Premier League: talking points from the weekend’s action - two

6) Villa are too bad to stay up

The Premier League has had some remarkable great escapes, from Oldham in 1992-93, to Wigan showing that you really can pass your way out of trouble in 2011-12. In the first Premier League season, Oldham stayed up despite being eight points behind Crystal Palace going into the last week of the season. Aston Villa still have 11 games to make up eight points on 17th-placed Norwich, but scarcely any sentient beings give them a chance.

Rémi Garde knows as much: after their 2-1 defeat at Stoke on Saturday, he praised their spirit but highlighted their essential shortcoming in a manner thatevoked Martin Johnson’s famous quote about the England cricket team in 1986-87. Villa, you see, have only two problems: they can’t score goals and they can’t stop conceding them. “We know we are a team that finds it difficult to score goals,” said Garde, “and we are not scoring many.” Relegation is the inevitable conclusion of inexorable decline since Martin O’Neill left in 2010, and the list of Premier League ever-presents will soon be reduced to six. Villa, to reverse the phrase usually spouted at this time of year, are surely too bad to stay up.

7) Spotlight on Berahino is becoming too bright

Is anybody else tired of the Saido Berahino story? Not a match goes by without Tony Pulis facing endless, repetitive questions about the striker, who increasingly looks to have his head screwed back on and has perhaps realised that he is unlikely to earn a coveted transfer to a big team if sat on the bench. Every question put to the West Brom manager in his daily newspaper briefing on Saturday was about Berahino and it is becoming increasingly difficult to remember a time at The Hawthorns when the standoff did not dominate discussion. It is also easy to forget that Berahino remains unproven in many respects; a player with plenty of talent but a questionable mentality. Ask a neutral to name one standout moment and they would struggle. Ask an Albion regular for a definitive description and something negative would feature. Yet in this age of endless speculation, wouldn’t it be refreshing to blur out transfer talk for the remainder of the season and simply observe a young striker try to develop his game? 

8) Bilic highlights the change in West Ham’s intent

West Ham rarely burst into life against Sunderland but the league table does not lie and Slaven Bilic believes their position on the fringe of the European places owes plenty to their positive attitude. “Our fourth game of the season was at Anfield,” remembered Bilic. “We’d beaten Arsenal in our first game and then lost to Leicester and Bournemouth at home. My assistant said ‘a point would be good tomorrow’ and I said ‘yeah, it would be good but I wouldn’t take it now’. Sometimes you are over the moon with a point after the game, but beforehand I will always say ‘no thank you’ because we have a good team and I believe in it.” They won that match at Liverpool 3-0 and have gone on to brighter things since. It is something of a quirk that two such forward-thinking sides as West Ham and Everton have more draws than any of their top-flight rivals, with 10 and 11 respectively. That statistic does not bother the Upton Park faithful, who see the proof of their team’s intent unfolding before them. There is little joy in compounding the disappointment of their former manager, Sam Allardyce, after his team played well enough to deserve a draw of their own on Saturday – but Bilic’s words inadvertently highlighted the fundamental change in outlook that has arisen at West Ham since he took his rival’s old job.

Pos	Team	P	GD	Pts
1	Leicester	27	20	56
2	Tottenham Hotspur	27	28	54
3	Arsenal	27	17	51
4	Man City	26	20	47
5	Man Utd	27	10	44
6	West Ham	27	10	43
7	Southampton	27	9	40
8	Stoke	27	-4	39
9	Liverpool	26	2	38
10	Watford	27	1	37
11	Chelsea	27	3	36
12	Everton	26	11	35
13	West Brom	27	-7	35
14	Crystal Palace	27	-6	32
15	AFC Bournemouth	27	-14	29
16	Swansea	27	-11	27
17	Norwich	27	-21	24
18	Newcastle	26	-22	24
19	Sunderland	27	-19	23
20	Aston Villa	27	-27	16