AvfcTheObsession

Needs a run in the No.10 role before any decisions are made. Not suited to playing wide in this league, where he was before Garde dropped him, as he doesn't have the pace or strength.

I am wondering whether the belief that Remi will do well is partly down to the fact he's a foreign manager who speaks well. I can't help thinking if Pearson had come in and got 3 points from 6 games there would be zero praise. However the current squad isn't up to scratch so he should be given the tools in January to give him the best chance here.

Yeah a 1:2 goals to games ratio in a team who constantly battled relegation and provided little service really isn't up to scratch.

That's how you get a chance as a youngster, when there's injuries/suspensions. Down to the player to grasp it.

I didn't think he did too bad on Sat. A couple of driving runs forward, one lead to a free-kick for us 25 yards out in a promising position. He also has a good engine on him and got box-to-box in tricky conditions. He did dilly dally on occasions alongside Sanchez (who was obviously the worst culprit for it on Sat).

Big difference is they have a pacey, hard-working front two who are flying. Ayew is carrying the can for us on his own.

I'll take a small consolation in at least getting the score line correct This is a bit of a myth that we 'played them off the park'. We were the better team in the first half, and deserved our 1-0 HT lead. Then we got a 2nd goal after 63 mins on the counter attack, with what was our only meaningful shot of the second half, we then sat back and the rest is history. Obviously we shouldn't have lost, or even drawn that game, but there's no way we played them off the park.

1 win there in the last 15 years, ouch! That needs to change on Sat.

After 38 games it doesn't. Leicester, Palace and Watford won't finish as high as they are now. Chelsea, Liverpool and Everton won't finish as low as they are now.

Everton are a better side than Leicester, 3-2 home win.

It is a difficult one, because we haven't seen him on the field against PL opposition for longer than 20-30 mins at a time. Against Arsenal I can only remember him getting the ball another couple of times after his run, and he passed it or there was the occasion he ran it out of play. At the moment though he is having to make things happen without even being in attacking positions, because we are deep and are not forcing the opposition back. I do think though that he's that quick, and strong, that opponents shouldn't be able to nullify him, even if they know what to expect.

Thing is, his one dash nearly led to a goal, and he was only on the field 5 minutes. I don't think you can take his main attribute out of his performance, then judge him. If he was on the field for longer, he'd have a few dashes at goal and one or more could quite easily lead to a goal or assist.

Things aren't always as black and white as 'they aren't good enough' and 'they don't want to be here'. They aren't looking up to scratch at the moment, which is in a large part down to the fact they've come in to a car crash of a club, without good Premier League pros around them to help them out. If Veretout had picked Leicester over us, do you really think he'd be struggling now? Because I highly doubt it.

2 points out of 15, not 18. Games which included Arsenal, City, Everton and Saints. Admittedly, I'd have expected at least a couple of points more. Gestede every week? He's started 2 games out of the 5 that Garde's managed, and in one of those only actually played 57 minutes. Please don't make things up to suit your agenda. Most people are quite rightly giving Garde more time to attempt to sort this out, including more favourable fixtures coming up against bottom-half sides (Newcastle, Norwich and Sunderland in 3 of the next 4 games). After the next 3-4 games we'll have a much better idea about how this appointment is looking.

It comes from the top. Lerner's aim is just to be in the division, I imagine he just sees finishing any higher than 17th as a bonus. This transpires down to the manager and the players.

I do see some of them at times and think 'even I last longer than you at Power League on a Monday night, and I'm paying £5 to play.'

I don't think Gana and Veretout are as bad as you say, they haven't done anything special, but I'd say they are capable of being average PL midfielders. We do lack some Premier League nous in the midfield though, along with leadership and organisation. Having 2 brand new midfielders to the league alongside Sanchez who has at least 1 panic attack per game isn't a recipe for success, someone like Darren Fletcher would have been a good signing. I'm concerned about the lack of a goalscorer, and a calm head at the back who can play (Richards is too much of a bull in a China shop for CB).

I was born in the 80s so don't remember the last relegation, but I can imagine in the old Division 2 it would have been very different back then. Literally thousands of Villa travelling round the country to stand on terraces at new grounds, probably only paying a couple of quid for the privilege. Nowadays it's modest allocations at sky high prices and in that league you quickly become much of a muchness. If we didn't go straight back up (which we probably won't), we'll quickly become another Leeds (who were seen as being at least as big as us when they went down).

Yep. Would love to wind back to the late nineties, 2 trophies and regular high finishes. Even the 5 seasons from 2006-2011 would do me: 11th, 6th, 6th, 6th, 9th.

Looking back they only had one top-8 finish in that period (late nineties, early 00s), whereas we finished top 8 for 5 seasons running. So Ehiogu and Southgate may have thought they were going on to better things, but they didn't do any more than they did at Villa, they won a LC at both clubs, but finished consistently lower down the league at Boro.

Treble this weekend @ 6/1 Stoke to beat an injury ravaged West Ham Arsenal to beat bottom club Aston Villa Hull to win at home to Bolton

Guzan Hutton Richards Lescott Llori Gana Sanchez Veretout Traore Agbonlahor Ayew

I just don't know with this one. In theory I think he'd be a better option than Gestede who is very limited. However, if both Sherwood and Garde aren't willing to put him in their 18, he must look very poor in training, or have an attitude/workrate problem or even both.

Ozil is the biggest danger, no doubt, as Sanchez is missing.

In the end I heard we upped our allocation to 2200 for Saints and only fell about 50 short of selling that out. May have looked worse as there was loads of segregation due to quite a few empty seats in the home end behind that goal.