It's a bit of catch 22 for Lerner. He obviously wants to sell the club and in order to stand any chance of getting a decent offer they need to be in PL. So what do you do? Give Lambert money to spend in January? or sack Lambert and bring in a new manager who will want to bring in their own players....either way it's going to cost money...and you still might end up going down. That would be a disaster.

I know it looked like they rolled over yesterday, and to be fair Villa were poor against us also but I still don't think they will go down. They do have some quality.

I'm not worried about the interest in the Championship as such. It's competitive, perhaps even more exciting than the PL in some ways.

Maybe too competitive. We'll lose some of our best players. So we'll have to do another rebuild, against fairly well established teams who are doing quite well. It will be tough getting promoted, and even tougher doing so and staying up. It would be a chance for some of our academy players to come through but we've just sold the better ones.

We'd better stay up. We have the players to do it. We have to find the way to do it.

To the OP.
If you go down, you lose the approximately £75m per annum TV money but if you stay down for 4 seasons you get a total of £48m spread over those four seasons.
So over four seasons you will not receive 4 x £75m = £300m, and you receive £48m, so over four seasons relegation will cost you £252m. That's if you're not promoted back again in that period. It's exactly the Wolverhampton Wanderers scenario, as their parachute payments run out next season.
On top of that there's loss of ticket sales for you, but that'll probably 'only' be between £5m and £10m a season.

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Its like walking towards a cliff with a blindfold on, only with thousands of people watching on helpless to do anything. Those financial losses would be an absolute nightmare. Lambert has already shown he can break any records, relegation might just be his big 1.

Lambert's problems probably stem from the fact that he hasn't had a proper head coach since Culverhouse left. He's doing too much. Before he used to leave the basic coaching to Culverhouse.

It's frustrating in that we have the makings of a good team. If only we could find a way of scoring goals. Players aren't going forwards enough, or when they do the pass in to them isn't there. Either the coaching is wrong, or out on the pitch players don't have the confidence to really put defences under pressure.

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"I have backed him for three years and now enough is enough."

Me too. I never want to see another Scottish manager down VP ever. Every one since I was born has been pants.

Paddy - I hear what you're saying. But to me the facts themselves don't matter. If this season had been better, would any of what happened in previous seasons matter? No.

However, I've come round to the position that I now have sever doubts about whether Lambert can turn things around, which to me is the thing which matters. Look back over the last year, say to the game when beat Chelsea last March, and we've had just two periods of decent to good results; the 4 matches at the beginning of this season, and a 5 match spell around November. The rest has been mainly dross. Lambert has done some good things, brought in some very good players for the budget he's got, but overall the results have been below the acceptability line. We're back in the sort of collapse we endured at the end of last season, and there comes a time when you have to say it looks like the manager hasn't got the answers.

Maybe it isn't as bad as that. I don't expect anything from the Chelsea match, but we need to pick up points after that. Maybe we will; we don't have to pick up many to pull clear of the teams around and below us. I'll back the team all the way. But the big question is can Lambert do it, and at the moment I see no sign that he can; the teams he puts are just poor once they get over the halfway line, and ultimately that has to be down to him. Hope he'll prove me wrong.

Bottom line is if Lambert was replaced by say Laudrup tomorrow, I'd go for it big time. The big problem is who would Lerner pick, someone of the stature of Laudrup or some lower league hopeful who has caught his eye? I'd be worried sick he'd go for the latter. As it is, I think Lerner's unlikely to make a change unless Fox pushes him into it, so probably we're just going to have to hope that Lambert can do it after all.

Lambert is the worst manager at Villa in the PL era. Cannot believe he is still here but that's why I no longer comment. We have players that should be capable of a mid table finish, but Lambert cannot motivate, encourage or instil belief into any of them.

He should be sacked regardless of what happens going forward given his appalling record as Villa manager but one thing's for sure - I will never, ever forgive him if he gets this club relegated.

Most fans have been wanting him out for ages and nothing gets done so no point thinking he will be going anywhere because quite clearly the people that run Villa don't have a clue.

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Definitely one of the best managers for villa I've ever seen,I hope he stays for years and years,or at least until League Division Two!