[Albion] Bertrand Traore

[Lady Whistledown]

In all honesty, they've kept their best players, added quality around them and not really spent that much. Very comparable outlay to us over the past two summers (around £65/70m). Whilst it would be fun for Villa to be acting like Fulham did, they're actually more akin to us - they'll survive comfortably though, with such a demanding fan base, that may not be enough for Smith to survive another season.

Indeed. Weird how expectations aren't as high as The Leeds United's fans are though. You'd have thought- being a comparably sized club (only one with a lot more actual trophies of course), they'd be talking of European qualification. Mostly they just seem to want an improvement on the shambles of last season.

 

[Beanstalk]

Indeed. Weird how expectations aren't as high as The Leeds United's fans are though. You'd have thought- being a comparably sized club (only one with a lot more actual trophies of course), they'd be talking of European qualification. Mostly they just seem to want an improvement on the shambles of last season.

One of my best mates is a season-ticket holder at Villa Park and I think they had their expectations for this year realigned by the reality of last year. The Premier League is really hard, it's also really fun when you don't get relegated. At the start he, normally a pessimist, was pretty convinced that they'd be comfortable last year.

On reflection, he said that internally Smith's target was actually pretty level headed. Survival. Getting to a cup final was a bonus and if you take your (Leeds shaped) tin hat off you've got to see that as a success.

Unlike Leeds of course they have the memory of being utterly dire still pretty fresh in their memories. They amassed 17 points and 3 wins 5 years ago in their relegation season whilst watching 4 different managers fail their way down. Leeds on the other hand, have had 16 (sixteen) years outside of the top flight, looking on imagining that "it can't be as hard as these teams make out" and commenting that "the standard is really poor this season". They may survive but it will not be the breeze they all make out.