his time in charge. Basing your case on the fact we're only 6 games into the season is rather blinkered bearing in mind the trajectory, performances and results under the whole of Gerrard's reign. What do you think is going to change, after 30 odd games? The squad should be good enough to stay up, sure, but then they should have been good enough for top 10 last season, but under Gerrard they failed miserably to get near that. I do wonder if you and others would be so generous with Villa's time and future for a lower profile Manager.

Obviously there is no immediate risk of relegation because it's early in the season. But you have to look at the bigger picture, and all the signs point to us being under serious threat if we stick with Gerrard. We have already given him time to "learn". 30 odd games. Is that not enough? That in itself was ridiculously risky in the multi billion dollar business that is the PL, and it is plenty to be able to tell if a manager can cut the mustard or not. He has shown scant indication of improvement or having learned anything. If anything, we have gone backwards, on and off the pitch. Can you think of any other multi million/billion pound business where a novice would be given 9-10 months in charge, fail to show any improvement, take the organisation backwards, and still be in a job? Of course there is a risk to bringing in a new manager who might not be up to the job. But some would argue could he be any worse than Gerrard, and also the earlier we get him in and see the more chance we have of fixing that without going down as well. Or should we also give that individual time to learn on the job as well? If so how many games will it take?. I think some people's judgement is clouded because it's big-name Stevie -G we're talking about.

To say we are not under threat of relegation just flies in the face of the facts. Of course we are. We're bottom 4 after 6 games and only out of the bottom three and bottom two on goals scored and goal difference respectively. More importantly, while there are 7 or 8 other teams who might be said to be under similar threat, the "direction of travel" for some of them has been a lot more positive than ours in terms of performances, shape, tactics, creativity and all sorts of other metrics. One plucky draw against Man City is not sufficient to say our direction has changed or will change. If it doesn't, then we will be well and truly in the relegation mix. Having a novice manager "learning" his trade on the job is a suicidal approach in the PL.

Well done to all. Maybe Gerrard is finally learning after all. Cash's injury maybe a blessing in disguise - I think he's been poor at both ends and Young looks much better. It looked like Ederson made only a token effort to save the shot as he knew the whistle had gone, but doesn't alter the fact it was the usual bad/corrupt officiating against us and pro sky 6 yet again. Coutinho should at least have been given the chance to get the shot off.

I don't care what other team's keepers do, that's their problem. It's what ours does that matters, and for me too often he's found wanting.

The second half performance was better (not hard) and may have been acceptable had we been 1-0 up and trying to add to it. We weren't and therefore it was not fit for purpose. I've never bought into the hype over Martinez and I think he could and should have done better for both goals, deflection or not. Dullard got the midfield wrong yet again. If he's meant to be "learning" there is scant evidence of it. Cash was awful, Digne was arguably worse. 2-1 was a lot better than I expected and more than we deserved. The only consolation is it should take us another step nearer to the end of Gerrard's reign.

This article hits just about every nail bang on the head, especially the bit about us being boring to watch.

Briefly listened into Talksport last night when they were debating Gerrard and to be fair the presenter was making the case for Gerrard being a disaster as were most of the callers, although a few still seemed to think Gerrard shouldn't go just yet. And there was the guest, Anton Ferdinand, saying "he needs to be given more time" and proceeded to blabber on in such a way as to make Gabby sound like Einstein. He's had almost 40 games, two transfer windows, a full pre-season and numerous lessons in what doesn't work. Yet he changes little or nothing and hopes it will work eventually. How is more time stubbornly applying the same failed tactics, shape and personnel, making the same brainless mistakes, and refusing to try something different going to make a difference? Except to see us even lower in the table than we are now? If nearly 40 games isn't enough for the penny to drop, another 6 or 8 really isn't going to help.

Abject. We're bottom 6 and hard to see us getting anything from the next two on this showing, so expect we'll be bottom 3 after 6 games. Purslow needs to admit his mistake and earn his money. We'd have been better off keeping Deano than employing this Charlatan.

Cabbage time, surely

The arguments defending Gerrard are pretty weak. He was a brilliant player - so what, it means nothing in terms of being a good manager - See John Barnes, Ruud Gullit, Alan Shearer, Thierry Henry and many others. He did well at Rangers - does anyone really need to explain again why this is not much of a recommendation? He can attract bigger names than Smith could have. Ok we otherwise may not have got Carlos and Kamara but is that it? Coutinho was a big name 6 years ago but isn't 20% of the player he was at Liverpool. Digne? Is he really that much of an upgrade on Targett? 10th in the table since he joined? Well that includes the new manager "bounce" but points per game have steadily declined since then, as have performances. And it's the actual table that counts, not this one. He's still learning his trade - well if that's the case he should be nowhere near the Aston Villa manager's job. The PL does not allow time for people to get up to speed, and there is no guarantee he will ever learn the appropriate lessons and be able to apply them. There are far more, and more robust arguments against Gerrard. Our points per game is getting lower. Gerrard's win percentage is one of the worst we've ever had. We don't seem to have a defined style of play. Gerrard doesn't seem to know his best 11 or best formation. Players don't seem to be selected on merit. They players do not look like they have bought in to Gerrard's approach. Players that probably deserved more of a chance have been frozen out or ignored. There appear to be rifts in the dressing room. The transfer policy leans towards older players on high wages who are supposed to be able to deliver now which is fine if they do, not so good if they don't, and is not a sustainable long term policy. Further to that he doesn't seem that interested in giving the younger players a proper run. The football is awful to watch. It's laboured, slow tempo, boring, risk free, possession for the sake of possession (or at least attempts at it when we can actually retain the ball) and it doesn't work. The reliance on the full backs to provide any width is awful and isn;t really working. We don't create much and our defence is often cut through like a hot knife through butter, often because the big holes where our full backs should be are exploited. . He repeatedly picks a midfield formation that has repeatedly shown it doesn't work. There is no discernable progress from the Dean Smith days. In some ways we have gone backwards - I enjoyed watching Smith teams for the most part, you could see what we were trying to do even if it didn't always work. Watching a Gerrard team is almost as boring and painful s watching a Bruce team. Would anyone except a former superstar player be allowed such leeway?

Not sure how much we can gauge from that performance. We should expect to win comfortably playing a mostly first choice 11 against a team two leagues below us and the scoreline, on the face of it, suggests we did. But it certainly wasn't comfortable or anything like competent first half. Three of our goals owed something to a flaky keeper and two to decisions that VAR may well have overturned, and our defending was a joke for Bolton's goal. Superior technique and fitness held sway second half but we won't have that advantage in most games. Great team move for Digne's goal and brilliant individual skills from Bailey for the fourth - like Traore on speed. Thought SG should have brought Archer and Tim on after the third went in to give them a better run out. If we learned anything it's that Luiz deserves a chance instead of Ramsey or McGinn in the PL. Whether the manager takes the hint or not, who knows?

Sad about this, love his skill and I think he's the ideal player for home games where we struggle to create much against a low block - less so for away games where more work off the ball may be needed. His goals at Albion and the one in the League Cup are among my favourite ever Villa goals, just nonchalantly passed into the net. Good luck Bert.

An own goal and conceded a penalty from 3 games so far. Unlucky I guess but still. Targett was a better defender, more solid, and linked up well with Grealish when going forward. Might have been able to do likewise if given a fair chance. I don't see much improvement going forward with Digne. Crossing maybe, but he can't shoot to save his life.